CRABWISE

Crouched around the rim, in clusters,

kids with buckets. Wordless,

I watch a tussle of wits.

 

They’ve come equipped, these hunters,

brought string and safety pin.

A bolt becomes makeshift sinker,

 

and bacon is saved to bait

their bottom dwelling prize.

Stalk-eyes see the would-be catch,

 

alert to a murky rip-off.

Risk is palpable, approached

through stealthy pincer movement.

 

Two schools of landing coexist:

some jerk and swing, flailing

in search of an instant answer,

 

others draw their lines patiently

by inches to the surface.

The day’s take plays scrabble,

 

captive in some plastic prison.

Canoe Lake strollers pause and peer,

in a barnacled mantle

 

make out the moon’s crust. Maybe.

Or count lost legs of veterans -

regrown at moulting season

 

like veins around a tumour.

Afternoon, and ice-cream,

bring this contest to a close.

 

Tipped out across a concrete page

my jottings scuttle to the edge,

spill over and sink without trace.

ii.2002

 

Away With Words, Portsmouth Poetry 

SHIPPING MOVEMENTS (Portsmouth – Isle of Wight)

Embarkation:

“Go now while you can” toilet trips,

and pointless rummaging

for items unlocated,

pass the queuing time.

Cycles racked and bungee strapped.

Roofboxes. Caravans.

Waiting on drivers and their rigs,

phalanxes of freight.

The sweet fume of petrol

undercut by salt tang.

With evening, clouds close in

and neon rips the broken light.

Gulls bicker for scraps on tarmac.

For twenty years my father came this way

watching warships, noting their numbers;

through cold war to détente, and back,

naming the gunmetal greys:

British towns and Greek goddesses.

On a ship’s rail leaning, looking back,

I fathom their allure; picture

his teenage ear lent to a crystal set,

construing the enemy:

Graf Spee, Bismarck, Scharnhorst, Tirpitz.

He never went to sea: signed up

to navigate the skies instead;

was transferred when gliders flew no more,

and ended up in Varna, spying

on a Black Sea fleet at anchor.

Decades on, like some ghost of a frogman,

rudiments of Russian picked up then

found recalled usage, translating

the Hammer and the Sickle,

when Obraztsovy was in port.

Daily ferried by three sisters -

Southsea, Brading, Shanklin - and bearded

in naval fashion, he stands:

pint in hand at bar, sustaining a sense

of other tongues, other islands.

Cast off and underway:

tricolours and Union Jacks,

grubby both, flap loosely.

Cranes salute, point skyward

alongside missile launchers;

who, fresh back from the Gulf

triumphant but empty-handed,

line the wharves.

And now gulls crowd

the detritus-churning wake:

in our turning manoeuvre

rich pickings, below the surface.

vi.2005

SHORE THING

Windows ajar, awake to the dark:

a squeal and hiss of braking below.

But I hear the surf’s looped roll

smash mussel shells, pounding

their jagged fragments into sand.

Like spume in the wind, doubt nags my skin,

but does not crystallize.

Instinct, professes Winston, is what matters:

we’re hostage to our genes.

Queasy, I reach for the remote.

Another celebrity channel:

the stink of dead cuttlefish

washed up among plastic bottles,

glass shards and broken chairs.

Night buses jostle a stretch limo.

The mini-bar yawns, and houses tilt

seaward. Here in hotel limbo.

Over a rutted mudstone shelf

flood tide fills extinct footprints,

leaves question marks in pools.

Full English breakfast dawns:

mushrooms grace my plate,

the closed anemones of trodden water.

A cormorant suns its unfurled wings,

cruciform as my upbringing.

v.2003 / ix.2005

BREAKDOWN

Have you ever strayed

over the edge of reason ?

Driven by all-embracing logic,

become a metaphor in pyjamas ?

Driven, for that circle must be squared,

or crossed, or arrowed.

Every road sign, every street name,

every lit window is symbol.

While the wide world chain smokes,

each number signifies, all actions link.

Your silent voice yells in an empty cave.

Where doors of perception jam open,

no one is neutral:

in any car’s colour, the driver’s allegiance.

Vision - a contraband daughter -

bathes perspective in hallucination,

sends wisdom a postcard.

Ears ring with the fallout in your head.

When diurnal rhythm lets go its hold,

time melts like a Dali watch

across the labyrinth of waking.

From one slug, or burn, or coffee cup

sleepless to the next;

each turning point an act of futile defiance.

Have you ever drifted

beyond your hidden depth ?

Reached deep within to grip

some outstretched hand ?

viii - ix.2001

SPARE CHANGE

I.

Already browning leaves

bask in focussed warmth:

the definition of sunlight

held in hard-edged shadows,

which slant bars of night

across the furrows.

I squeeze the most

out of time remaining:

removal of crumbs

from arcane elevations

with dampened fingers, thumbs,

and expectations.

Leaving is the absent word

on a torn page:

smoke in a blind spot

where one can’t be found -

trusting footsteps do not

follow you around.

II.

Taking a breather:

I turn the block to its corner, and back.

Retracing routes to a dead reckoning

of climb-downs, compromises,

and short-lived triumphs.

To stay is to swim,

to drink the poisoned river.

Limbs stretch, pull, kick and glide,

emerging silent for a year

beyond the point of no return.

Catching traffic at a halt,

I scuttle by, green lighted.

Place a coin at the bedside

should the ferryman not hear my rhyme.

Always there’s a fare to pay.

III.

Hung up on tenterhooks

a wet blanket of doubt dries:

the masks of here and there,

two-faced, waiting on a word.

Leaf-fall as rain soaks away.

The shouted team-talk of six-a-sides –

lunch hours played out

in swearing, sweating echoes.

Parking meters promise

“free use of unexpired time”;

I plot reappearances

to the rhythm of wheel on rail,

and doze in grubby compartments.

Sunlight and shadowed passages –

the clear-cut choice

long made, long unrealised.

IV.

Pressure on a button then,

for drawn-out if becomes when

in the blink of a moment.

Familiar faces, soon no more

than unsharp recollection,

count these eight years down to days.

I am my own dissector,

measuring mixed sentiment

with a metre length ribbon;

And seeking some balanced view,

which neither labels nor betrays,

is mere shift I’m working through.

Sliced strand by strand, the stale knots

loosen; expose my parting shots:

Home again. Whole again. Home.

viii - xi . 2000

Vignettes a la Ronde

1.

From Autoroute we exit

through silty plains, slowing

to the pace of sunflowers.

Where Man and marsh commune,

once limestone islands

emboss this monk-drained basin.

Here, our journey ends

in pantiled roofs, peeling shutters

and unmade, sun-baked pavement.

2.

Monsieur freewheels the potholed slope -

a single geared, sit-up and beg descent.

The faded polo stripes

and shorts and socks and sandals

worn comme Hulot.

His creased features speak of weather:

“Orages dans le Sud”, he says

showing front-page shots with solemn glee.

Yet fretful, for saplings - parched

and wilting - croak, while Bordeaux floods.

This pitched site, plus simple, more to him

than unretired income:

his stubborn foothold on a walk of life.

Taking a dim view of motorhomes -

“sangsues, pas vrai camping” -

he vows to charge them extra next year.

* * *  

For Saturday evening frites,

Monsieur’s spent all day mending.

Disgruntled, he shakes his grizzled mop -

“Il est panne: rien ne marche” -

an ancient fryer in bits around his feet.

Later, after meticulous checks

of the pool’s pH and chlorine,

Monsieur lingers to observe petanques,

and exchange pleasantries:

We talk of Pineau, Troussepinette,

some vagaries of the Michelin inspectorate,

and how his tomates biologique are ripening.

The clack of boules on dusty gravel

continues under globed lamps.

Unnoticed, Monsieur departs for home

from where, at eleven sharp, our lights go out:

“ Monsieur bon nuit.”

3.

Morning: warm baguettes, jam,

and the smell of bikes lent into rosemary.

The day yawns, stretches out its canvas:

we paint each one, full to its frame,

with paddle-stroke and pedal-turn.

Gnarled pollards edge the patchwork,

squat its banks like old anglers, hollowed out.

Beyond a tumble of purple loosestrife and fallen trunks,

a dagger beak rises through poplars:

hooked and trailing legs are carried out of sight

by huge, deliberate flaps.

Our barque zig-zags through lime tarmac:

the conche’s lush silence disturbed

only by frog-splashed gashes in its duckweed,

an iridescent flash of Kingfisher,

and family disputes over navigation.

Market garden mojettes yield

to sunflowers in their day-glow pomp:

emergent from a dappled maze

we track the levee dividing wet from dry,

wheeling, like kites over treeless meadows,

in search of the next deserted village.

 

4.

Evening: swallows swoop low,

with chittering swerves, to scoop the pool.

The site settles to after-dinner books, card games

or the shake, rattle and roll of dice.

Two plots along, guttural geese honk evensong;

a bat jags through the twilight.

Out at three a.m. with a bladder full of wine,

the Perseids streak luminous to earth

where fireflies, like cigar stubs, flicker at my feet.

Cassiopeia sits due north, her beauty at its zenith,

and Cygnus has flown from east to west 

while I grow old in gazing at such skies.

v.2002 – i.2003