Monthly Archives: September 2020

PLACES

Sun-dappled clearings below rising, noisy, moisture-dripping RAINFOREST

Bleached, slowly shifting, unforgivingly dry, arid desert SAND DUNES

Silky-lush, verdant green, daisy spotted, pasture grass MEADOWS

Wild, boggy-damp, jig-sawn, cold and mist covered MOORLAND

Panoramic, soaring, towering, snow-capped, MOUNTAIN RANGES

Quilted, orderly-fenced, multicoloured, arable-cropped FIELDS

Weather-beaten, crumbling, boundary-guarding, nest strewn CLIFFTOPS

Endless, restless, fathomless, blue/green/grey, untamed OCEANS

…..

High rise, noise-polluted, concrete-crowded CITY CENTRES

Fissured, rock-scarred, unkempt, abandoned, exhausted QUARRIES

Blotting, stinking-rotten, poison-filled, synthetic WASTE TIPS

Hidden, radiation-spewing, millennium-lasting NUCLEAR DUMPS

Blasted, shattered, depopulated, flattened, inhuman WAR ZONES

Sprawling, unwanted, shanty housed, hungry, REFUGEE ENCAMPMENTS

Silver tongued, lip-serviced, self-serving, sterile POLITICAL ARENAS

Climate-changed, overpopulated, resource-depleted, mismanaged EARTH.

Tinnitus

Gone for ever are the honey-silvered trills and songs of the nightingale, tit and blackbird

Though the raucous, but welcome, ‘caw’ of the crow, raven and magpie, lie still within my reach

The cacophonous din of tinnitus’ engine-whines, ringing and roars, never can be unheard

But, on a good day, soften and shush, as waves breaking and retreating on a steep, pebbled beach

The Other Way

Such is the fate of the timid

That chance will be denied

Scenes of what might have been

Are painted on eyelids, inside

….

Memories that have no past

Faces and places never seen

Hands wanting for the holding

The other side of time’s screen

…

Dreamers know such losses

On nights that last all day

Things that would be different

Had they taken the other way

The Stokers

A freighter ploughs through heavy seas

Navigating oceans by degrees

Racing to bring precious cargo back

Convoyed to reduce the chance of attack

….

The war effort needs these crucial supplies

Ferried to Britain under pewter skies

Below in the cold and merciless deep

Lies a deadly enemy that does not sleep

….

U boats silently stalk their prey

Alert and watching night and day

Silent, merciless cylinders of steel

Torpedoes armed, aimed at the ship’s keel

….

In the freighter’s bowels, ‘neath bulkhead light

Stokers swing shovels in constant night

Sweat, coal dust, crippling heat, endured

Power for the engines must be assured

….

In the stern, the propeller churns

Boiling the sea, the ship tacks and turns

On the bridge the look-out is slack

Failing to spot the moon-silvered track

….

Hell is let loose near the water line

Two explosions rock the ship’s spine

Salt seas pour in with torrent strength

Alarms ring out along the ship’s length

….

The stokers know the emergency drill

But the deluged furnaces are quick to kill

“98 hands lost”, the official post

“Ship sunk within sight of the British coast”