Shylock’s lament

Rates go up, as well as down

And an unpaid surer cannot be sound

A penny short requires an eye or a tooth

We have to live and that’s the truth

Some call me base, my trade so seedy

But want my money, then call me greedy

Pay me my gold, that’s my solution

I care not for UN Resolutions

Debts require satisfaction- prompt and fresh

Or I grab my due, a pound of flesh

My red hat is not for show or flounce

It shows my clients  I am about to pounce.

Cypress Kneewood

Ripped from the bayou

Dry forlorn awkward

Casual memory

Knotty, smooth, uneven to the touch

Sanctuary to alligators

A thousand years old

With tales to tell

You stare out, all seeing

Petrified

Left side/right side

It is easy

I can feel my right side

But not my left

Hot or cold?  Sharp or blunt?

Who can tell?

Threading a seat belt

Or closing a zip

Is beyond left side me

I was half way down the supermarket aisle

When I realised I had my  right shoe only on

An urgent retrospective hunt recovered

The left

Stranded in the car park

Abandoned

Where it fell.

On the shore

It sweeps in

Granting

absolution, forgiveness, redemption, certainty

Completing its task relentlessly, slavishly, completely

Twice daily

Salving, soothing, cleansing reassuring

Nourishing, caressing and scouring

Beckoned by the sun and the moon

Dunkirk and  D Day

Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail.

we shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,

We shall fight on the seas and oceans,

We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,

We shall fight on the beaches,

We shall fight on the landing grounds,

We shall fight in the fields and in the streets,

We shall fight in the hills;

We shall never surrender,

Unless I have a TV interview to save my skin of course..

For David

Fresh air

Was the cure for everything

And so it was, that day

In his cot, not yet two

Wrapped and warm

In his pram

For half an hour or so

Who can tell?

There is so much washing to do

Until it was time

To discover his lifeless body

Pneumonia they said

Who can tell?

She never told me what happened

I felt what happened, from her

For years to come

But the words were never spoken

Ever

I do not know his birthday

I do not know his death day.

Or funeral day

I tried to escape through my aunt’s

Bathroom window

But at three, there is no escape

There never is.

Stornoway

North.

Very far north.

Where night is a brief intrusion on day.

Where Glasgow is for southern softies,

and the seas, sky, and buildings have been painted grey.

At Halloween

Outside, the half light hesitated

Uncertain

Inside blackness

Lurking behind drawn  curtains

While ghostly figures perambulated

Lost souls forever fated

To roam this cloying earth

At this time,,this place, his hour

With nefarious intent,to seize and devour

Shadowy sprites, cold s death

Moving amongst night’s misty shroud

The demon’s breath

To ham to cripple to burn to maim

Consumed by the devil’s flickering flame

Poems

Do not trust the Mirror

You are older than you look

More beautiful than you imagine

Your imperfections less pronounced

You are closer than you imagine

Your faults further away

Concave or convex

Who knows

The light

At that angle

Momentarily

Illuminates the darkness

Which you feel

Images are transposed

Left to  right

Right to wrong

In the blink

Of an Eye

( after Sarah James)

That Last Carry

You were six and a half

And had not asked for one in months

But the wind and the slopes

The myriad points of interest

Along the promenade

Had all sapped you

You said nothing

Just stood in front of me and threw your arms out

As  if in pious supplication

You slumped over my shoulder

In grateful abandonment

Heavier than I last remembered

Your panting breath stroking  my neck

Subsiding into synchronised rhythm with my pace

Maybe, in the future, you would walk beside me

Hand in hand

If I was lucky.

( after Mathew Stewart)

For Pete 1959- 2024

Stornoway Part 2

North.

Very far north.

Moscow north

Where night is a brief intrusion on day.

Where Glasgow is for southern softies,

And the seas, sky, and buildings have been painted grey.

Your daughter  sent me the news to say

Her image that of her mother forty years ago

You were my Best Man

And I remembered those pints of IPA

And our unsteady walks home

Cementing a steady kinship

And the songs- another music in a different kitchen

In Stornoway you introduced me to scallops the size of cricket balls

And waves the size of cliffs, and cliffs the size of waves.

And beaches white, with skies sometimes blue

And a culture proud to be different, on its own

I understood that

You had found home.

“Reclining on a seaweed-upholstered chaise longue of gneiss…”

That will do – and it did.

You urged me to visit the Callanish Stones, I did

With views unchanged for five thousand years

You returned where your ancestors, had walked

And had seen the Stones too.

When I next see them, I shall see you.

Pasta energetically

I like pasta, pale, and white

Perfectly formed a slimmers delight

Which do I like best? that would be taglietelling,

With creamy sauce aromatically smelling

But after a mouthful, written by  penne, I might

Pea pods and butter beans

luxuriating in summer’s warmth, ,

Where green on green, a vibrant sheen,

Hangs heavy, plump, a verdant prize,

The pea pods swell before my eyes.

A gentle snap,  satisfying sound,

Tiny pearls perfectly  round,

Fresh from the vine, sweet delight,

Coaxed into readiness

in the suns , golden light.

Beyond  broad leaves lazily  spread,

The butter beans, a creamy bed,

Lie nestled close, a mattish  hue,

Kissed by the morning’s diamond dew.

They’re gathered now, a kitchen’s boon,

Beneath the glow of afternoon,

The butter beans, a melting dream,

Bathed in butter’s golden gleam.

Pea pods and buttered beans, a pair,

A simple feast beyond compare,

A taste of summer, fresh and bright,

A garden’s gift, a pure delight.

Sometimes I just sit

Why walk, when I have arrived?
I do not look,

 I am neither dazzled by brightness

Nor cowed by the dark

I do not listen, for I have already heard too much

I do not raise my nostrils to the breeze seeking a transitory aroma which will come and go, fleetingly

Already I have tasted what the day has had to offer

I do not speak, enough has been said

Sometimes I just sit

You should try it.

Janet Device – The Witch Child

Nine years old, already bitter

Cast aside as the runt of the litter

Always making tea with the kitchen kettle

But nursing a grudge

 For she had scores to settle

Her mother, brother and  sister

On her list were top

And for it they were to pay

The price – the hangman’s drop

Her mother took the form of a familiar she declared

A brown barking dog, no-one was spared

While king and prosecutors and politicians wrangled

Ten innocents  from a tree lifelessly dangled.

 Source  Lindsey Davis There Will Be Bodies

Throwing Shapes

And how will we be when the moment comes?

contorted agony, howling agony –

or  slipping gently into the night?

A final mazy movement in the moment

Wild crazy bends

Or angular jolt

That this is how it ends.

From that first  blast of light on the day of our birth

To the plummeting darkness of our last day on Earth