Category Archives: All poems

April 29, 2020

Map reading at 60

By hjs

Should I feel lost these days
I will unfold my trusty Ordnance Survey map –
brittle from many a soaking, sunshine, sweat;

and though it is coming apart at the creases,
and yellowish areas of terra incognita
are spreading out from frayed edges,

when I take off my glasses to peer
at the whorls, dots, cabbalistic symbols,
I think I can make out where I’m at – look:

miles north of this place called Despondency,
and – except for a ravine and some ridges –
not far, not so far south of Contentment at all.

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April 4, 2020

My Covid-19 Song

By hjs

so somewhere in China
a new kind of virus breeds
they say bats are involved
and open markets and now
it spreads and breeds
new verbs so now we’re
social distancing
with the best of them
and all out of face masks
and the shelves empty of bog rolls

surely someone somewhere
must be sitting on millions of them
taking a gleeful crap
in the lap of luxury
the selfish asshole

and in the twilight
you walk the dog
the blinds are down and
the shutters closed
everywhere
provoking medieval visions
how they’re all lying dead
behind those blind windows but

the day was absurdly clear and bright

and there’s a golden moon in the sky
and one golden star

all alone

2 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in All poems, Life_the Universe_and ..., Moments

February 25, 2020

Jack at sixteen

By hjs

Sometimes
he just stands there.
Just stands,

back hunched,
head drooping,
milky eyes unfocused.

Sans eyes,
sans teeth –
sans everything?

Whether he’s lost,
unseeing,
wondering where he’s at;

or whether
he’s following a fox
into the undergrowth

while you, helpless,
call his name
until he bursts from bushes

happy:
that he cannot tell you.
That is for you to decide.

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January 1, 2020

New Year’s Day

By hjs

Time to take the dog out
into pale sun.

Pleasant enough walking,
until we reach

the dark curtain of fir trees
where the path,

rising, turns to ice.
As if on cue the noon bell rings:

time to turn back.
After all, we’re no spring chickens;

after all,
we’ve been to that top before,

know that view;
why bother? After all, it’s only

the first day of a whole new year.
So we go on.

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November 2, 2019

Llanthony

By hjs

The wagtails anyway looked lively
and the freshly shorn sheep were bleating.

The place was deserted. The monks long gone;
the car park empty; the hotel closed.

Only a very old couple were limping
in the skeleton of Llanthony Priory:

the walking wounded…
I put a spring in my step; felt a twinge

in my back, a cold wind on my neck.
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near?

Ah –
but wasn’t it lovely –

 

i_Llanthony (3)

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September 4, 2019

Patrishow

By hjs

No hermit now at Patrishow
above the valley of the Grwyne Fawr.
The gifts left at the Holy Well
forlorn; the grey church silent.

Snail shells lie scattered on a stone.
The thrush who guards this place
has found a use for an old grave.
He hops from stone to branch, serene.

He knows we are just passing.

 

h_Patrishow (37)

 

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September 4, 2019

Sunday morning at the canal

By hjs

Across the fields to Llangattock.
At the top of the hill
the latch clangs back on the metal gate.

The canal sleeps on.

Two boats, barely moving
on still brown water.
A hiker; exchange of a nod.

Perfect reflections of foliage.

Unseen flutter of wings;
the call of a wood pigeon.
Fat stone bridges.

The sound of my footsteps.

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September 4, 2019

Lunatics

By hjs

The asylum is vast and state-of-the-art
and you have to admire
the single-mindedness of the inmates

moonstruck indeed
they spend every waking hour
computing arcane calculations
assembling monstrous machines
long after the sun has sunk and
the sane seek sleep

as the cold marble rolls
slowly across the sky
their restlessness increases

imagine their fierce dedication
only sometimes a yelp can be heard
or low keening or fully-fledged howl
imagine the terrible itching
of their coarse grey hide
when the sphere has grown full

it is true that abandoned children
cry for food and
fighting has started outside the walls

but you have to admire
the ruthlessness  of their religion
and appreciate it is only thus
they can ever hope to succeed
in putting one of us
on the moon

 

July 20, 1969 – first man on the moon

 

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April 26, 2019

Too late

By hjs

I too would have liked
to write about fog but
the Big Boys intervened,
told me to shut up:

they’d been there,
seen it,
done the poems,
had the T-shirts printed.

So here I sit
quietly watching
a pale sun melt
what could’ve been

my poem – all fourteen
glorious fucking lines of it.

2 Comments | posted in All poems, Moments, writing

April 4, 2019

The Master of Sleep

By hjs

Oh but don’t touch him. This you may do:

let the auricle trap the ghostly filaments
of his dreams; let malleus, incus and stapes
deliver them into the cochlea’s sanctum.

Don’t speak to him. But this you may do:

Let the intangible particles of his slumber
be warmed by keen turbinates, let them
drop anchor in the olfactory epithelium.

Stay! Do not move. Though this you may do:

wave by invisible sine wave, let the heave
of his night hunt pierce the cornea, traverse
the bulbus oculi, and enter the retina.

Do not presume further. This must suffice –

there are lines which shall not be crossed,
lands which uninitiated feet may not tread.
Time itself will stop for an old dog asleep.

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