Category Archives: All poems

March 5, 2013

Cutty Sark

By hjs

From the foggy Clyde
round the Cape of Good Hope
all the way to Shanghai she braved storms
and the advent of the steam age.

Who sentenced her to this?

Raised high and dry,
made fast with iron struts:
the viewing of a perfect corpse
by a procession of nosy landlubbers.

Taunted by seagulls, mocked
by the rising tide… The wind tugs
at her empty rigging. She will not move
for all the tea in China.

Do not go near her. Leave her be.

When all is quiet, she dreams
of sailing with her luckier cousins,
the Marie Celeste, the Flying Dutchman,
the Pequod on their endless voyages.

A wind is in her sails. The iron rusts
and falls away. The dry dock is empty.

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March 1, 2013

the room

By hjs

first door on the left
right up at the top
the doorknob is tarnished

bedstead of brown polished wood
hotplate (two rings)
furred up kettle
tin saucepan

through the window
black fireladders
shadows on brownstone walls
a rusting watertank

stranded
halfway across the floor
a black leather boot
with a big silver buckle

salt in the air and seaweed
gulls circle the ceiling rose

the ocean rolls in from the far side
long lines of breakers
between the overthrown washstand
and the warped dresser

tidemark of debris across the room
broken planks
a smashed barrel of rum
glint of scattered doubloons

thick fine white sand covers the floor

stay
who made those footprints?

hush now
take care
how you go

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February 28, 2013

Imaginary photo album #2

By hjs

I was there too.
It was a smooth trip through the night
until the sun rose, even further East.

We spiralled down
from 20,000 feet. At 8:16 we did our bit
for history, and cheered the sun we’d sowed.

You’ll find the names
under a grainy picture: Paul Tibbetts Jr;
Tom and Robert, Wyatt, Dick and all the others

on the crew. Look closer,
and you’ll see faint shadows: men
in lab coats, men in suits, men shaking hands

for front page photographs.
And, in a certain trick of light: distorted
shapes, scorched faces burnt into the fuselage.

I was  there too.
Look at us all together, smiling, back –
back from a smooth trip into night.

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February 28, 2013

Going outside

By hjs

“I am just going outside and may be some time.”
Cpt. Titus Oates

He never was the one
to go in search of sunny beaches.
He never took that Caribbean cruise
at Christmas – would rather
stay at home, confined inside
as cold winds rattled windowpanes
and snow fell on the garden.
He didn’t want a tan, the busyness
of southern market places,
the babble of vacation crowds.
He liked the cold, the quiet, night.

On winter evenings
he embarked on polar explorations.
He set his armchair up below decks
on the Erebus, and watched
John Franklin vanish into myth;
returned, a lone survivor,
from the kitchen with a mug of tea,
to strike out for the North Pole
on the Fram. Thwarted by southern drift
he turned the page, and tried his luck
with Shackleton and the Endurance.

He didn’t change much when
the diagnosis was confirmed:
sat still and watched his garden
slowly fill with snow; took up
a book and trudged with Scott
and Oates across the bleak expanse
of endless ice. Just sometimes,
after dark, suspended in his pool of light
behind the glass, he would wonder
if he’d ever find the courage to go out
– or if he’d rather stay some time.

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February 21, 2013

Touch-me-not

By hjs

Someone has found my secret place
and raided the Impatiens Parviflora.

Its pods,
translucent green
with ripeness,
the joyful pregnant bombs
of resurrection –
all spent.

I button up my coat.
The winter will be cold.

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February 21, 2013

still

By hjs

out on the beach
an old man leans into the wind

bends down
picks up a pebble

against the hiss of waves on shingle
he stands motionless

then gently puts it back
among the million others

leans into wind
bends down

seeking perfection
still

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February 8, 2013

Tourist Boat, Tonle Sap, Cambodia

By hjs

The fisherman
hip-deep in muddy water
waits for the tourist boat
to pass.

Cigarette dangling
his bright eyes never leave me.
When the tide turns, Barang,
they tell me
I’ll slit your throat.

The boat belches diesel.
We pick up speed.

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , | posted in All poems, Holiday snaps, Moments, Places

February 8, 2013

Monument Valley

By hjs

A fat man on horseback rides into the sunset.
Blue jeans, red shirt, black cowboy hat.
“That’s Dave,” says Rosie over the microphone.

“He’ll stop there on the bluff for you, four minutes.”
The shutters click. He stands immobile.
Four minutes, and he trots towards the tourist bus;

heaves his redshirted belly off the little horse.
His face is dark and still.
This is the famous dignity of the Navajo people.

Two dollars for a photo of yourself astride his horse.
There are no takers. He just stands.
Later, in Suzie’s hogan, we watch her weave a rug.

She’s ninety-five, says Rosie, and almost blind
behind huge spectacles. When time is up
we file past her, from south to north, to show respect

and stuff a dollar in a cigar box. I saw Dave earlier
in Goulding’s campground store: a fat man
buying candy bars, something to keep him going

while he hitches up the trailer, loads the horse, and
drives out to the bluff over his nation’s holy land
to ride for tourists until the sun goes down.

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February 5, 2013

Footprints #2

By hjs

I came across this poem called Footprints
in The Nation’s Favourite Twentieth Century Poems
by ANON. (and by God he or she knew why):

an overpowering poem  for sheer mawkishness
and one hundred per cent genuine cringe value –
and I caught myself loving its message.

It’s about this man walking the beach with the LORD
(reliving his life in a dream), and looking back he sees
only one set of prints at the most difficult times,

and he accuses the LORD of deserting him
in his hour of need; whereupon HE replies
then HE was carrying him… I blinked back a tear,

then retraced  their steps in the sand
to measure the depth of those solitary prints.
They were no deeper than when the man walked alone.

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February 5, 2013

An unread book

By hjs

In the middle
of his fifth decade,
all at sea and lost
in office murk,

he strikes out
for the shores
of his favourite bookshop.
Stroking faces and spines,

scanning the shelves
for the one
that will cut through
the fog,

a Companion to Life,
he has no eyes
for the shy assistant’s
sideways glances.

If he knew how to read
and what
they would speak
volumes.

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