The melting frosts on the midnight roofs
House the cows with their mud-shorn hooves, whilst
Skeletal like, the winter weeping willows sleep, and
The hickory-smoke-scented quietness sweeps
The peace of Christmas past
Down the iron-barred drains.
Joggers, like slugs in the early sunlit morning,
Slowly slither up[i] Mary’s hill,
While the black crows still are cawing
Over the brightness of the slime—
Their foot-fluorescent greens, whose reflection
Marks the sun, sitting high
In the corner of my eye
Beneath the roof
Of my own black felt hat, and
The collar-top lip of my
‘Old man’s overcoat,’
As she calls it—
All bound up and
Tripled-scarved
Against the cutting wind.
Meanwhile, the
[ii]Tesco van of home delivery
Chugs past the empty fields
Of horse and livery,
And all the still fishing ponds
Of dead, Wedge, Wood—
Where the empty goalposts,
Now rusted white,
Stand grinning like rich China men.
Bone-skinned herons, blue and grey,
Like sentinel-still soldiers—
Guardsmen of waiting death—
Are motionless, either side of the
Portals of my memory,
Marking this,
[iii]My wedding day.
Forty years on, the broken boughs
Of old gnarled trees,
Dead stumps, and
Sheared-off trunks
Of the wet and waiting woods
All bear the marks of lightning gone—
Burnt out now,
And cold without the fire.
Halfway down the hill—
A memorial bench,
To Fred (who’s dead),
Surrounded by flowers
Left for the ghosts to see and smell,
Laid by the midnight and unseen people
Wrapped in red ribbon
As the shivering [iv]daffs
Bwa their heads beside the
Cold memorial to poor, dead Fred.
Now a corpse, decayed and vile—
Yet still we’re invited to:
“Please sit awhile and
Remember his laugh.
Consider his smile.”
Memorials are for the living—
Lest they forget.
The dead have forgotten already.
Visiting seagulls crack the surface tension
Of the icy, smoky water,
Whilst the winter sardine-like slaughter
Of the still mirrored-face ponds
Continues on and ever on.
After all—
We’ve all got to eat.
Leaf-empty trees,
Like lungs coughed raw,
Bear like hanging cancer their [v]witches’ brooms-
Infesting their cold canopy floor
And empty rooms
Of February.
‘Quack-quack’
Go the quickening ducks
O’er the gull-grey fence
Toward the empty cricket pitch—
Now naked without the covers
Of the bowling greens.
Winter lays all the hidden ground
[vi]Out—
To be so clearly seen,
By the bobble-hatted children
Shuffling like mice
On this socks-tucked-in-the-jeans
Maudlin Monday morning…
When winter leaves
The lane in Wedgwood
All fired in [vii]potter’s mourning greys,
As these late and bitter days,
Chase all our summer dreams
Away.
[i] Most joggers nowadays are women. What on earth is that all about? The pressure is on them that’s for sure.
[ii] Tesco PLC is a British multinational grocery and general merchandise retailer headquartered in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom.
[iii] It was February 24th and my 37th Wedding anniversary when I wrote this poem. I love my wife. Honest!
