A Thousand Mile Journey

A thousand mile journey
Must start with a step
A lesson begins with a queue
A mushroom risotto
Begins with a cep
The many starts out as the few

The story – four figures
Dark suited and sad
Who carry the coffin above -
Begins with a second glance
Shyly returned
And proceeds with a kiss
And with love

The Whisky Experience

Here in Edinburgh’s Royal Mile
The kids enjoy the ride
In the automated cars
That creep around
Scotland's past
In the Water-of-Life Whisky Experience

It’s good to give
The boys and girls
An early fun -
Soft-focus
Sun-shining-on-the-golden-barley
Rainbows-in-waterfalls-
Water-of-Life Whisky Experience

I mean
It’s not as if Scotland
Or Britain
Or the world, for that matter
Has any kind of problems
With alcohol-related deaths
Or alcoholism
Is it?

Good to catch them young.
And for the adults – a wee dram
And a free glass.

Strictly No Laughing

The sign on Teignmouth beach
Says Strictly No Laughing
The tide’s on the turn
The rain is drizzling
And the red sands are almost deserted
Three dogs splash through the surf
And two seagulls, mother and daughter
Argue over a crab’s leg
A family take their blue and yellow tent down
And no one’s laughing

I’m leaning on the seawall
Waiting for my party
A father tells his son
Not to step on the cracks
But does not say why
And no one’s laughing

A crooked man talks into his phone
A sunny couple
In vertically-challenged tee shirts smile
And I realise I’ve misread the sign
It says Strictly No Launching
It also says
The launching facilities are at the Polly steps
The Quay
Tiegnmouth
Where everyone is laughing

The First Time You Heard the Wind

The first time you heard –
really heard –
the wind –
it banged your eyelids
and called out
like a mad horseman
below the rattling shutters
of your window
saying, Come ride with me,
let’s race the black stallion
across the frosty fields

The first time you felt –
really felt –
that cold,
the cold that sneaks into the stove
and sucks the heat from the last few embers,
that creeps between the joins of your clothes
and kisses your exposed neck
with icicle lips

The first time you heard –
really heard –
the wind’s song
A song so melancholy
that you desperately tried
to think of summer,
the beach where you dug for pennies,
where you traced railway tracks in the damp sand
with your red metal spade –
but the song
whistled around the graveyard in your head
and drowned those memories
and found deeper, sadder stories

That was the first time,
sitting with a childhood sweetheart
in a lean-to shelter,
feeling the shivers of rain,
wide-eyed, wide-eared -
the first time
you really heard the wind

The Rhythm Festival 2006

The good news is that when you get old
and crusty and pasty and rusty
you can still sit in a field
filled with other crusty, musty old hippies and wannabe hippies
and wish-we-had-been hippies
and wear inappropriate pixie hats
and ethnic gear that barely hides your lumps and bumps
and folds of flesh but it’s a blessing
that the young tasty, lusty guys and gals
who have strayed here by mistake thinking it’s 2006
don’t say, Hey granddad you’re insane and sad and mad
and it’s bad for your heart and skin and legs
and don’t start on about 1966 a-bloody-gain

So then Donovan drifts on
with his anachronistic, impressionistic,
joss stick wish-flicks, an old dogs with old tricks
and the barely alive dig the shtick and the beer flows
and granny pogos and the moon glows
and the headbands and the flowing scarves
and the fat flab and the skeletal grey-pony-tailed
pointy stick-jeaned, ringed and tattooed, unglued, rude, screwed
misplaced, uncased, released, nearly-deceased
(love and peace)
and weathered, withered flesh of an audience
gasp the last breath of the sixties and seventies before the music
fell apart in the eighties and we sit in our folding chairs
and Arlo sings about Alice and the man says,
What’s Really Changed? And we cheer!

So the kids jig to the knockabout Dylan sound-alike Steve Gibbons
two lane and there’s no sign of rain
and by Sunday night everyone’s too tired
to cheer for an encore and top of the bill
is Jerry Lee Lewis who is wheeled on
and gamely tackles a selection of his hits
Goodness Gracious, we’re in our motorhome
which is convenient and has its own lavatory and shower
and the tent next door are playing loud music
and it’s past midnight for god sake -
don’t they know we want to get to sleep?
What kind of festival is this anyway – Woodstock?

Numbers

At first
the living
outnumbered the dead.
Back then the wheel was the latest fad
and cooking fish
in the embers of the fire
as the sun set over a sparkling sea
was haute cuisine.

But as the years passed
and the body count grew
there came the moment
when the dead and the living
numbered the same.
And the first questions were asked
and ignored.

So now the teeming dead mock us,
above and below.
And a cup of clean water
is a rare feast
to be gulped in the warming wind
beneath the burning sky.

Discuss

1 The new book by Billy Collins. The Trouble With Poetry. Are his poems losing their edge? There are, for him, a couple of quite aggressive poems. And a few brilliant poems, too. But so many end in his trademark anti-climax. The cased guitar leaning against the bookcase. The sparrow on the porch roof. Discuss.

2 Despite that – the book has inspired me to write several poems. Including the one below – which you may like to comment on here.

3 Little Onion commented in the haiku flurry (see entry for March 27th) that it was unusual to see haiku keeping to the 5,7,5 syllable count – and somehow not necessary. But I disagree. I think the discipline of the form, together with the need to produce that little frisson of haiku magic – is what makes the haiku so fascinating.

4 England limp out of the World cup (yes, talking soccer here) Was it the fault of Sven, the manager? Was he just not up to it? Bad luck and injuries? Or the cheating Portuguese team? What do you think? And were the Italians worthy winners?

5 And finally – here in the Northern Hemisphere – it’s summer! What are your plans?