Yearning

This is poem that I'm rather proud of - it's odd that I stick rigidly to a structure that I've decided on beforehand, but I was determined not to give up on it. So, 13,000 redrafts later, I'm finally happy that it says what I wanted it to, and rhymes and has the right number of syllables in each  line!


Yearning

From the dust to which we shall return,

A single glorious ember burns,

Animating sullen clay.

As like to like together yearns,

Impelled, the clay begins to churn,

Toward another husk it sways.

The longing’s strong, and yet to learn

Its solitude, so still it turns,

To usher outer dark away.

The sparks grow close, yet sep’rate stay,

Divided by encumbering clay,

Which flows with longing brotherhood.

They mold as closely as they may,

Aligning tighter day by day,

Shared passions as a second blood.

Rebellious fire burns away

In unison, they bow and pray

For ending of their solitude.

Starlight

Sorry for the long delay between posts - other things to do, you know how it goes. This poem makes use of an idea that'd been kicking around in my head for a while, and I'm still not entirely happy with the title. Any suggestions would be welcome.


Starlight

Struggling up, bent double, the hill that leads home,

The chill in the sky settling into my bones,

I scan the way carefully for patches of ice.

Skidding and slipping, and losing control,

Progress is tentative, tortuous and slow,

Coldness and misery deaden the soul.

The handles of the bags cause my knuckles to ache

With curious burning, as wind pinches my face,

Grounded in the weaknesses of flesh.

My downward-case vision, scouring the ground

Take in crystals of ice scattered around,

Coruscating in place as I move.

My perspective is changing – I come to a halt;

The strange constellations between the rock salt

All discomforts and achings forgetting.

As the mind’s focus alters, I seem to fall forward,

Moving through the asphalt to the glittering starfield,

Drifting through burnished infinity.

Unanchored I soar through endless starshine,

Exulting in absolute freedom, for a time,

Transcending my fleeting frailty.

Can you tell what subject I study? This is an odd one, but neatly contained within it is the exact reason I'm doing zoology... A weird blend of my two interests.

All Things Strive

Five kilometres below sea level, where the sun’s light has never been known,

On a freezing and bleak abyssal plane, always crushed under the pressure of tonnes,

There lived a crab.

Tiny, bleached, apparently fragile, it scuttles between the rotting carcasses

And the effluvia of billions of other animals that thrive in the sun,

There lives the crab.

Past the great mouldering corpse of a leviathan, now ravaged and diminished

By unknown and unseen denizens, the necrophagic scavengers of the deep,

Scuttles the crab.

Picking across the detritus of a life unknown in this cold and sightless hell,

Towards a wound in the world that exudes toxic chemicals in scalding billows,

Wanders the crab.

Clustered around the noxious fumes that spill into the otherwise empty landscape,

On a razor’s edge of survival at the very edge of viability,

Live the crabs.

Dancing between long elegant ribbons of scarlet,

A flora unknown and forever unseen,

Yet glorious. 

Seasons Suite

Just a little quartet of seasonal poems, trotted off in one draft. I've re-read them since, but they are that rare thing in writing: a piece that unfolded as the writer intended. This is a further experiment with creating emotive and evocative effects with my choice of words that echo the seasons, as they are a nice and clear set of contrasting images.

Seasons Suite

Soft the heaven’s sigh settles sweetly on the hedgerows,

Warm summer’s bliss fills the woodlands and the fields,

For a short pause its trials and shocks rescinding,

And for a brief time there is peace upon the hills.

                *               *               *

Down, down, over the hills

The wrath of the thunder strikes,

The rampaging gales tear at the land,

A maelstrom of flying leaves.

                *               *               *

The world lies muted, constrained by a soft

Newly-set binding, and yet aloft

A voice is heard calling above silent swathes,

The herald of new life, still singing away.

*               *               *

Nascent life slumbers,

Awaiting sun’s touch,

To prompt an awakening,

An upwelling rush.

Wipers

A few years ago now, I went on a tour of battlesites and war graves in northern France and Belgium. It made a deep impression on me, that at the time I was unable to satisfactorily put into words. I'm still not entirely happy with it, but here it is, warts and all.


Wipers

I am standing in a foreign field, on a patch of emerald turf,

Above me are the high blue skies, around, the cultivated earth.

It might be anywhere, an innocent pastoral reverie,

The peacefulness belied by the incongruous sight in front of me;

Island amidst the gently canted fields, there stands a tended plot,

A strange sort of garden with granite walls, and grass so neatly cropped

It could almost be a bowling green, with parallel flower beds,

For the benefit of visitors to the unvictorious dead.

Beneath the unknowing, heedless sky lie the slain of two world wars.

Surrounded by the noise of birds and farms, there is a muted pause

In the diurnal humdrum that erodes the hours and days and years,

And with them dulls the immediacy of war’s many brutal fears.

So soon the lessons war has taught are buried, rushed to early graves,

In the efforts to forget the bad, the baby is thrown away

With the bathwater. To forget everything, to spit on these men,

And the sacrifice they made to stop this happening again.

Sassoonesque

There's not a great deal to say about this one - I was interested to see if I could write in the style of another poet convincingly, in this case the great Sigfried Sassoon.

Sassoonesque (or We Never Learn)

Now children of the Isle, arise,

To fight and die on foreign fields,

To seek triumph underneath foreign skies,

And find relief that only death yields.

Quails the breast of most stout-hearted

At their task; now they must fight

To finish that which others started,

For this they march on into night.

As tares are cast into the fire,

So cast aside are England’s sons.

Wasted, spent to feed war’s ire;

“Defeated, unvictorious ones.”

First Frost

I wrote this one sitting in a statistics lecture last week, and I must have been in a right old strop that day. Not the most subtle metaphor I've ever employed.

First frost

The First Frost always comes unexpectedly-
It is always anticipated, but never expected.
It invariably finds us unprepared.

We notice an extra chill in the air
But dismiss it, ignore it,
It may never happen.

The growing cold hints at the shock to come,
It offers to help us prepare, but denial
Is curiously pervasive.

The First Frost is the beginning of the end.

The end of living and the beginning of surviving,
Ancient priorities reassert themselves,
Falling further from angel, to beast.

We light candles and growl at the shadows,
Gather together to fight the darkness within,
And endure for a time.

The First Frost always comes unexpectedly;
The First Frost always comes.

From here it will only get worse;