Of all the tear-jerking images of war on the edges of Europe, one or two have stayed with me: birds shocked from their treetop roosts by the deep boom of artillery fire; a woman handing out sunflower seeds to occupying Russian forces.
Courtesy Guardian News and Media
This poem has grown from these images. Like In Flanders Fields (from which it borrows heavily and compares badly), it’s a rondeau. Sadly, John McCrae had first hand experience of war to inform his work. Glady, I have none. So please forgive any unintended insensitivity. It is, necessarily, a work of imagination.
So Sunflowers Grow
So sunflowers grow where you die She said with hate-and-hope-pierced eye Then handed the soldier a seed It will grow when Ukraine is freed Rooted in your blood, in your lie.
Air sucked from a bird-shrapneled sky Lungs emptied before the reply No thanks heard. Silent, unstaunched bleed So sunflowers grow.
Shot once they said: sniped; head too high. Crumpled camo, no time to lie Unregimented – pulled up weed Withered. Lifeless. Yet in that deed Of decomposting spirits fly So sunflowers grow.
Here’s how the dream unfolds:
behind the gritted lids of night is told
the story of an ironed-flat sea -
moonlight over mercury.
Soon out. Beyond the beach.
Deep down below the folds and creases.
Rapid eyes. Heart beat increases.
Mouthing silently as they sink like
drowning men who twist and pike
then slip, unsaved, beneath the surface
an un-remembered shoal of twisted faces.
By morning out of reach.
Untold. Unseen.
So all that’s left is this blank sheet
damp and crumpled from the dream.
You know that feeling of loss when you have a really good idea at night but you’ve forgotten it by morning? Well this is a poem about that!
I used to keep a notebook (yes, a stupidly expensive and pretentious Moleskine) by my bed to scribble down random words and lines as they came to me. That, of course, meant turning on the bedside lamp. So now, for the sake of my long-suffering partner, I jot them down in the notes of my smartphone although I’m sure the blue light of the screen is playing havoc with my sleep pattern.
El Medano reminds me of Swanage. Sand, sea, sunshine, taut salty skin. The tide of geological time turning as the waves wash in and out and in… But then these days everywhere reminds me of Swanage.
Wish you were here
In that jumper I’d now give anything to possess, dad playing on the beach. You camera shy just out of reach. A pair of empty sandals* in the cradle of the deckchair. There but not there.
(How I) wish you were here…
Dear Mum
Like many parents my mum and dad dutifully plotted their children’s travels around the world by sticking our postcards home to the downstairs toilet wall. Partly geography, partly social history, it’s a family A to Z covering literally everywhere from Aberystwyth (my stay-at-home sister) to Zanzibar (her globe-trotting baby brother).But follow the path (easier when you piss standing up) you’d see the journey comes to an abrupt end. By the U bend…
A section of the downstairs toilet wall rescued before mum moved out.
The sticker-upper-in-chief (our dad) died. And shortly afterwards so did the tradition of sending postcards because, let’s face(book) it, #holiday is a whole heap easier than buying a stamp and finding a postbox. Trouble is mum – like many women of her generation – has never really done social. “They’d have called in Wrinkly Facebook if it was for us,” she joked. Before dementia wiped the smile off all our faces. She’s still with us though. Her name is Sheila. And this poem is for her.
*This line was inspired by my mum’s sandals sitting on a deckchair in a family photograph I’d looked at a hundred times before but not properly seen. For me poetry is all about seeing things properly.
Mum’s sandals circled in red.
The poem was also written because I’d been asked to pen something on the theme of travel for The Big Live Breakfast Burrito on LinkedIn. If you haven’t listened check it out. I also penned an alternative based on the shows hosts...
Dear Mum
Wish you were here. You’d love Burritonia Will couldn’t make it so I’m here with Antonia. Eric’s the rep a right Tam o Shanter With a fella called Matt who’s a bit of a Ranter Then there’s a woman named Van – Vin Extraordinaire And Simon (and Craig with a chin-ful of hair).
Day Two.
The sun’s been quite strong so Eric’s turned pink. And Matt’s prone to whingeing so he’s kicked up a stink. And Van’s poured a glass of Canarian wine. Though it’s barely past breakfast and hasn’t struck nine. Now Simon’s got factoids he can’t get the cream Craig’s knitting his beard like he’s lost in a dream. Antonia’s mouthing a mysterious word And from Will only silence nothing’s been heard.
Shit and surgical spirit. There, I’ve said it It’s only taken 22 years A forehead kissed. No words. No tears Too airless. Two chests deflated. His dressed in half Windsor-knotted Sunday best. But on a Thursday. Curated.
Dead cool. The book tented open at line *seventeen Steepled where his stomach would have been His word. Diminished. Unfinished. Small.
Eviscerated.
I can magic all this back. Son. Father, wholly ghost. But it’s the shit and the spirit I remember the most. That and the piped music. Bland enough not to wake the dead.
“Go up to his room. He’s waiting for you,” she said.
The print of him was already smudged at the edges of the unmade bed. Sheep hollow filling with snow. So by mourning there’d be nothing left to show. Except a bible-shaped drift
Undisturbed.
Pure white. An allegorical rift Between Christian and pagan. Beowulf stabbed with a pencil (marked thus * by heart line 17) Now in the other scene.
Morning. Curtains open shut then close. Blinking behind the veil as book and body burned.
* The glorious Almighty, made this man renowned.
This is a poem about loss. About christianity and paganism. And how, ultimately (by which I mean in the end) they are one in the same thing. When my dad died there were two books on his bedside table: Beowulf (Seamus Heaney’s translation of the unknown poet) and the bible.
He spoke to me in a dream on the road to Santiago
The pilgrim father. Ochre boots. Lamp black hair.
“Any path can be a Camino.
“Just start walking. You’ll know when you get there.”
Now forgive me if I refer to the map. It’s long since I saw the legend - turned the key.
Winsor and Newton artists’ oils.
Humbrol enamels. Sable brushes. Airfix toils.
Sunday school. St James the Apostle. Follow me…
Back. Past the pond. Iced over.
Goldfish. Koi. Shubunkin. Locked in
Scarlet lake and silver slowly sparkling
Right at the tar-trunked pole. Under gunmetal transformer.
Beneath blood red risk-of-death label and verdigris cable. Arc-ing…
To the garden shed
Drab olive door stuck in its dark oak jamb.
Dull zinc hasp. Chrome padlock bright.
Entrance to the relic of the saint
Fly-stained glass. Webbed light.
Burnt umber urn. Penumbra of paint.
Gloss. Emulsion. Undercoat with a crust.
Cans made of plastic and tins turned to rust.
A screw top. Hand sized. Kilner-like.
Scratchy thread. Preservative of the dead
And transfigurative.
The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
Inside now. Muted. Hushed. Pewter.
But every colour there ever was shouting:
“Son, you’ll know when you get there.”
