The sepia tone of November
has gone –
wrote Harry Smith
aged ninety-one …/
I am a General Practitioner,
working through my impatient lists..
At school, a rough painting
of my father, in green:
His shotgun, an accurate detail,
hung arm-broke,
With empty breech, unloaded,
exposed, gun-oil-clean.
He shift-slept: even through
my demanding brush-stroke..
We four-squared the fields,
Measuring the flat-topped hedges…
I love the place name: ‘Teddington’,
It raps a tapping off my tongue.
Urban-suburbia resides,
Above the rises of river tides:
Just tidal bores in house prices.
So sits deed-rich: benefices*.
The stoic Lollipop Lady,
Manor’s stick-wielding boss,
she was out in all weathers,
the snow, rain, and frost.
…..
In this (revisited) moment my eyelids are caustic,
stung-rubbed corneas, awake, weighted-down,
by an utter exhaustion,
(which sleep, these days, fails to cure).
I, drug-succumbed, to such high views,
from unclouded dream-peaks:
then wading, unaided, each half-flooded
unmapped valley of sleep:
where such side-effected,
vast dreams, broadcast through the night,
to my disconnected self:
every time, more real, when I can move, like old.
But flat rigidity, offered, again, at 5am,
is a sluggard-waking, on misty un-rolled downs,
off the sleep-state – providing no more shelter,
from exposure, to my forever-reigning pain.
We are now committing six easy jets,
And many young souls to cold desert-deaths:
Then we’ll agree a bloodied bag-exchange:
More re-dress rehearsals (of flag-tagged pains).
Led by the strong-arm (of munitions’ squeeze),
Again lobbied “Ayes..”, said our lame MPs.
Did we bomb Ireland, strafe the terrorists?
No: we shook those Fenians’ angry fists.
For peace at home – send a tame diplomat:
But for offshore battles – we’ll bomb you flat.
From a still, unpacked,
house you see,
The scruffy, leaf-free,
‘Pigeon Tree’
…..