Tag: poems

Poem ‘Woman from the West’

Woman from the West

You’d awoken me with tea in the spare bed,
where my feet hung out the end.
At breakfast we heard about the pier,

smashed by the savage storm, the worst for years.
It was early December with heavy skies threatening,
so we wrapped up warm to take some air,

scarves blowing, my arm around your waist
feeling your locomotion, the buttock’s rise and fall
with that playful goose-step, your natural stride.

Through the lichgate, we passed graves old and
one very new. We stopped by wreaths, with thoughts
for a boy of no age. Found him in a ditch, you said,

in blasé exaggeration. No Christmas this year.
Not for them, but did it bother us?
Your life lay ahead, sampling life in London,

as lethal as the sea stallions pummelling that pier.
Now my eyes were open. That walk wasn’t playful
but callous, and the tea seemed like a gesture.

So when we left the wreaths, I felt changed.
Wreaths for that poor boy and for us.
Not for love.

© copyright David Francis Barker 2011

* First published in 2011 in poetry collection ‘Anonymous Lines’.

** The illustrations are from a 1990s drawing of a Lincolnshire Church, and a more recent painting of a couple on Cromer beach in North Norfolk, England. CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO SEE BIGGER SIZE!

Poem ‘Southside’

Southside

seabird shadows play
across my drawn curtains

a minimalist drama
upon which I intrude

car tyres scrunch by
like slowly tearing paper

gulls’ insistent cries describe
someone sparing food

© copyright David Francis Barker 2011

*The poem was inspired by last winter.

**The illustration this time is a photograph I took at Bempton Cliffs, Yorkshire, England, of gannets, which has been manipulated.

Poem: ‘The Painter’

The Painter

Climbing the dune,
wind heavy in our faces.
We squint (or do we smile?),
our laughs and quips
diffuse in the air.

Young legs carry you
ahead to the summit,
where tufts of green cling
to an existence. Then you’re
a sudden lithe silhouette

against a racing sky.
I revel in your victory;
your gentle hand hauls me
up close to ocean eyes,
an elfin smile, teeth

pristine like breakers
on the distant, crashing
shore, that white noise
filling our ears.
To look into you

is to look as men
have done for centuries.
Unchanging heart,
you’re the pearl left
nestling in filth.

So take a look –
can anyone steal time?
An hour here or there,
we leave our footprints,
no foothold anywhere.

I am the painter of this shore –
you are the model.
Again and again,
we return to wrestle
in familiar hues;

deep alizarin crimson,
yellow ochre, phthalo blue,
making it real. Stay in this
moment, we bless and bless.
It has to be you.

© copyright Francis

* Taken from the collection ‘Anonymous Lines’

The illustration is from a larger painting of a scene overlooking the North Sea, from sand dunes at Wells Next The Sea, Norfolk, England.

Poem: ‘Winter Sun’

Winter Sun

The weaker sun burns low
over stilled marsh and scrape.

Straight-cut dykes glow like
hot metal fissures through indigo.

Heavy boots crunch on ghosted grass,
breaking threats of enveloping silence.

By a glistening gate I pause, to gaze,
the pristine kiss of rime stiffens my hand.

The lone motion is my breath, brief clouds
vanishing in vasty air, to which I am inured.

A bleeding horizon yields dwarfed
silhouettes feigning heat, random skeletal

trees and pylons merely punctuate
before a distant church stump.

A sudden snipe breaks his cover,
rasping furiously over my head,

where I catch fleet Mercury gleaming
bright through icy blue.

© copyright David Francis Barker 2011

* Taken from poetry collection ‘Anonymous Lines’, which can be found here: http://liten.be//nr7n9

** The illustration is from a current painting by the poet/artist, showing the marshland at winter sunset near Boston in Lincolnshire, England.

Distraction

Distraction

The thing that’s killing me
is that which first caught my ancestor’s eye.
Until then, I was content to roam the far horizon,

to be that quivering digit in the African plain,
strolling and musing, simply taking my time
when it didn’t matter; crouching at pools,

fishing for food, picking up things which lay around.
You could say it was like a kind of Eden,
for which I didn’t care or mistrust.

But then one day – I can’t recall exactly when –
something sparked, like a piece of flint in the sun;
sharp, fetching blood and an idea.

The rest you know in its outlines;
when the shaping of some tool
turned the wise one into a fool.

*Taken from poetry collection ‘anonymous lines’

http://liten.be//iHKVl