ON DECK

Midnight on the Norfolk Broads. Moored up.
Snuggled up in fleecy throws, sipping hot soup
from Land's End mugs, we sit in silence on deck
each lost in our own private thoughts.
My gaze wanders past you to the pub lights
beyond the tow path and their reflections in the water:

a constellation of dancing rainbow stars
glittering in the velvet blackness.
There isn't much else to look at,
apart from the occasional glimpse of headlights
rising up then descending as they
pass over Potter Heigham bridge.

Soup growing cold. But I try to hang on
to the moment, to stall time, to take in
the enormity of the task ahead of me.
Tiny raindrops begin to spot our faces,
but it barely registers.
We're both light years away,

absorbed in two wildly differing takes on us :
you, never doubting that we belong together;
and me, not having the heart to shatter your illusion.
Slipping off my engagement ring for the first time
while searching deep for the appropriate words
to let you down gently.

But, try as I might, I just can't find any.
So, feebly, I begin by blaming the stars,
"Capricorn and Aries?
We must have been joking, eh?
You, serious and home-loving. Me, outspoken,
restless and easily bored - what were we thinking?"

There is no satisfactory answer to such a question,
only more and more self-delusion.
And the torture in your eyes envelopes me like a sad blanket.
I want the deck to open up and swallow me.
But now I've begun there is no going back -
I must follow it through.

"When we first met, I believed I'd found my Heathcliff -
excitement and danger. Instead, I found myself
trapped in a world of tedious sameness.
There is this space in me that you can never fill
and it constantly aches for something inexpressible,
something only Emily would understand...

And I'm sorry,
so very sorry...



Wishing You All a Truly Magical Christmas and a Happy New Year!

And for those of us of other Faiths...Very Happy Holidays...:))

SUNSET RHAPSODY

How the mind plays tricks
and teases! Oh what a parody of foolish desires
set in daydream's whimsical realm
are here materialised in the red-gold hues
of a mid-December sunset.

And how such spectacle evokes and holds
intense amorous longing: for to sheathe in fire
the Adonis form intensifies mania -
however illogical. Ever since the first Eve
was formed from Adam's rib

has not woman been tormented
by irrepressible urges? The inner voice
cries, Touch him, go on - touch him!
And tingling fingertips
eagerly reach for the shimmering mirage.

But distance armour protects
the God-form from harlot's assault -
and we all know sunset eventually gives way
to dusk, that gathering darkness that shields
the Idol from wanton gaze.

And in the morning
he is no longer there, just an empty sky
and light unformed. The ice blue,
now victorious, seems to mock:
See - there is nothing here but space!

But, once aroused, the seventh sense
will not relent: scrutinizes still
in desperation clouds and flocks of birds
for any semblance of humanoid form
that imagination can illogically deify.



For certain the Gods have struck a pact
to place great power within the grasp
of man and etched his glorified image
deep into the female psyche -
is this what the intellects term "instinct"?

He, stunning once more in a new sunset,
is shimmering less though in the fiery glow: over-worshiped,
his perennial perfection is overstretching
and fading into another dusk. His body askew,
he is disintegrating and dispersing

into illusion's fractured sunbeams
that once gave him lips to kiss in dreams:
an exaggerated promise that seems suddenly absurd.
Now, as storm clouds gather, the ideal anatomy transforms
into irony's most hideous fiend.

MOSS

Over centuries, slowly
creeping. Discreetly,
very quietly,

our expanding forms
take hold on rocks,
creep over the gravestones.

No one questions
nor halts our progress,
other organisms make room.

Soft tendrils adhere
to hard surfaces,
imperceptibly melding

with even the mighty Oaks.
Our power is in our resilience,
our footprint is indelible.

Although non-malicious,
we breech all defences,
invade the crooks and crannies.

We feed on moisture,
on sunlight, air;
asking

very little,
only to exist, to be.
We are legion.

We are unintentionally,
subtly, pernicious:
we can be poisonous -

but only in self-defence.
In spite of our meekness, though,
we are formidable.

We are
relentlessly engulfing the Earth
in green and yellow.

No one has seen it coming
so, soon,
our conquest will be complete...

CONTUSION

For my mother...with deepest compassion

"I know dementia," she says. "It is all I know.
It is your worst nightmare.
But I do not fear it. I live there.

Is it my instability that frightens you -
my unpredictability?
Or fear of contamination, that my condition is contagious?

Love is an illusion,
how it runs from the hard times!
See how it disappears like a puff of smoke

just when you need it most? Loneliness
is turning me to stone. I lash out in frustration.
I'm hurting. I want you to know how it feels.

They're slowly poisoning me, you know -
these demons who visit me.
See this pale, gaunt face in the mirror?

I have suffered the atrocities of alien abduction:
have been probed and experimented upon
by beings with huge eyes and needles for fingers.

Now I am disintegrating into odd-shaped pieces
that will never fit together again.
I am losing myself. I can't stop screaming.

The sky is darkening: it is coming for me,
the darkness. It will drag me off
to God knows where. But I will not go!

It's not real. It's not real.
It's all in my head - that's what they're saying,
these strangers in white coats who accost and hold me down.

I am deafened by shrieks.
Nightly they pierce my eardrums:
has the Banshee finally come to claim me?

I am terrified of this dark red thing
that lives inside me, just awaiting the right moment
to close down my brain. And what may come after.

Birds fly across the sky.
Are these the bearers of Souls to the next World?
Is it for their deliverance that my arms rise skyward?

Sudden sword-thrust through my head.
What is this blurring of senses, this petrifying
of body and will - some horrifying contusion?

The red thing is devouring me.
A sea of faces, weeping.
The final separation.
A clinical voice saying  Apoplexy."

Oblivion.


Now we, the living, are left
with our legacies of guilt...

THE AUGURY

Triple portrait of Charles I,  by Sir Anthony Van Dyck


Unearthly creature! Are you for real
or some fairy-tale Being wholly surreal?
Just look at those sad and brooding eyes
that augur misfortune borne of self-lies,
and I swear that could I but hear your voice
you'd lament the error of future choice.

Still and tranquil at first glance,
and then such turmoil in your stance.
Oh see that leaden gathering cloud
draped about you like burial shroud.
So desperately your mind is reaching out
to escape a destiny forged by self-doubt.

How is that one of such mollycoddled descent -
a Dandy of glittering palaces - be sent
to govern a nation in chaotic upheaval,
one so ill-equipped to deal with evil?
Ha, did you really believe that fable
the "Divine Right of Kings" would keep things stable?

How dare they disobey your will
and so many of your troops kill
that fateful day upon Edge Hill
that the whole of England remembers still?
You could have had it made that day,
but through indecision threw victory away.

Just how many more had to die before
you realised no solution would come through war?
They demanded democracy, you turned them down flat -
you were the King, and that was that.
A King's word had always been law of the land,
until Cromwell and his ever growing band

of followers who became the "New Model Army"
pre-empted your moves and drove you barmy.
Well, along with frustration came childlike tantrum:
no longer would be tolerated this rebellious scum!
Stuttering and cursing these "Enemies of God"
you attempted to over them ride rough-shod.

But, unfortunately for you, it badly misfired:
many of your allies had defected, it transpired,
and now the country had it's King on trial!
Such a thing was unheard of, you were in deep denial.
When they read out the sentence...tyrant, traitor,
and public enemy...you faced the prosecutor

and made one final attempt to speak.
But they cut you short - your fate now looked bleak.
Just three short days you were granted to prepare
to meet your maker - oh the utter despair.
Then outside Whitehall on that January day
by executioner's axe you were spirited away...



Perhaps there's good reason that the great Van Dyck
painted in triplicate this portrait so like
your tragic countenance that haunts me today:
to the Holy Trinity I'm inclined to pray
and plead for deliverance for this fractured Soul,
that three parts be forged once more into whole.

EREBUS

You could just as easily knit sea-spray
into a fluffy white sweater
or capture the wind in a butterfly net
as banish exquisite recollections
from an overly nostalgic mind
that appears hell-bent
on creating it's own personal Erebus.

You need no electronic picture file
to resurrect once more the angles of his face
in life-like colour, or to preserve in time
desire's frenzied flare for intimate touch.
Emotions eject their darts, dipped in thought's poison:
no matter how you sweat to cling to hope,
disillusion still creeps in.

Now in the early hours his voice
envelopes you. Listen to his ballad of bliss:
a lover's cruel lie, preserved forever
in the archives of bitter experience
for future perusal. You struggle
to conquer gut's wrenching in the eternal now:

that final promise fossilised...haunting...taunting...crushing.

Oh how the two of you once loved!

And how the remembrance of it blows you apart,

as if to recreate from your atoms a new Universe

composed of endless frenzied yearning

to catch and tether those fleeting impressions

that nightly come in racing heartbeats' blazing wake

and within seamless vivid dreams.

But this dawn banishes the ghostly images,

and although searing lust so covets immortality,

last night's fever gradually subsides into apathy.

However fiercely you're in denial,

obsession recoils from the clarity of the rising sun

that highlights reality in stark relief, and blinds

the deluded eyes of the emotionally naive.

ARMISTICE DAY

On Armistice Day
cheering crowds thronged the streets
and how the bands played!
But those joyous songs the people sang
served only to heighten your sense of sadness,
for they signified for you imminent redundancy.
The last of your boys were finally moving on.

There were no long drawn-out goodbyes,
just a few half-hearted pledges to keep in touch.
You'd been there for them when they'd needed you,
it was as simple as that.
Please remind me again -
how many broken minds did you mend?

Armistice Day
symbolised the end of an era for you.
Armistice Day
secretly filled you with dread.
But, guilt-ridden,
you'd smiled and celebrated with the rest
whilst trying hard to feign euphoria.

Meanwhile, all you could do
was await orders from above,
knowing it was inevitable
that you'd soon be exiled
from your beloved Craiglockheart.
It was unthinkable - you'd invested
heart and soul in that place
that had become so much more than home to you.
How apprehensive and weary you felt -
and your nervous stammer was worsening daily.

But the British Army had no compassion
for a severely damaged psychiatrist
who had become shell shocked by his patients.
You'd served your purpose
and now you were an embarrassment to them.
So they hastily signed your discharge papers
then sent you on your way.
And it seemed to you that not a living soul cared...



But oh how wrong you were!
What of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen?
Neither of those great war poets ever forgot you -
your name crops up frequently in their memoirs
with unmistakable affection and gratitude...

And now there is me -
an unknown insignificant, I know,
but you will be none-the-less in my thoughts
on this Remembrance Sunday in twenty-sixteen.
Oh Dr. Rivers,
I have read your books and digested your papers,
and have learnt so much from you.
You were a genius of your time.
And I will remember you
always...

William Halse Rivers Rivers