Category Archives: Poems

Hedgelayer

This poem was written during a time when I did a lot of volunteering for wildlife trusts and other environmental groups. Amongst other things, I learned how to build a drystone wall, coppice woodland, and lay hedges, in some beautiful parts of the country. There was always something magical about being outside, working with a group of like-minded people, whatever the weather.

Hedgelayer

A man, a man I could have loved
starts to shade, to shade the morning mist.

He is beating stakes, stakes into the clay
forcing them past stones, stones and steady roots,
the things weak within the earth
and the things that hate to move.

As I approach he takes his shape assuredly
from the frail and wet white air,
a seamster weaving hazel whips through the hedge,
outwitting the final challenge of scratch and rip.

In defeat the hawthorn rests its useless claws
uneasily against itself, uncertain how to act.
Then feels the sap rise, rise again in its veins,
and knows that it is elect.

Hedgelayer features in my poetry collection Up in the Air, available here:

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Last Time

Yesterday was the 72nd anniversary of D-Day. My grandfathers, Fred Griffin and Egon Korn, fought on opposing sides. Egon, a young German of sixteen, was captured shortly after D-Day at the Battle of Caen. He was aiming a bazooka at a tank when the tank commander saw him and fired his machine gun at him. My grandfather’s stick grenade was hit and it exploded, injuring him terribly and killing his friend. He was saved by the Red Cross, sent to Canada, then Scotland, and finally to Eastbourne where, working as a POW, he met my grandmother.

My grandmother died two years ago and I did her eulogy. She left me a note asking me to draw attention to the fact she had met mothers on both sides of the conflict struggling to come to terms with the loss of their children. That’s what made her a campaigner for peace. And, whilst many things might get lost in the detail, it’s worth remembering why Winston Churchill and the other Founding Fathers set up the EU in the first place.

This poem, about a group of veterans revisiting the Normandy beaches, was first published in Poetry Ireland, issue 56.

Last Time

he was here things were a lot more hairy –
invisible fingers were plucking cones of water from the sea
and everywhere the sand was bursting
like puffballs, struck by a flurry of sticks.

Machine guns smacked endlessly at the air
as if its sins were irredeemable,
and the air expressed its pain
with the cries of men, like children.

Lashed by hot grit he’d run like a boy
down the green suede of the Sussex downs, leaping
bodies like the cracked boles of hawthorns,
still fresh with a whorl of flowers

Now, here again after fifty years,
he can hardly believe this was the place –
the wind’s so soft and warm,
the sand and sea don’t glisten –

everything seems as banal as home.
He turns to remark to an old friend
but finds that he’s fallen several yards back
only to be swiftly enclosed

by a circle of kneeling veterans.

Every Bird is Singing

A while back, whilst posting about the influence of painting on my poetry, I mentioned the artist Jocelyn Merivale who died two years ago, far too young.

Below is a sequence of short poems I wrote after visiting an exhibition of Jocelyn’s held at her home in Merton. I’ve included a few photos of her paintings, although I’m afraid they’re not the exact same ones that inspired the poems – but they give a good flavour of her talent. I would put all her paintings up here, they’re fabulous.

And a small point of clarification – these titles and sub-titles are my own, not those of the paintings.

Every Bird is Singing

I watch the painting
with its thousand yellow birds
all edged in black

and only some time later notice
that all their beaks are open,

that every bird
is singing –

Green Ghost Girl at No. 9

Who is this green limned girl
stood at No. 9’s red door?

Won’t they let her in? Are there
bundles of garlic
splashes of holy water
sprigs of wolfsbane round the frame?

Does some sudden memory
paralyse the will of the dead?

Or perhaps she rehearses her performance,
how with just the right moment and angle
she might make forever good her intent,

push her teetering target
over the edge
of a measureless chasm of fear.

Or maybe she just doesn’t have the power
to walk through.

After all there is only so much
the dead can do.

The Sea

is everywhere. We are made to think
of our edges, our rocks and shingle beaches
bee-sting Victorian lighthouses –
of hulls on tossed waters
whose fate is to break.

But the sea is also amongst us
dull green with algae host
sitting, seeping around buildings –

an urge to circumscription
we can entertain, or not.

*

– This is my favourite
he tells me, it reminds me
of the girl I fell in love with.

A beautiful, everything girl
full of treetop song –

with splashes of red
falling down gold beside her

*

And, found behind the portrait of the baby,
a mental hospital, rain, billowing trees
in iron-dark grey

This poem features in my poetry collection Up in the Air, available here:

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