Runnymede.

I have recently returned from a visit to Runnymede RAF memorial where one of my wife’s family is remembered. Like all the Commonwealth War Graves, this place has its own very special atmosphere. Being under the Heathrow flight-path seems particularly fitting, as did October’s falling leaves.

Runnymede.

Above a silver giant slides
through clouds, across October skies
While down beneath the chestnut trees
the golden leaves float gently down,
to join the empty husks below
and lay among the fallen.

Beyond the avenue of green
a stillness and a silence reigns
around a square of high white walls
where proudly worn, wide open wings
remind us with solemnity
‘Per Ardua ad Astra.’

A quadrangle of inscribed stone,
boxed close, in cloistered corridors,
remembers airmen never found.
Their chiselled columns watch from high
those eyes that searching, seek to find,
then humbled, shed a tear.

Counting The Cost.

I will be away next week so I am posting twice this week. Yesterday the government announced massive defence cuts including some 40% of our heavy tanks. Back in 1968 the regiment I served with, also heavy tanks, was a casualty of another government’s defence cuts, after another financial crisis. Here is a first for me; a poem written in anger and frustration.

Counting the Cost.

The regiments are falling boys,
they’ve fought their best but lost.
They’ve stood their ground courageously
but now must count the cost.

Through centuries of conflict
and on many battlegrounds,
for us they’ve made their sacrifice
but now their ‘Last Post,’ sounds.

Pride in their long traditions
has always filled their ranks
though rows of cold white headstones
have too often been their thanks.

Proud units who have served us well
march one last time in glory,
consigned to dusty history books
that closed, will end their story.

They did not fall in battle
for on them we could depend.
They were beaten by a bloodless coup
and politicians’ pens.

It’s time to count the cost they say
see what we can afford
and in the final reckoning
the pen’s mightier than the sword.

So come on boys, let’s say farewell
as they march off with pride
but when they’re needed once again
where will the bankers hide?

The Elm and the Plough.

I don’t often write to strict form, preferring to let each poem discover its own form as it develops. The following sonnet though was an exception.

The Elm and the Plough.

Against cold winds that bite and bend your boughs
you stand, hosting the rooks and crows who caw
angered by gulls that swoop behind the plough
and fight for worms that hide in covered straw.
Many seasons you have watched this scene
silhouetted by wild and wintry grey.
Today’s ploughman powers his huge machine
and folds six stubbled rows without much strain.

Before; when horse pulled plough across this land
and ploughman bent his weary back to scratch
one straight furrow, by skill of eye and hand.
Perhaps against your ageing bark he’d snatch
a rest, before returning to the soil.
Then did you watch their heavy, plodding toil?

Techno Babble

At the end of OU A215 a small group of us wanted to form our own writers group, ‘Forum 215,’ and with the help of Colin, who had some experience in setting up something like this before, we proceeded to follow his e-mail invitation. Like everything else these days, computing seems to have developed its own language. This odd ode springs from that.

Techno Babble.

An e-mail invite needs reply,
a link clicked launch, and high,
through cyber space’s surf, I fly,
where Google Groups, I find are waiting,
alliterating, initiating
a username and password.

Survived to ‘Forum 215’
where Colin’s techno wizardry
and modern terminology
are waiting there to challenge me
with whistles, bells and topic lists,
and countless other things I’ve missed.

Inside I find a friendly face.
and wonder just how Clare has placed,
her jpeg, when all others yet,
remain an eerie silhouette?
So now to master posts and threads,
can I recall what Colin said?

Echoes of Waterloo

Corporal Styles, 1st Royal Dragoons, parades the captured eagle before the Black Watch at Waterloo.

In May 1962, I joined the Junior Leaders Regiment, Royal Armoured Corp, at Bovington Camp in Dorset. Here boys were trained to become future NCOs in the cavalry regiments of the British army, as well as in the Royal Tank Regiments.

Although being trained for the modern army, the regiments we were to join had been involved in almost every engagement and campaign throughout British military history. The regiment I was to join, The 1st Royal Dragoons, was awarded its eagle cap badge after capturing one of Napoleon’s eagles at Waterloo. Here at Bovington the past really did meet the present day. The next odd ode I hope reflects this.

Echoes of Waterloo.

‘The scum of the earth.’ Lord Wellington said.
But it’s fine fellows we have made of them.’
I knew none of that when I picked up my bag
and walked down the road to the station,
where hisses of steam and slamming of doors
seemed to echo my own reservations.

We pulled into Wool, in the late afternoon,
to loud shouts from the guard who stood there.
Then six wide-eyed boys, stepped down from the train
and as sulphur-filled fog slowly cleared
a corporal with clipboard rose up from the mist,
as he sharply barked out. ‘Over here!’

In barracks, at Bovington, over two years
we marched and we drilled and we studied,
polished our kit to John, Ringo and Paul
forging friendships for life that have lasted.
Corporals and sergeants made boys into men,
until trained, it was time we departed.

Hussars and Lancers and me, a Dragoon
with my cap badge of bright gleaming gold.
Napoleon’s eagle, worn high on my head
full of pride as we trooped past the crowd.
‘The salt of the earth,’ I marched off with,
and I knew the old Duke would be proud.