Night Drive.

An early post this week as away this weekend, I hope the drive is better than this one was.

Night Drive.

Tunnels of black reflections rushing past.
Wipers beating, heater blowing numb tiredness.
White starbursts, stabbing at eyes that try to shut.
Red! …Warning, braking, stopping, waiting.
Rotating blue, wailing through wetness.
Arms waving, lips mouthing unheard words.
Kaleidoscopes of amber, usher us away.
Alert eyes, avoiding, another RTA.

The Archer

Retirement has given me the opportunity to revisit some of the things that gave me pleasure as a boy. Three weeks ago I started an archery course with my local club, one of the results is below.

The Archer.

I stepped up to the line today,
placed both my feet astride.
I stood, side on, with others
taking stance on either side.
They looked to me proficient,
to them, I was untried.

I breathed in deep and focused.
I calmed myself inside,
remembered the instruction
given by my coach and guide
and in my hand it felt that time
itself was brushed aside.

I raised my arm up to full stretch,
once more I held a bow
but not of rough barked Hazel
hacked from the old hedgerow,
and strung with orange bailer twine,
of many years ago.

I drew my hand back to my mouth
my muscles all stretched tight
I loosed the string and waited…
I watched the arrow’s flight.
I heard the thud as it went home,
It filled me with delight.

It wasn’t gold, not this time,
It went a little wide.
But out of all proportion,
was the joy it did provide.
Again I am an archer,
and in that I take a pride.

Son of Wessex.

Beneath the hills of Exmoor.

The story behind last week’s poem was discovered while researching family history. This was something I didn’t do until after a totally unrelated chain of events led to me moving to Somerset in 1976. Both my parents were born in Kent and I had naturally assumed that this would be the area I would find most of my ancestors. However that was not to be the case, I found that three of my grandparents were born quite close to where I live now, I had already moved back to my roots in the west-country.

Son of Wessex

I am a son of Wessex
despite all I had heard.
I thought I belonged to the East,
my parents of that earth
where Kent is close to Surrey,
the county of my birth.

But I’m a son of Wessex,
in that ancient western realm
ancestral generations
over centuries abound.
Grandparents and their forbears
set my roots deep in its ground.

From the tidal rushing Severn,
along Dorset’s leafy rides
beneath the hills of Exmoor,
my ancestors have survived.
Some magnetism pulled me back
to where they lived their lives.

I have returned to Wessex,
with luck I’ll never leave.
I feel at home with where I am,
my journey seems complete
and it’s the soil of Wessex
I would feel beneath my feet.

A Wessex Woman’s Tale.

The facts that relate to the following poem, about a woman who lived in Yetminster, in the eighteenth century, were discovered in the Dorchester records office some years ago. The facts are taken from entries in the parish records of births and burials, and in other records that had been kept in the parish chest. Many thanks are due to the local history society who had transcribed these records and made my job considerably easier. Of course the record entries tell only part of the story, and the following poem is very much my personal interpretation of these entries.

A Wessex Woman’s Tale
(Or: The Ballad of Grace Jenner.)
Yetminster 1736 – 1810

She stood before the parish court
as she had done before.
She faced, full on, her future,
we know not what she saw.
Her fate, and that of those she loved,
out of her hands once more.

I wonder if her head was low
or if she held it high?
Would she have felt fear in her heart
or readied to defy?
For to her children, she was true,
what profit now to lie?

‘Grace Jenner, you are here today
to answer to this court
upon whose purse already, you
have leaned on for support,
and yet, another base born child
into this world you’ve brought.’

Did magistrate look down his nose
as he read out her sin?
Did Parson feel compassion for
the plight that she was in?
Or did the dwindling parish funds
leave sympathy too thin?

In fifty seven, it says here
you spawned a son named John.’
Words read from a dark ledger,
by a clerk, who hurried on.
‘Received then forty payments,
the father had long gone.’

I wonder did she love the man
whose name she chose to hide?
Was it that she hoped someday
to stand there as his bride?
Had he been cruelly using her,
and then, cast her aside?

‘When summoned here the first time
she was forced to speak his name
and Richard Oliver then met
the price we did reclaim.
But that was not the end of it,
or of her sinful game.’

Why did the clerk not tell the court
for what else she’d been paid?
To tend the sick, the orphaned child
that as her own she raised,
the old and frail she’d tended to
as their last prayers were made.

‘In seventeen hundred and sixty,’
the dull old clerk droned on.
‘She burdened us this time with twins,
with Eleanor and Tom.
But still there was no husband,
no one to right her wrong.’

But what of how young Gracie felt
with three young to support.
Her worries at their illnesses,
their hunger, never short,
with poverty for comfort,
what was her last resort?

‘Young Eleanor was taken ill,
then died. The price of sin.
The parish paid for shroud and bell,
the cask they laid her in.
Grace Jenner still drew heavily,
for her and her two kin.’

I picture Grace beside that grave
young John stood by her side
her baby Tom still in her arms.
I hear her silent cries.
A Wessex woman in her grief
with tears still in her eyes.

The clerk, he paused, he turned the page,
then once more, on he read.
‘When smallpox came, her Tom was ill.
The doctor? Paid!’ He said.
‘Paid; for John’s shoes and britches,
he’s apprenticed now instead.

When Yetminster had smallpox
and fear made people hide,
who did they pay to sooth the sick
staying safe by fire-sides?
Or pay to tend the orphans
of parents who had died?

‘Grace Jenner has a daughter now
and Sarah is her name.
She’s yet another bastard child
to cause our elders pain.
Once more Grace has no husband,
her story stays the same.

The parish records bear this out,
it cannot be denied.
They also show a mother’s love
and of how hard she tried
to clothe and feed her family
and keep them by her side.

Two centuries slipped by before
her story was discovered.
Now, slowly, as the tale unfurls
of Sarah, and her brothers.
I warm to Grace, I’m proud she is
my five times great, grandmother.

White Christmas?

Christmas Day 2010 in Therfield, Hertfordshire.

I have just spent a great Christmas with my son Toby and his family in Hertfordshire, but it seems all was not what it appeared.

White Christmas?

It was not a white Christmas!
At least,
that’s what the bookies said.
Though I woke to excited squeals of delight
That drowned out the rip and tear of paper
and outside the world was, as it was last night,
white, covered and crisply encased.

Though snow crunched under my feet,
icicles, hung from thatched eves,
and threaten to drop, but didn’t drip.
Rooks, backlit by brilliant blue,
were black silhouettes,
watching from empty branches,
as my breath, billowed out before me.

Though occasional cars slithered past
as feet slipped on glazed pavements,
or slid into toboggan tracks,
my eyes squinted at reflected light,
and Christmas card scenes surrounded me,
Santa and snowman sharing,
what once was a lawn.

You see, this snow fell yesterday,
or the day before,
or for days before that,
but sad to say; none today.
So it was not a white Christmas!
At least,
that’s what the bookies said.