|
SELECTION OF POEMS FROM SHADES OF GREEN
|
|
I TOOK THE CAR TO THE DENTIST
(and my teeth are a bit crooked )
I parked the car in a hurry
plenty of room I thought.
fed a generous fee to the meter
plenty of time I thought
for the dentist to check me up.
It was. I started back
and began to drive away
nice day I thought -
when something caught my eye.
A notice stuck to the windscreen:
surely not? I did everything right -
I thought.
but no. I'd parked a bit squint
not exactly within the lines
and such is an offence
that would cost me thirty quid.
It can't be I thought
does this carelessness offend?
offend whom? I thought:
the sky? the earth? the neighbourhood?
the cats? the birds? the trees?
Never mind I thought
I did wrong and should be punished
I should have come by bus
should have set my alarm earlier
and left more time I thought;
I expect to do too much
in one morning. I should make
the dentist my day.
I expect to do more than
one thing in a day I thought
and that is unreasonable
in the 21st century.
I am living in the past.
I'll make myself ill, I thought
I'll end up with a heart
attack I thought, I'll end up
neurotic and boring I thought,
I'll end up dead.
Take my time, what's the hurry
I thought to finish myself off
more quickly?
I even still have my teeth.
And all I do today
for good or ill I thought
will be forgotten tomorrow when
I return to dust - then I thought -
Let's hope they don't park me squint!
|
|
SHALL I TAKE THE CAR?
Fugue for the frustrated
No parking at the door, no parking in the street
no money for the metre when we're late
late because of traffic, caught in traffic,
held up in traffic, jammed in traffic,
trapped in traffic, paralysed in traffic,
nose to tail cars and unnecessary vans,
articulated lorries,
far too many buses, ambulances
fire-engines, police cars and pedestrians
crossing at their crossings,
Another red light, always against us, vindictive
calculated just to make us frantic -
how shall we explain when we are late again?
Should have left an hour before, before
the rush hour started, should have left
at night before dawn broke, the traffic woke
snarling from its slumber
or should have caught a train
carried heavy bags, walked through the rain
waited in the wind, coughings, sneezings,
other people's mobile phones and silly
conversations.
Should have caught a bus
carried heavy bags, walked through the frost
waited in the wind, coughings, sneezings,
other people's mobile phones and silly
conversations.
Ought to get a bike
helmet, gear and expensive equipment
mapping out the routes that keep
us out of the traffic, danger of being
killed by ruthless drivers, danger
of pollution from standing exhaust fumes,
danger of being exhausted when we
reach our destination, nowhere to tie
the bike, easily stolen, carry in the saddle
carry in the lights, get an old bike
get some old clothes, not suitable at work
get another job, get another life
where we can live in a community that's gone
no local shops, no post office
no local restaurant, no bank
just the computer all alone at home
burning our own fuel, looking
out the window at the street
jammed with filthy cars
no parking at the door, money
money, money, tax, insurance
petrol, MOT, get me an elephant
to ride into this jungle and shoot
a few tigers in the tanks to
get rid of my frustration
that's what it says on the motorway sign:
FRUSTRATION KILLS
KILLS - KILLS - KILLS - KILLS
IRAQ - OIL - PIPELINES - PETROL
CARS - CARS - CARS -
Like parasites we cling to
the wheel as we head towards
our auto-mobiled self combustion.
ALARMING TIMES
Haiku round the clock
An alarm clock rang
I fell asleep again
when I woke it was too late
A clock loud ticking
in my sleeping head
I woke and thought it was a dream
Our planet changes
we know this happens
at times it changes faster
Species get knocked out
like Neanderthals
adapted to frosty woods
What sort of being
will survive, emerge
from massive global warming?
A small desert rat
with a human brain
scuttling down sandy hovel?
Or some amphibian
plying savage seas
in sun-powered frog-skin vessel?
Or robotic node
consuming knowledge
in collective thought-machine?
WAXWINGS IN THE PARK
Variety is the spice of life
A flock of waxwings in the sycamore
sycamore in February in the park
park green and windswept in the city
city grey yet glistening in the east
east coast of Scotland facing Europe
Europe, Scandinavia and Siberia
Siberia which sends its icy greetings
icy greetings holding back the Spring
Spring to come, longer light and walks
walks in the park perhaps to glimpse
crested waxwings banded on the boughs.
In Scotland occasional winter visitors
visitors who wear distinctive colours
colourful from head to yellow tail
yellow tail and sealing-wax red tip
to every feather of the wings, wings
for chasing insects, beaks for berries
beret chestnut with the jaunty crest
pinstriped through in charcoal black
and black around the throat and blazing eye.
My eye surprises me in looking up
looking up and welcoming the migrants
migrants among our crows and starlings
our gulls accustomed to the slanting sun.
CARBON TRADING
regular verbs
I pollute you pollute he/she/it pollutes
we pollute you all pollute they pollute
in the present tense day after day
and in the past I have polluted
you have he/she/it has you all have and
they have polluted
but in the future we'll have carbon-trading:
I shall pollute and you will sell your credits
like coffee beans among baby-sitters;
they will pollute with impunity
having planted a few trees. We'll pollute
with sanitary towels nappies cleaning bleaches
aerosols chemicals our fossil-fuel burning
our artificial clothing our trash consuming
our luxury goods and fashion-fawning
our factory-farming our throwing out
of old computers.
You and I
plod on with heavy footprint on
the earth's eroded soils and over
several times the earth's whole compass
while the poor tip-toe barefoot through
our toxic rubbish-heaps and drink
from contaminated waters breathe
our manufactured fumes beneath the
blackening clouds of global dimming.
Would that I had not you would not
he/she/it might not you all would never
dream of they would cease at once
from all declensions and conjugations
of the user-friendly active regular verb: to pollute.
THE ARMS TRADE
let them eat guns
To make more profit we manufacture
bombers, tanks, guns
poisons, chemicals,
smart missiles
long-life exploding land-mines
and sell them for people to kill each other.
With the billions such exports earn
we import food and drink
from starving people
whose toil and trouble
loses us not one wink
of sleep, or do we toss and turn?
No, we kindly arrange for loans
with interest so they need
us to develop
their country and help
their failure as we succeed:
they have no bread? Let them eat guns!
This is global capitalism
based on democracy
we can all vote
for one president
why don't all agree
to this more than satisfactory system?
FOOD
"and is there honey still for tea?"
Cows have gone mad
seals have caught a virus
chickens have the flu
eggs have salmonella
bees are dying for lack for pollen
shell-fish are toxic
fish are farmed on drugs
vegetables are sprayed
fruit is radiated
beans are gene-mutated
tomatoes given dye
bananas packed with pesticide
nothing to eat is safe
sugar and salt forbidden
bread and butter ill advised
most of the milk non-proven.
"I think I'll go and eat worms"
but what could they have eaten?
corpses full of all that poison.
ECO-HOUSE SPEAKS
A garment to wear
I'm displayed as an eco-house:
not many of us yet, we are
hand-built, crafted in detail
with every latest invention
up-to-date, state of the art,
no two alike, we are each
unique, built less to last
than to be adaptable you could say,
organic you could say, breathing
you could say, a living system.
Take walls and structure:
as with clothes it is the layers that count
for warmth and we have layers
and cavities. Take roofs: the slope is
not so much to drain off the rain,
more to catch the sun in solar panels.
We keep heat in, we let damp out;
we have a circulation like the body;
we have a heart that pumps renewable
energy; we have waste disposal systems
that recycle waters, make compost,
dispose of nothing that has another use.
Light and free to live in, we stretch out
our arms in moveable positions, our
legs in swinging doors. As for windows,
they are made from whisky barrels
for letting in the subtler spirits.
We insulate
and use the ceiling space. Our kitchens
are partly garden or so it feels: herbs
growing, vegetables cooking, salads
appearing, grains and pulses heaped
in abundance; slow food, good food, languid
home-made wine, home made bread
with its own metabolic cycle.
We have no heavy tread upon the earth;
our footprint is hardly traceable
though we are firmly grounded
and can withstand storms and
hurricanes like a reed in the river.
To live in an eco-house is to wear a garment.
We are not machines for living in, as
Le Corbusier tried to manufacture.
Machines are too demanding;
we are intuitive and gentle;
we save you from alienation within
yourself, between yourselves and from
Nature you long to know better and
cannot avoid any longer without
tantrums; this very place, any particular
kind of place, a certain chosen milieu,
that's where we belong as eco-houses,
belong and belonging transform.
WHAT SHALL WE DO?
Nursery rhyme
What shall we do with the working woman
and with her young ambitious partner?
They can't stop working to have a baby
and the population's falling.
Who can afford to buy a house now?
Price of houses gone sky-high now;
local houses owned by landlords:
what a good investment!
University loans to pay off;
part-time working not an option;
who will stop and mind the baby?
pay a private nursery?
No-one can afford a family
(housing working holidaying)
single children trapped in nurseries
morning noon and evening.
Scotland has no use for children
seen as an expensive burden;
yet an ageing population
saps this wealthy nation.
From the world's congested corners
people come in search of haven;
Scotland has it all they reckon
houses, land and freedom.
What shall we do to breed more babies?
pay the carers, provide the houses,
clear the streets, make safe play-parks
welcoming to children
Employ our young folk in their region
learning skills of integration;
sea and land a blessed possession
for our future children.
THE SEA-BIRDS' PROTEST
The birds of the sea convened a parliament at St Kilda;
from Orkney and Shetland, the Small Isles, the outer
Hebrides they gathered one week in late summer
when chicks could fend for themselves, though few chicks
had hatched that year or the year before or the year before.
Manx shearwaters skimmed the waves, gannets flew
on their wide wings, arctic terns soared
from the north; puffins, guillemots, razorbills and
even a pair of albatross, who acted
as moderators. The talk was mostly of climate change
and how it was altering the relative temperature
zones of the sea and convection currents, affecting the fish.
The skuas shrilly denied this, squawking "No proof" and then
"Climate is always changing, the earth has always moved
and we have always managed to adapt."
But the lack of sand-eel supply due to factory ships
that dredge the least living thing that moves in the sea;
chemicals dripped from salmon farms; oil escaped
from tankers and the huge disturbance of oil drilling;
the dwindling of cod and whitefish with trawlers forced to dump
them dead in the depths again after catching them
for fear of being over quota; seals, dolphins, whales
suffering a similar fate; submarines
prowling and fouling, prowling and fouling, prowling and fouling -
"Silence" cried the albatrosses, "Order, order!"
The chatter and cries were tumultuous, so that none
was properly heard. "It's time to take a vote and resolve
on action. Either we become extinct
or we leave the coasts of Scotland for good and find
another home." - "We might persuade the humans
to pay attention to their seas and make new rules
for their protection, as they have begun
to do to save their land?" With a show of a thousand wings
it was agreed a protest must be made,
that birds of every species would gather on Arthur's Seat
to darken the windows of the parliament
and drown with their cacophony even the grind of traffic
even the calm debating within the chamber.
"We'll fly around encircling them and swooping
closer and closer. They'll remember Hitchcock
and become afraid!" - "How will fear make them act
when reason has not prevailed all these years?"
-"Fear and pity for their descendants who will never
watch a gannet diving or a pufffin
landing or the artic tern in the northern sky."
Thus it was arranged and final flocking took place
for three weeks in October. It was noted
in Edinburgh that the sky was black with birds from the sea.
"Return to the waves", people shouted, "or
we'll have to drive you back." It was in vain, in vain.
The birds continued in non-violent resistance;
they waited over the winter as one by one and then
in their tens, in their hundreds, in their thousands
they perished, large and small, litterd the park
and the parliamentary precincts with their
delicate feathered souls and desperate beaks.
THE WISHING TREE
'this lone, wind-blasted hawthorn in the wilds of Argyll is one of
the few known wishing trees in Scotland (The Heritage Trees:
Constable)
Grant me a wish O ancient thorn
Queen of the land maiden and crone
grant me a wish as I beseech
Every inch of your twisted limbs
studded encrusted pressed with coins
each one somebody's fossilised wish
What is your wish? Replies the tree
as it rests in its own infirmity
Speak to me of your heart's entreaty
I wish for a Scotland green and free
a world and its peoples in harmony
where humans and creatures share the earth
I wish for seasons and climate at peace
sun air water lands and seas
an equilibrium poised, alert
I wish for my poems to share a story
for my children's children's true destiny
for ripening, death and rebirth
The wind was keening the tree was silent
clouds were luminous shoots were greening
blossoms were budding from every coin
Tree of the May Queen of the Light
berries of blood and blossoms white
my wishes are granted by this sign.
|
