Even more poems from an earlier incarnation

Photo by Mrika Selimi on Unsplash

Cocktails in the Infinity Pool

Singapore wears her skirts high above the knee,
proud of her slim and tanned thighs.
Her shopping malls mesmerise,
their glimmer, gold and glitz, veneer-deep,
a skin of tropical sweat glistening
on a body we all desire.
Across a polished sky, a grey mass
threatens to unload its burden;
rain that will sing as it bounces off
swimming pools and Ferraris,
trapping you where you stand
or forcing you indoors,
into air-conditioned boutiques,
French pastries, Italian coffee and
faux New York sidewalks.

And yet.
There is history here if you care to look,
if you bother to make the journey out to Kranji
or see Changi as more than just a destination
for departures and duty-free;
long hauls of another kind are buried
not so far beneath the surface.
Perhaps it is apt that her history
is a precious metal to be stroked not scratched,
to be caressed by cotton gloves
and melancholic remembrance
- and then forgotten,
conquered by expeditions to Channel, Louis Vuitton, 
and cocktails in the infinity pool.

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Coast

Trace around its outline with great care,
there is danger as well as beauty there.
Go slowly, cautiously;
try to picture postcard scenes
of secluded coves, a deserted beach,
the caves where smugglers hid
and waited for the tide to reach.
Pause again where once upon a kid
you ate fish and chips with Gran,
or cream fruit scones with Auntie Fran;
or walking that neglected path,
held hands with Ruth’s sister, Cath.
Crab fishing from the pier!
Or chasing pollock with a plastic reel;
a Fair, a Carousel, the Dodgems’ cheer, 
Candy-floss’s sickly smell,
screaming at the Waltzer’s spell;
a litany of buckets, spades,
vampires, Goths, Sunday parades,
yachts, hovercraft, Bank Holiday swathes
of tourists, row boats, crazy golf,
and over-flowing ice cream sundaes.
You touched the sea more than you knew.
Retracing steam to Dartmouth,
the winding roads to Lyme, St. Ives;
coach trips near and far,
Saltburn’s red funicular;
Blackpool’s lights, Brighton’s sights,
Bournemouth nights, and Whitby frights;
a multicoloured film of wooden huts,
of dunes and skimming stones,
castles of sand fighting incoming tides;
of grit in shoes when walking home
dodging dog shit, the ends of fags,
of wading in the freezing drink
which made your little willie shrink!
Trace your finger round the coast with care;
where land meets sea, your history is there.

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The Light of Our Lives

We have a jar in our bedroom
where we keep the fragment
that fell from the sky and
buried itself in the garden the day
we moved into our new house.
Some days the shard would glow
and the jar illuminate
with an impossible light,
and if we removed the lid
the light escaped and our world
and our lives became
just a little more wonderful.
We were blessed when it landed.

But recently the glow is more reticent;
our rock is alive less frequently
and it has become harder to top-up
our lives with this astral gift
and we are forced to carry on
as if it never arrived,
as if we were just like other people.
Each evening before bed
I check the jar, ever-hoping;
wishing once again to be able to let
a fraction of the brilliance escape.
But it is always dark these days
and when the lights are off
our bedroom is as black as the sky.

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These poems are included in Selected Poems 1976-2022.

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