Poetry

I have, on occasion, been tempted to write poetry. Collections of poetry are notoriously difficult to get into print, so this might be the closest it will get to seeing the light of day. Read, enjoy, but please be aware that all original material on this site is subject to copyright.

  

Fatal Attraction

(ode to gravity)

You were my first love

Before I knew even the warmth of the sun, you held me in your hand.

Declaring your undying love for me at the moment of my conception.

I was all yours, every cell, every neuron, every moment of every hour;

Cradling me in your everlasting arms and caressing my infant eyelids to sleep.

Oh, how constant you were! So constant that I struggled to break free.

My bones hardened and I stumbled to escape your grasp

But you knew, how you knew, that at the end of each day, I would return to you

Lie down in your loving embrace and close my eyes.

In my youth I pondered the mystery of your lure;

The rain drummed on the window but could not distract me from the stark truth

Nine-point eight one metres per second per second

The measure of your need for me.

Another reality dawned, so obvious that I gasped at your audacity.

I had sworn devotion, but you were promiscuous, openly and without shame.

Tall, short, fat, thin, blonde, brown, European, African, anyone;

Distributing your favours with impunity, but insistent on my fidelity.

Enraged at your hypocrisy, I set my face to flee.

Even when I chose another, you were there- Did I ascend in adoration?

Or soar in adulation? Oh no! Like everyone I fell in love.

And when I flew from you, you waited patiently at my destination

Half-smiling at my temerity, but waiting all the same.

And now, in the last five-point seven six seconds of my life

I teeter, flailing wildly for the rocky parapet, hearing the indifferent sea below.

And knowing in that all-engulfing terror

Cruel, constant, dispassionate, I come to you,

And you take me as I am, crushed with your love.

 Joe Harding February 2008

This next piece is very much a performance item. It needs four very different voices (indicated by different fonts and colours). If you are a member of a poetry society and think it might be worth a try, then please feels free to have a go at performing it.

When I get round to it, I will try to record the poem and incorporate it as a sound file. If, in the meantime you try it , then please contact me and let me know what you think. I would strongly advise using a metronome to establish the rhythm in practise sessions.

Light that is stronger, for the daytime that is longer and the sands have all run through now it is time…

To be reaching, to be swarming through the soil the sun is warming, goading and exploding…Tendrils ever-curling, and the leaves are unfurling,

From the shady valley river to the blighted moorland heather, higher than the wind yet softer than a shiver from your shoulders to the floor

hear the cry to live, live, live, live

 live,  live, live, live, live, live, live,

Sheen of green on the hawthorn

 live, live, live, live,  live,  live, live,

Ground-mist of blue ‘neath the trees;

 live,  live, live, live,  live,  live, live, live,

Shy-gold of hedgerow Celandine,

  live,  live, live, live, live, once more.

 Wild garlic loading the breeze.

 Live, be   born, season flows;

Liverwort jaundiced with primrose;

Slip indiscriminate frost,

Sipping the saturate moss;

Shake awake and return,

Combings of maidenhair fern,

To the lover you left and you lost

.Hazel dandruffed across.

Rumble of April downpour;

Tremble of untarnished silver;

H u m b l e ….. T h r u m b l e

Black-clouded cassocking prayer,

Birched on the open heath;

B e e …….. B u m b l e

Sunlight’s ten billion strands

Violet consorts with anemone,

C l o v e r … d i p

Washing her dust-spangled hair.

To bind with the weed beneath.

A n d p o l l e n t u m b l e

I am the giver I am the Sun

Chuckle of early Campion

C u c k o o……. c o o k

I am the father, I am the son,

Each candescent sliver newly spun

Shades of Deadly Night

C u c k o o……. c o o k

In my hands I cradle the gun

Author of spring, inviting, inciting

Emerald sap-scented nettles

C u c k o o……. c o o k

In my heart, lodged as a splinter

Behold my volume in radiant writing

Bristling their fresh-venomed spite

C u c k o o…… c o o k

Nourish the dark, cherish the winter.

As the boots retreat with the packed soil shaking come the lull in the shelling and the torn earth weeping for her sons who are sleeping in the softness of the sun that their broken limbs is warming as they grasp for the morning; the day that will not rise in the countless sightless eyes and the mud that is drying on the dead and the dying to consign them to the night and the fading of the light and the ears that are closed to the cry to live…live…live… once more.

 

 

The Rosebud Explodes

How could I know, the day I held you in my hands;

Your little head barely overflowed my palm,

And when your eyes unstitched themselves to behold

The face bemused, that cradled you in his arms.

How could I know, the day you babbled out your song

And chided with me when my attention was elsewhere;

“Dad, you’re not listening!” “Yes I am my love,”

Such fledgling indignation in that stare!

Yes, how could I know I held a Rosebud, tightly coiled?

Wrapped against the later frosts of Spring,

With just a flash of colour peeping through the husk,

The promise of such imminent blossoming?

How small were once the cares that crossed your mind,

Like cloudlets that obscured the warming sun.

Fast driven by a curious, surging intellect

That could not stay to walk once it could run.

How small each step that goes to make a journey,

How small the achievements, retrospective seem.

Letters, words, to sentences and stories-

Light the fuse, my child, ignite the dream.

Feel the power of unfettered imagination,

Look past the possible, look to all the roads

That lead past modest expectation,

Leading on to when the Rosebud explodes.

I do not wish you happy ever after-

Does any soul thrive on empty satisfaction?

But with your confidence writ large

I’ll be much more than a spectator to the action.

For suddenly the bud becomes a flower,

Come the minute, come the hour,

Come the sunshine, come the shower,

Come the freedom, come the power,

Come the bitter, sweet or sour

Stand and fight, or cringe and cower,

But when the cup of experience overflows…

I’ll hold you in my arms again….

When the Rosebud explodes.

Mother’s Day

Uploaded in time for Mother’s day.

Did you hear about the man

Who to his love gave everything?

A yacht, Ferrari, diamond rings,

Five star dreams, honey wings

All the wealth he could devote,

Mink-wrapped around her slender throat.

All he had was all he gave

Poured into a sunless grave;

She took the necklace with a gasp-

Her fingers trembled with the clasp

They might as well be paste and tin

For all the love she held within.

Murmuring thanks to her Midas lover

The clasp was undone by another.

What ever did you give to me?

Last child of the family.

Shoes and clothes with room to spare

Tired of pretending not to care;

The school rule that I can’t deny

Clothes make man, so what was I?

The birthday watch- I was elated

By my classmates desecrated.

But patiently you pointed out

Within is greater than without.

I cannot tell you this today

Five feet of soil are in the way

You gave me more than gold or wealth

You gave me life, you gave me health.

A mind to question, delve and learn;

The confidence to overturn

Or disregard and shy away

From blacks and whites to shades of grey.

You did not preach or moralise

But quietly opened up my eyes

To live and not apologise

But more than heaven, seas or skies

You gave me more than all the earth-

You gave me birth.

‘Midst the shadowing wintry glade.

It scorns the aching frost and snow

Shakes it to the ground below.

Where once the forest, fair and dressed;

Breathed its perfume, soft and blessed-

Where are thy whispering leaves today?

All thy fairness torn away.

Is our love an evergreen?

Surely of all woods the queen.

Does it not to change admit?

Does it not rejoice in it?

Do not the trees of Summer know

That soon the Autumn gales must blow?

And in this certain expectation

Have they not made preparation?

E’en though the leaves may turn and flee;

It is the root that bears the tree.

And what may be the Summer show,

The leaves, the fruit, the passing glow;

When all is passed, ‘tis plain to see,

It is the root that bears the tree.

In truth our love knew Springtime’s story

Rejoiced in youth and beauty’s glory;

As the sun, in warmth and splendour

And as the moon, so soft and tender

And hush! the wind that moves the trees

Sighing soft as Summer breeze.

Did we of frost and snow conceive?

Would we the raging winds believe?

Yet when the Winter gave them birth

As if to tear us from the earth

To scorch our leaves and throw them down

And yet, my love, we stood our ground!

The cold and gloom is plain to see,

Yet ‘tis the root that bears the tree.

Though all is bitter, dark and drear

It bides the turning of the year

And when the swallow’s seen once more

The leaves will burst from budded store

Receive anew the blessing sun

For love that grows is never done.

 

I hope you enjoyed these poems. I would welcome your comments and suggestions. joe9003@hotmail.co.uk