Approved Abuse and other poems

From the Lighthouse

Should the surface of the world advance,
its waves bow, tumble and dance
at my feet and haul its treasures
from galleons closer, their stories sunk
without trace, I’ll merely compare such pleasures
with the memory of yours,
your approval, your warmth, your face.

Horizon the altar of my church,
I revere and seek the ultimate, a search
successful long ago.
Barely touching the world, gaze
a permanent tangent, the only philosophy I know
the sigh of shingle
slipping away, plangent.

Leaning on ship rails at night,
couples sense the beam of my sight,
see it as no warning,
more a beacon celebrating youth,
the spring tide, evocations of our dawning
a benediction,
eternal, ocean-wide.

Approved Abuse

He wet himself.
Focussed, I forced him to balance
the blood-red apple on his head,
aimed my crossbow
and shot him dead.
Or might easily have done, the link
between truth and legend
loose. Either way,
it wasn’t heroic,
it was child abuse. 

Heavy in heart
but compliant, obeying heaven
instead of conscience, common sense
or human compassion,
atmosphere tense,
I raised my eyes and the knife,
despite Isaac’s look,
wild, and would have stabbed,
idiocy committing
the murder of a child.

Epitome of romance,
I married my brother, twelve,
ensured his death and married another,
eleven, who happened
also to be my brother.
I poisoned him, advancing
my bastard son by Julius
Caesar, incest and infanticide
no obstacle
to an audience-pleaser.

This eighteen-nineteen
law, with no provision
for enforcement, seems to serve to ensure
that no children
be exploited any more,
eight years of age
too young in a mill
or mine. For such work,
a twelve-hour day,
they must be nine.

Eager to fly,
to reject the rigid laws
that conspire to keep us earth-bound,
Father and I
left the ground,
our wings spread, constructed
from wax and feathers, those avian
requisites. Higher, warmer,
my wax melted ...
Abuse by physics!

The Search

One night out of time,
out of all the nights in time,
she arrives like a gift, unbidden,
their meeting by the river
a season in itself. From nowhere
she becomes everything, a landscape,
her scent fresh grass, her touch
silver water.

He sensed, even before waking,
her absence, her only goodbye
a deep longing, their moon-and-shadow
night imprinted on his mind,
a black and white negative
awaiting sunlight.

Wandering fields, he pictured
her face, each day increasing the distance
between them. Exploring tracks, searching
breezy hedgerows, he confided in branches
and stalks, describing her
features to shaking heads. 

Then, an old woman, half remembering
in a hazel lane, muddles blue eyes
with the watching sky, hair with russet
leaves, and thinks she may have seen her
or her smile through the heat haze
of a long-forgotten summer,
placing her, as a youngster,
in the village school.

At her cottage, the retired teacher
frowns, decades of pupils answering
her silent roll call. Memory fragile, names
float back, some long-enshrined
on the war memorial by the butter cross
they played on. At last, she seems to hear
a faint reply of ‘Present’.
There, gazing out at him
from a faded photograph, black and white,
she sits in a row, eyes meeting his
once more, shining night returning,
moonlight and shadow.

‘It was strange,’ the teacher says,
squinting at remote scenes. Seasons
rewind, trees growing shorter,
fallen dry-stone walls re-forming
as tarmac rises from lanes. In the background
of her mind stands the village, cottages
restored to lumpiness, cows instead of cars,
vanished faces chatting at the pump.
‘I can see her,’ the teacher breathes,
‘sitting by the pond. My cleverest pupil,
her love reading, her reading
love. Hardly of this world, a wanderer,
she’d disappear for hours, amble
day and night until, one evening,
she didn’t return.’

The old teacher fell silent. He urged her
for more, but the cottages crumbled,
became semis, patios weedless,
aerials and dishes flowering high.
‘We searched long, finding
only meadows, woodland, bracken
and dead leaves.’

Loneliness, my friend, we must roam
again, acknowledge nodding berries,
a slope’s cadence, listen to babbling
streams, sunset’s blank look lustreless
compared with black and white.
I’m sure there’s comfort,
of a sort, in scenery’s sweep, a secret
gully or timeless wood. Nature
sustains the desolate creature, subsistence
in daybreak, a still noon, evening’s
song and the crackling stars.

Fields wet, paths muddy, he wandered further,
leaves like sleet, grey at last
giving way to lights, a town’s edge.
Penetrating the rain, sparks of sound
fit movements, lamps glowing, shop windows
blooming, a rural community selling
its remains, a dying trade
in antiques and bric-a-brac. Then,
his mind away, he sees her
standing before him.

Transfixed, absorbing the steady gaze,
he struggles to advance. Reaching
to embrace her shoulders’
charcoal sweeps, he listens for lips
that were smudged into shape
and the eloquent eyes. A shop window,
solid space, separates them. Inside,
dizzied by warmth, he’s a customer
requiring a sketch
and the original. ‘My grandfather’s work,’
the old man says, throwing in
the few facts he has. ‘Sketched over
a century ago. She wasn’t local. So young.
Such a loss.’

The hope she’s given him
lives, consoling as he sits in church, dank,
semi-derelict, words of ancient hymns
condensing on walls. The vicar, poet,
historian and patriarch at forty, buried
in books, letters, parish registers, finds
no name, no record of her passing,
only vague references, recollections of those
whose memories lie in the churchyard,
a few words above their heads. 

With each gust, trees shuddered,
persistent snow, powdery, numbing
all recollection of greenness. He trudged
winter, crushed frozen cobwebs
of bracken, brushed frost from his face, the crisp
hush of hedgerows surviving
in silhouette. The evocation of her drowning
tumbled continuously through his mind,
the river, as he crossed it, turbulent
no longer, but frozen, innocent, white.

Tinted by spring, winter grew
turbid, showers clouding vision as he reached
suburbs, a city. He almost fled
concrete valleys, glass smiles, mechanical
handshakes but, in a park
that served as nature’s museum – sallow
snowdrops, embattled bluebells – he met
a girl in a rainbow dress. They walked
on workaday grass, inhaled
fumes as though scent, her views sunny
and, one dusk, jealous of its country
neighbour, spread itself
and them on a bed of leaves and litter,
a kaleidoscopic love in loneliness,
its urgent beauty ignoring noise, squalor
and paint flaking like leaves. This
communion, they knew, was real,
substantial, even as he left,
a gradual parting of hands.

The return of summer, occasional storms
raising bushes by the hair,
followed by heat. A pedestrian dozing
where two lanes cross, he lies in a hollow,
damp clothes drying on him, a cloud
of insects for steam. Through haze,
a figure approaches, becoming clearer
until, there in a dream is his dream,
the prime mover of his days
and perennial season. Through closed eyelids
he tries to focus, needs to free his tongue,
but her nearness answers all.
They’ll embrace for all time, he believes,
the world of their first night, their only night,
recaptured, a scent of fresh grass,
sheltering leaves, silver water. 

He sensed, even before waking,
her absence, her only goodbye
a longing etched deeper than before.
Surrounding woods seemed darker, sun
brazing gaps in the canopy, sealing
him in. A few uncertain paces, conifers’
discarded needles blunted to black,
a barren, ascetic bed. Abruptly,
he stopped, his shout startling the air.
The sound searched tree trunks,
nests, burrows, found tiny ears
that sensed peril and froze.
When silence returned, reticent,
he began walking again, as for so long,
but not onward, for now his footsteps,
instead of his mind, led him back.

The city shines, windows, vehicles, signs
reflecting every hue, light
constantly moving. And there she is,
in her rainbow dress, mundane
as a firework display. She’s never seen
the northern lights, the Perseids, nor even
the Plough, but she understands idylls
beyond urban boundaries and her flat
becomes the universe that night.
In the unlit room, he sees, surely,
sparks on her skin, her picture, so long
imprinted on his mind, developed
into flesh and feeling, no mere image,
the room’s essence a bed by a river,
a summer in itself, a gift
he sees properly for the first time;
the girl who, one night out of time,
out of all the nights in time,
came to him unbidden, from nowhere,
to become everything.