Pure Invention

After the last flood, you promised

No more Arks;

Exploring lost countries

And finding out why;

Defying the past

In planes that fly backwards.

No more basking with sharks

On a submarine sundeck;

Or plumbing new depths

With trips to Atlantis.

If you can’t change the world,

Don’t try.

Do a crossword instead.

People who lead

Dull lives

Still make it to the grave.

Reinventing fire might sound bright,

But it could make things worse.

Most dreams,

Like postcards from strangers you ought to know,

Remain on the mantelpiece.

Pater Familias

You keep popping up

In the strangest places.

Walking into a room,

Your face appears,

Smiling the same odd way.

Real or not,

I know you’re there.

My shadow everywhere

Bumps into yours.

I hear your voice

Through doors

Long closed.

Even the dark

Assumes your shape;

You’re here so much,

The monsters under the bed

Have been complaining.

SOS

You sit, tapping out Morse;

That much I get.

“Don’t rock the boat,” you said,

As we boarded the Titanic.

When a heart sinks,

‘Mayday’ is not enough.

The seas we know

Won’t save us.

So, you sit,

Tapping out Morse,

Time upon time.

For all the world like an expert.

Beneath

In memoriam 11/11/11

These flowering legions

Cannot know

What glory hides:

Fields of the fallen, glimpsed

Along the route to Rheims:

Graveyards of Picardy

Where real poppies grow,

Transforming each minute spent

In recompense

For those

Whose silence is endless.

Prophetic

I hear your voice:

Cassandra in reverse,

Stating the obvious;

While I sit,

Staring at the landscape,

Consulting the gold,

Bowed heads of wheat:

A congregation

Bright with questions

For which the wind,

Shaking the scattered poppies,

Has no answers.

Joker

You haven’t left,

I know for sure.

I saw you in Sainsbury’s

Only the other day,

Your cart piled high

With goodies.

The dead don’t change;

They carry on,

Playing the same old game.

Shuffling the pack,

I see you again,

Ignoring the rules.

Well past your sell-by date:

Your smile as bright

As a new-minted coin,

Deceiving no one.

Memoriam

The doomed man  

Hears fireworks he cannot see,

Smells Autumn’s corrosive breath,

As metal salts

Ignite the air.

In his mind’s eye,

A boy,

Lighting a match,

Holding it up for a dare.

A crowd appears

Chanting in fatal glee.

And here in the dark,

The past explodes,

A story unrehearsed:

An effigy on a bonfire.