Memoirs In Verse

This poem is a portrait of an Australian stevedore I once met as we both watched cargo being loaded onboard my ship for Papua New Guinea. New Guinea was a vicious and bloody theatre of the Second World War where ANZACs and Americans fought, often hand-to-hand, against their ferocious Japanese enemy.  Listen to: Portrait of an ANZAC The foreman stood beside the slewing crane; As he watched our cargo stowed below, Within the vessel's deep and gaping maw. His weathered face was deeply lined and tanned,  With once-bright grey eyes, now ageing and dimmed. 'You're loading for New Guinea, Mister Mate? We went up there in forty-two and three, To bloody Kokoda, Milne Bay and Lae.'  He raised his calloused hands for me to see  The cruel scars that bound his sinewed arms.  'I still succumb to vivid, hellish dreams; Sweat-soaked in fear and swallowed by the bush, I hack and hack and hack the kunai grass, That swishes, slashes and slices my skin, Then wade neck-deep through bloo

For Annabel Listen to: Ode to a Pilgrim As I beheld the twilight at the end of day, The trade winds gathered from the south and east, White-crested waves broke hard against the hull,  To cast cascades of spray upon the breeze.  A scattered flight of calling migrant birds  Bore witness to our steady progress south, And called me from my watchful solitude, Beneath the saffron and rose-washed light of dusk. The unruly breeze brought sooty terns to feed And seek their prey among the dancing waves, Then soon the albatross came soaring by,   In silhouette against the twilight sky. As heaven’s amber hues gave way to night, In gusting wind, that pilgrim stayed beside  The ship, to fly within my widest reach,  And hold me fast with her piercing watchful eyes. With skill and sovereign grace our pilgrim Discerned her path across the boundless ocean, While I employed mean time and precious sextant,  To grope my way amidst the sun and stars. My feeble feats of ordinary pilotage,  Were naught to suc

Listen to: Noon at Sea The sun spurns the landsman’s mark, Of the clock tower’s hourly chime,  She keeps to her diurnal path, And to her shining zenith climbs.   I, braced against the deck’s,  Unruly heaving, pitch and roll, Stand bullied by the punching wind, And hold her in my sextant’s eye.  The vernier proves her progress, Towards the summit of the day,  Then I bear witness to her crossing, My meridian at noon that day.