Memoirs In Verse

This poem is dedicated to the memory of Sergeant Jack Edwards of the 155th Field Rgt Royal Artillery (the Lanarkshire Yeomanry). Jack’s war was cruel; he was captured at the Fall of Singapore and rescued from the mines of Kinkaseki in 1945. I am proud to have known him. ‘Keep Going The Spirit that Kept Us Going’ is the motto of the Far East Prisoners of War. Listen to: Banzai You Bastards! That night we heard the echoes of his homeland, the melancholic choirs of the valleys; they brought peace to his impassioned mind, and a purpose born in purgatory. Without that choral beauty, then as now, he'd feel his anger rise to rage and burn at the trauma and injustice suffered, by those unfree, yet undefeated, men. Those exalted hymns and songs lent strength to his endurance of his slavery; the music of the valleys gave him hope, to survive the fetid mines of Kinkaseki. Hope gave him the reason to bear his scars— his shattered mind and wounds poorly healed, the damage of disease and foul ne

Listen to: Light Airs By dawn, I felt the lightest airs of wind Bearing fishers homeward from the sea; A sea of changing colour, from darkest blue To turquoise, and coral reefs richly hued, In reds, purples, greens and yellow ochre, Like opals careless strewn across the bays. I breathed in the salt air's subtle sweetness, Of silver, bright-eyed fish with lustrous shades Of blue and shining iridescent greens, Landed from the tuna boat beside the quay. I saw a paradise on earth at peace; The people of that place were justly proud Of their remote, idyllic island home. They cleaned and canned the fish in brine or oil, And packed by hand that line-caught ocean's trove, There to await the northbound ship, Chefoo. By dusk, I felt the gentle offshore breeze, Bearing local fishers once more to sea, To gather fish for their daily market, While day's rich hues did gently fade to dark.

This poem is dedicated to my wife, Anne. It is written in iambic pentameter to give the poem a contemplative tone. ‘Beyond my reach’ refers to the sun passing below the horizon. The words ‘I choose my guides’ refers to my choosing the stars to ‘shoot’, to obtain a position using a navigator’s sextant.  Listen to: Dusk at Sea The sun descends beyond my reach and yields, To leave the cooling ashes of the day. The most sublime of hues are now revealed— A worthy scene for some aspiring Manet. I stand my lonely watch beneath that sky, Across that calm and tranquil sea we plough, With none to witness our sailing by, Save distant, spectral, lateen-rigged dhows. The twilight lifts her sheer, translucent veil, And shows my constant, faithful friends to me; And from among that host, I choose my guides— Oh, blessed stars, guide me west across the sea. The full moon bathes the ship in silver light, And I reflect upon my passing day, Among those fleeting shadows of the night, My longing thoughts of

Listen to: The Guardian of Dreams Do not lie beneath my lonely rampart, And see an ancient, worn, discarded toy, I am the guardian of his childhood dreams, And he is my child still, that ungarnished boy. Only when I hear his joyful laughter do I rest, I am he who held at bay his youthful fears, It was I who gave his dreams the wings to fly, He made me, more than once, bathe in tears, I listen still for the beating of his heart, Close beneath his arm and beside his breast, Where we fought and cried and laughed as one, And I, like a meadow’s flower, was pressed! I know the weight and value of his love, And if you would have him love you too, Then listen for the beating of his heart, And count yourself among the precious few. He became a man as I stood by his side, I implore you, take him and hold him dear, While I stand my watch each passing day, And help protect him from all that’s drear. If you would also know and love him, And share his disappointments as do I, Then I will stand besid

Listen to: Clydeside Steel It's better my faith rests with Clydeside steel,  than heaven's careless, unworthy deity,    for how fickle and uncertain He remains.  When winter’s seas reach out in frenzied rage, to test my abiding faith's resolve, I will rely upon those who forged this steel  to endure the cold and dark of winter days, for by their skill they've earned my well-found faith.  At the winter's end must spring emerge, from skies as grim and black as granite tors, and her fury give way to kinder seas, when boisterous spring wears only veils of rain that flutter in the season's breeze. Until then—and after— I'll keep my faith in Clydeside steel.

This poem, of a stevedore mourning the passing of a way of life, is written as a villanelle, comprising five tercets and one quatrain of ten syllables in each line with a formal and distinctive rhyming pattern. Listen to: The Stevedore The city docks stand idle and forlorn,  Old wharves and warehouses lie decaying,  The sky weeps soft and gentle tears to mourn. The long grass grows between the cobbles worn  By the tides of men and cargo passing,  The city docks stand idle and forlorn.  The ships, seamen and stevedores have gone,  Now, few hold memories of our calling, The sky weeps soft and gentle tears to mourn. Who remains to hear the dock foremen call,  For gangs of men for that day’s labouring? The city docks stand idle and forlorn.  Or board the Kiwi meat-boat in the morn,  Her holds packed full, ready for unloading?  The sky weeps soft and gentle tears to mourn. For one last time, I pass those gates well-worn,  My memory, like the tide, is ebbing,  The city docks stand idle and f

Listen to: A Soliloquy on the Anga The people of this village, bound in time And place to earth, wave and greet me smiling, And hold me warm in courtesy's embrace. Well-favoured by distance does this village lie, Amid their valley's cool, grass-scented air. The fertile valley stretches broad and long; As morning’s rain gives rise to perfumed mist, With hints of lazy smoke from village fires, The voices of the village men returned From hunting, carry laughter through the hills. Yet what strange practice I witness here Beneath the sandstone hill-top's weathered brow; For watchful dead as if in judgement sit, With skin and tissue dry, like aged parchment, And watch their living kin through sightless eyes. Their bodies have their kin preserved by smoke, As smoke preserves their memory, good and ill, To rest upon a fragile, timber seat. Loved ones recall their lives, their loves and strife, And, as if living still, are they consoled. Oh, when will people grieve, if in their eyes

Listen to:  The Monsoon Break On An Oil Field Our ship’s alone—for many weeks we’ve toiled,  Nurturing those rigs and platforms like flowers, Their roots searching within the Earth for oil, Reaching for that dark ichor of ancient life.   Throughout the days of May, the monsoon gathered,  And compelled Fair Weather to yield her claim, And leave us among the lonely platforms, clustered,    As a flock around their shepherd, watchful but alone. Stiffening breezes proclaimed the summer’s tumult,  And the cumulus obeyed the season’s call to fly   Eastward to the warm monsoon’s embrace, beneath the blue-mantled ocean’s sky. Now, helicopters drone on their final flights like bees,  That dip among the blooms shimmering in the heat, The rhythm of their wings beating in the breeze, To carry home their drowsy weight, replete. A host of nimbus crowds the darkening skies, And rain spills from that brooding refuge In silvered cascades—for millions the joyful reprise  Of each summer’s gift, that life-

Listen to: Medevac This poem is about a medevac operation by two pilots on an oil field west of Mumbai (Bombay). Flying conditions were appalling. The American pilots remained true to their word when they declared many weeks earlier that if we needed them, they would come. The pilots were ex-Vietnam veterans and had flown gunship and medevac operations there. The pilot’s voice crackles, ‘Papa Charlie, this is Kilo Lima,’ the ship’s hove to, plunging and heaving in the writhing swell, ‘ETA your helo-deck, zero three minutes—Are we clear? Over.’ I glance at the lacerated diver, the bastard’s going through hell; at last, the chopper beats towards us in the hot and humid air. ‘Roger, Kilo Lima, deck’s clear. We’ve got a damned heavy sea.’ Now I can hear the percussive drumming of the huey's rotors, ‘Copy that, Papa Charlie—it’s like goin’ into a hot LZ!’ My crew stand ready by the deck as the bird approaches, and the chopper beats above us in the hot and humid air. The wind, salt and r

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.

This poem is about a cleaner whom I came to know quite well. One day I asked him what he did during the war, his reply shocked me and I thought his story deserved to be recorded. Listen To: Portrait of a Cleaner The old cleaner bent to his mop and swabbed the washroom floor. ‘You surely must have been there, Alf, what did you do in the war?’ He was small, silver-haired and stooped, an invisible man to most. He rarely spoke, a quiet man, in simple work engrossed. He looked long at the mirrored wall, when a younger man replied, ‘Oh, I had a busy war, boy,’ and then spoke on with pride. ‘I was a miner here, in Pontypridd,’ his lilting voice compelled me, to pause, to stand and listen well, and so he told his story. ‘Over two hundred of us left, we volunteered to fight ’gainst Franco and the fascists, to help freedom in her plight.’ He was no lettered Thomas, but made my time stand still, his were the annals of working men, and like the mariner, held me by his will. ‘We came home, beat, in