David Selzer

1046 posts

POETRY

GLIMPSING THE STARS

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read1.8K views

I wake, as always at some dark hour, to pee –

make my way, as always, with utmost care

down the steep, narrow stairs then across

the dining room’s creaking floor boards

as silently as bare feet can. Afterwards,

I creep to the patio doors, hoping

to see the visiting fox my hosts have heard.

There are stars in the clearest of skies –

so many, as always surprisingly

so many,  I want to wake the household

but, instead, craning my neck, peer up

through the double glazing in wonder.

What would the fox, night’s denizen, see?

An old man in his pyjamas, singing

sotto voce, ‘I only have eyes for you,’

longing to go in the garden to gaze at

such mundane immensements!

 

 

 


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POETRY

ACHILLES’ HEELS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.7K views

On the short strand where the Red Wharf Bay Sailing

and Water Sports Club has its clubhouse,

the salvaged HMS Thetis was grounded

the day Chamberlain declared war on Hitler.

 

The last human remains were slow marched,

with muffled drums, up the narrow, high banked lane.

For want of an escape drill and a pinhole

ninety nine men had died from carbon monoxide.

 

Raging Achilles, scion of the Greeks,

prince of the Myrmidons, slayer of Hector,

was son to Thetis, a nymph of the sea.

 

The First Lord took no blame, kept secret the

misapplied drop of enamel paint,

the panic – and compensated no one.

 

With muffled drums up the straitened lane

they bore the dead that sunny Sunday –

before the beaches were edged with tank traps,

the coasts sealed with barbed wire.

 

 

 

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POETRY

ONLY TO BE OPENED…

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read1.8K views

If her mother were to live to be Centenarian of the Year,

your mother would be seventy six and you,

surprising angel, nearly thirty three.

(You will note, I am assuming that I shall not be

Grandpa of the Decade – false modesty, of course!)

 

Thinking for so long there would be none,

I am surprised how the likely continuity –

of blood, flesh and memory – reconciles me

to that dim eternity. The phone rings.

‘Hehwo, Gwanpa.’ As always, I am enchanted.

 

We speak of many things – butterflies,

Sleeping Beauty, riding your pink bicycle.

I imagine you holding the receiver eagerly,

half the length of England away –

beyond the shires and the towns,

the wasteland and the woods –

shunning the dark, applauding the sun…

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

PASSING THE PARCEL

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.7K views

i.m. Ron Durdey

 

Each time I walk or drive by the one storey

Edwardian sandstone building with its

daunting windows and an entrance for Boys

and another for Girls and Infants –

one of my alma maters, an All Age

Church of England school – a memory

will appear like a genie… It is Empire Day,

’51. Mr Youd, the Head Master,

takes the assembly. We sing, ‘I vow to Thee,

my country, all earthly things above,

Entire and whole and perfect…’ I whisper

something to a friend. ‘Stand on the mat!’

And I do but it is the wrong mat – not

the one outside his office where the rough boys

from the farms and the council estate wait

to be caned. He forgets me. He walks past

at break. ‘What’s your name?’ I tell him and see

he remembers and thinks carefully. ‘Go!

Count yourself lucky this time!’

 

I would like to think I had, at nine,

been mocking his imperial twaddle.

‘We may have lost India but…’ and knew

it was the wrong mat. Maybe I was sharing

my aunts’ views of him, his school peers:

toady, bully and a quarter master

corporal in Ceylon while their father

and step brothers were on the Western Front.

Perhaps the line ‘The love that makes undaunted

the final sacrifice’ made me think

of my father. Whatever it was

I had learned a lesson.

 

 

 

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POETRY

EUREKA!

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read1.8K views

A realisation as sudden as

Archimedes’ leaping from his bath,

the moment when – in the pleasure gardens

of Wisley, with its giant rhubarb leaves,

its gaping carp, its hissing swans, its wild

playground – going for a well earned modest slab

of chocolate cake and a babychino

enhanced with spoonsful of Grandma’s latte,

pointing, she called out, “That says ‘Coffee Shop’!

I can read!”

 

 

Note: the poem was originally published in September 2015.

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POETRY

AT THE END OF THE PIER

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.7K views

Past Songs of Yesteryear, Mystic Morgana,

and other booths – purveying Flags of the World,

Country & Western Memorabilia,

Decorous South Sea Shells, Home Made Welsh Fudge;

past the sustainable hardwood benches

with withered in memoriam bouquets;

over the planking with its measured gaps

through which to view, like a bioscope,

the incoming tide shimmy then shake

the fronds of bronze weeds among the rocks,

slap, strike the elegant, cast iron stanchions;

next to where even the line fishermen

are starting to stow their gear, as an east wind

begins to blow, is the Mariner’s Lounge

with its faux fishing nets, its mounted

plastic cod, its framed chart of the North Wales coast.

 

Those Tinsel and Turkey pensioners

adventurous enough to leave their hotels –

crescented along the town’s North Shore –

are sipping, with the odd Walkers’ crisp,

a Rombout’s coffee, a Gallo chardonnay,

a Carling, a Guinness, and watching

Hollywood tv repeats in HD

as sudden rain squalls against the glass.

 

Oh, to be transported warmly, safely,

to Beverly Hills – via Mulholland Drive

and Santa Monica Boulevard –

where, to portentous chords, perfect mysteries

are perfectly solved by pensionable folk!

 

 

 

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