David Selzer

1075 posts

POETRY

THE BELVEDERE

David Selzer By David Selzer9 Comments1 min read2.6K views

You and I with fifty valentines and

February’s sun pale on the glass!

We count the camellia’s crimson blooms –

and remember, last summer, our grandchild

shivering with ecstasy the day

she chased her daddy with the garden hose.

From here, the house seems sentient, our

remembrancer – the lawns and borders and

parts of neighbours’ houses an urban landscape.

In this wooden hexagon – a half-glazed

gazebo, its blind back turned to a high

Victorian wall festooned with ivy

and clematis – voices are naturally

intimate and revealing, privacy

in an open space. Is it remarkable

we have been friends and lovers so long?

Chance, choice, serendipity or willpower?

We opt for all four. Behind us, in shade

for most of a winter’s day, accidental

primroses are blooming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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POETRY

WHO WOULD ANTICIPATE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.4K views

We were besieged: iced winds from barren grounds,

then snow hushed down. That night, she screamed – breaking

her wedding china piece by piece. A car

slowed in the muffled street. The deranged have

no dignity or beauty but the trick

of absolute exclusion – only snow prints

left, scattered porcelain and their caged birds

swaggering in the locked house filling with dark.

He waited – for who would anticipate

life’s accidents, mysteries, in rooms furnished

with grace and littered with utensils

of barbarism? We occupy

the suburbs of folly.

 

 

 

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POETRY

PEDAGOGY

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

Beyond the furthest goalpost, at the edge

of the wood where smokers hid, was a pond

clogged with glue tins, an Asda trolley and,

sometimes, discarded tasks – notes, a poem.

In every sense, it was out of bounds.

I was one of a group of subversives,

teaching childhood and choice in a land

of deference and property. We would

measure success anecdotally, ignoring

statistics. Now that we have lost the past,

I believe that the children must make

the revolution. Their graffito should be,

‘Innocence rules! OK?’

 

 

 

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POETRY

LANDFALL

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.7K views

i

 

When swifts no longer sickle the twilight

and gulls beat inland, when clouds pass like

drift ice and a reaper’s moon is rising

like a blooded eye, leaves spiral almost

like tears. In the unlit house, a voice murmurs.

 

ii

 

At flood tide, winds off the waters abuse

the cherry tree and batter the fences.

Just out of hearing, the rolling fathoms calm

to torn branches, occasional ice and

the slow intimation of landfall.

 

 

 

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POETRY

INNOCENCE IN ITS SECOND YEAR

David Selzer By David Selzer6 Comments1 min read2.2K views

She crouches slightly to see the horses –

a grey and a bay – through the wire fence.

They are eating windfalls of sweet chestnuts.

She watches them fully open the cupules

with their teeth then tongues to eat the nuts.

They notice her, feel safe to approach.

She is not much bigger than either of

their heads. Each half a ton, they walk with the grace

and circumspection of fifty million years.

They bend their heads towards her. Fearlessly,

she offers them grass. Gently, they take it.

 

 

 

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POETRY

BETWEEN THE MONKEY AND THE SNAKE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read3.1K views

We flew to Marrakech one January –

from dark, frosty, early morning Gatwick

to a view of the sun on the snow-topped

Atlas Mountains. Barely six hours from home,

we were in the Souk – ‘La shukran! Non merci!’ –

avoiding the blandishments, noting

the bartering and the credit cards. Relieved,

we emerged into the Jemaa el Fna,

the Marrakech Medina’s vast square,

with water-sellers, jugglers, magicians,

henna tattooists with their sample books,

peddlers of herbal medicines, dancing boys,

acrobats, story-tellers, traders of

mint, dates, olives, kumquats, lemons, cumin,

the ancient start and end of caravans

south and east across the Sahara.

 

Suddenly, in all that charivari,

you heard a charmer’s flute. ‘Cobras!’ you cried

and rushed unwarily away, me

hurrying after. You stopped – the flute now

out of earshot – only for a macaque

monkey, dressed in a powder blue suit

and a fez, to tap you on the shoulder.

 

The monkey was chained and the snake, no doubt,

de-fanged but I could not relieve your fear.

Love has its short term limitations.

You were lost and found and lost again

between the monkey and the snake.

Then the plangent notes of the mid-day call

to prayer sang from the city’s seven mosques

and you were found again in sudden beauty.

 

 

 

 

Note: The poem has subsequently been published at

http://thirdsundaybc.com/2012/03/18/vol-1-no-2/

 

 

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