POETRY

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ZODIAC

By David SelzerAugust 29, 20151 Comment1 min read1.7K views

We were born in the Year of the Horse,
the month Rommel was trapped in the desert,
Paulus in the snow. This, our forty ninth
of marriage, is, again, the Year of the Horse.
We are predicted family happiness,
filial piety, fiscal surety –
urged to avoid pneumonia and be
‘of merry heart’. This is also the year
of the drowned. Somewhere it is always
night – stars fall, meteors rise. The robin,
perched on the street lamp, sings through the dark.
The wild bee, lost in the room where I write,
steers for the sun undeterred by the glass.
To be merry of heart and to know these things
is to be what we are.

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JULY…

By David SelzerJuly 29, 20150 Comments1 min read1.5K views

the month we found, beyond the rose of sharon,
past the mint and the sage, in the sunless
corner by broken pots and upturned
zinc buckets, the first wild strawberry…

when we walked up the Acropolis,
with feral dogs among the olive trees…

when we walked through Carnac’s standing stones
and heard the wind shake the fields of wheat…

when we decorated our first home,
with Chris Montez, ‘The more I see you’…

the month we met on a date blind like Cupid
or Justice – between the end of schooldays
and the rest of our lives…

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CONCRETE MYTHS

By David SelzerJuly 29, 20150 Comments1 min read1.4K views

We have explained about Knossos in the car,
so she is keen to see the palace.
(We have not mentioned the Minotaur
or Daedalus and Icarus). She likes
the cats, the peacock and the cicadas
and appears not disappointed at all
by Arthur Evans’ concrete. Maybe
she knows the concerns of grown-ups are
more illusionary than substantial –
and a young woman, posing like Betty Boop
in high heels and sharp yellow dress
by an amphora, would prove her point.

Knossos is on the edge of Heraklion’s
southern suburbs. Just down the road from here
is a pristine Ottoman aqueduct
built across a narrow, river valley.
Swallows and swifts nest in the post holes.
The dingle is filled with bougainvillea,
jacaranda and pink oleander.
We walk up to a church, open and full
of silver – St Irini’s – and a playground.
She runs to the swings. There is no mention
in any of the guidebooks of the aqueduct
or the saint – never mind the nesting birds
or the valley abounding with flowers
or the safe place to play. Under
an ancient, encompassing olive tree
with labyrinthine branches, she flies high.

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POETIC JUSTICE

By David SelzerJuly 29, 20150 Comments1 min read1.5K views

A wishful thinking editor changed
a poem’s final words from ‘a tramp woman
nurses an infant/under a tumbling sky’
to ‘under a trembling sky’. Humbling to find
an editor’s chance choice of epithet –
she had spelt my surname with a ‘t’ –
happier than my own! Mine was truer.

Note: Here is the poem referred to above – https://davidselzer.com/2012/04/dedham-vale-revisited-2/

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MIRAGE

By David SelzerJuly 29, 20150 Comments1 min read1.7K views

On Little Eye, a family appears trapped
by the incoming tide – two adults,
a boy, a girl and a dog marooned
in some Enid Blyton adventure.
We anticipate an RNLI
Atlantic hoving to the rescue.
But they wait in the sun for the ebb,
the dog barking at black headed gulls.

By a sandstone outcrop are high, thick bushes
with vivid orange berries – ‘Poisonous!’
we hear our childhood’s guardians call.
But a woman is gathering them –
Sea-buckthorn berries – nutritional,
medicinal throughout Eurasia.

And I remember my first outing
after a heart attack – to the North Shore,
Llandudno – a picnic in a shelter
by the paddling pool and an October sun
making me thankful. ‘We had salami
sandwiches,’ I say. ‘As if!’ you respond.

Here, at sea level on West Kirby’s beach,
people, at the sea’s edge, seem to walk
in the waves, on the horizon itself.
From the top of the dunes, they become
cormorants drying their wings on the sand.

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