Writer of Poetry, Screen Plays, Stage Plays & Fiction
Shipwrecked on his way to Ireland, the saint
was washed ashore to the foot of the cliff:
founded the church we walk uphill towards
between hedgerows of honeysuckle
and meadowsweet. The church squares to the wind.
A cemetery of slate edges the cliff.
We look down. A seal bobs by the lobster pots.
By David SelzerHorses gallop across the beach, a dog
barks at a black headed gull that lifts
into the air as light as spume and we,
almost entirely by chance, find a rare orchid
on the dunes among the marram grass.
By David SelzerFor Alex Cox
This is the year Dien Bien Phu falls,
Algeria rises, segregation is
ruled illegal in the USA,
the first kidney is transplanted and UK
wartime food rationing finally ends.
Lime Street was filled with thousands of boys and girls,
gathered to greet the singing, celluloid,
Born Again cowpoke, Roy Rogers (erstwhile
Leonard Slye), and his entourage – combining
a promo tour with a Billy Graham
crusade. The youngsters, pinched with cold on that
blitzed and windy street, clutched their copies
of the Roy Rogers Cowboy Annual.
Those with seafaring dads – and there were ships
filling the Mersey then and its docks –
had something from the Sears catalogue
of Roy Rogers’ Gifts: boots, guitar, holster,
ersatz buckskin fringed shirt. (Roy and his wife, Dale,
had been mobbed in London, fringes ripped from
the genuine article). But Roy and Dale
were in bed with ‘flu in their Adelphi suite –
so Trigger trotted the route alone,
climbed the hotel steps, made his mark at
reception, entered the residents’ lounge,
visited his master’s bedroom and appeared
at a first floor window for a photo op.
But was it Trigger or, his double,
Little Trigger? And which rears on its hind legs
stuffed in the Roy Rogers’ Museum,
Branson, Missouri, the ‘Show Me’ state?
Or is either or both with Roy and Dale –
and Bullet, the dog, of course – alive, well and
moseying along on the moon’s dark side?
By David Selzer
OR CARE IN THE COMMUNITY
People new to the neighbourhood soon notice,
rising from one of the walled gardens
or the terraced yards, an occasional
bird call – wood pigeon or even cuckoo?
Distracted by the previous owners’ always
doubtful detritus, it takes them longer
to realise the sounds are human though
of indeterminate age and gender.
Exchanging a Victorian madhouse
for a gentrified Victorian suburb,
making ambiguous bird noises rather
than rocking to and fro in the urine-stink
must be better – but no less sad, no more
purposeful, still unconscionable.
By David Selzer
i
A heron – self-motivated, self-contained, aloof – stands,
between a potted phormium and a wooden Buddha,
on the roof of a houseboat on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam,
two metres or so from passing cyclists on the embankment
and the nervous tourists queuing for Anne Frank’s house.
ii
A heron – undisturbed, unconnected, elsewhere – perches securely
on a fallen oak beside a Cheshire pond near the motorway,
and the cargoes and the cars bound for the docks
slow almost imperceptibly as they pass.
iii
A heron wades at the water’s edge by Beaumaris pier: an accomplished,
stilt-walker’s strides – elegant, certain, considered, entertaining.
The setting sun casts our close shadows on the planking.
In the distance, cloud shadows cross Snowdonia.
And we say, as we always say, ‘This is so beautiful’:
its disparateness; the stillness of the air; the calm of the straits;
the prism of colours; the indifference of the heron…
which, suddenly and hugely, takes to the air, calling, calling…
By David SelzerThe rain was heavy. The road was slurred
with cow muck and clay. I slowed
then stopped the car as a straggle of cows
swayed round the bend in the lane.
Large, wild eyes caught me – dry, warm
and listening to a string quintet –
on County Council business.
One of the beasts, sashaying to a
milky music, nudged a wing mirror askew.
Dense hedgerow became sky of enduring grey.
The elderly cowman plodded at the rear. He too
eyed the public servant lounging to an adagio.
I acknowledged his enigmatic gesture
and adjusted the mirror.
By David Selzer
