POETRY

POETRY

THE FORK IN THE ROAD

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments2 min read2.1K views

They would never know that the narrow lanes –

one right, up the thickly wooded hill,

the other, following the valley’s curve,

quickly out of sight – led to the same place,

and that the few houses there were shuttered.

 

They had stopped – the diesel puttering,

the brown exhaust fouling the summer air –

in front of the triangle of long grass,

with a glass fronted shrine at its centre,

that marked the fork in the road. The officer

searched the landscape with binoculars,

quartering the maize fields on either side

then looking for movement among the trees

on the hill. They waited. The engine puttered.

They both thought, though neither could say, that

this was not where they wanted to be.

 

Drawing his revolver, the officer got out

slowly to examine the shrine. The driver

revved the engine slightly. The grass triangle

had been uncut for months. A wild flower bloomed –

and heavy rain or some animal

had flattened a narrow path to the shrine.

The fields of maize chafed in the warm soft wind.

 

The shrine was typical of the country:

a rectangular wooden box painted green

fixed to a rusted cast iron pedestal –

with something behind the small red glass door

(usually a dried flower and a bone).

The officer reached to open the door but heard

the engine revved – and returned to the cab,

placing his revolver into its holster.

 

The diesel puttered. The driver gripped the wheel.

Suddenly, round the curve of the valley road,

a white horse galloped towards them and past,

its reins whipping the dust. The officer

drew his gun. The brown exhaust fouled the air.

And the shrine exploded.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
2 Comments
POETRY

THE GARIBALDI STATUE, VENICE

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read1.8K views

Usually on a geometric plinth,

sometimes ahorse, once like Charlemagne,

here at the end of the wide, tree lined gravelled

Viale Giuseppe Garibaldi

that leads from the Giardini Pubblici,

he stands, as if on an Appenine peak,

with one of his Red Shirts below to one side.

Though probably better known in Britain

for his eponymous biscuit, the hero

of both Italian freedom and unity

faces what had once been a canal

but was made a street in his honour,

the Via Giuseppe Garibaldi.

 

The sculptor, Augusto Benvenuti,

was a local lad, a poor boy. Apprenticed

to a wood carver he learned to sculpt.

Though famous enough to be commissioned

to make Richard Wagner’s death mask he died,

in Venice, aged forty-one, destitute.

 

Garibaldi’s nickname was Il Leone,

and the head of a lion is set in the ‘rock’

now festooned in foliage. The monument

is placed in a small, railed, circular garden.

There is a crescent-shaped pool – with two carp, one

water rat, three abandoned terrapin, all

safe in obscurity.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
0 Comments
POETRY

THE OUTING

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.8K views

Each Armistice Day, she remembered it.
A walk along the riverbank. Her teacher took them –
one Saturday when the hawthorn was out
and the river slow after weeks of sun –
her and three of the other older girls.
Miss Davies’ young man came too –
in his uniform, on leave from the front.

When they all rested in the shade of a willow,
he unwrapped a large bar of chocolate
slowly, looking away, or pretending to,
across the river.  Suddenly he turned.
‘Voila!’, he said, holding it out to them.
‘Pour vous. From plucky little Belgium.’

Miss Davies and her young man went and sat
at the river’s edge, their heads almost touching.
Two of her friends began whispering – another
pursed her lips and kissed the air. The others giggled.
She lay back – and squinted at the sun through the branches.
‘Look’, said one of the girls. The soldier was pretending
to dip the toe of his boot in the water.
Miss Davies laughed.

On the way back, ‘Listen’, he said, and they stopped.
On the dappled path, blocking their way,
a song thrush was striking a snail on a stone
again and again and again.

 

 

 

Note: This piece was one of the first five poems published on the site when it was launched in April 2009 and has been reposted twice. It has also been published in ‘A Jar of Sticklebacks’ – http://www.armadillocentral.com/general/a-jar-of-sticklebacks-by-david-selzer

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
2 Comments
POETRY

THE ROPE SWING

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read1.8K views

i.m. Liz Stafford

 

In the crematorium I try to sit,

if I can, where I can see the lawn

sloping up towards the landscaped copse,

and, today, blue sky. I assume the dead,

even if you could, would not begrudge

this longing to be elsewhere, to be free.

 

You have prepared for your death: choosing

the readings, and the hymns any pragmatic

atheist might know, briefing the eulogist

with selected work and leisure anecdotes.

I admire such fortitude, such command.

‘…send not to know for whom the bell tolls…’

 

At the funeral of a neighbour’s son,

among the family anecdotes

was one about a rope swing his dad had made.

The young man when still a very small boy

would swing ever higher from the garden oak

over the wall, the towpath and the canal.

 

I think of that now – pretty sure, like me,

that whatever risks you took were in your head

but were no less vertiginous for that.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
2 Comments
POETRY

AT LOGGERHEADS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read2K views

The Afon Alun rises from hidden springs

on the peaty Llandegla moors, and courses

through ruined mill races to this valley

of ash woodland and wych elm, hazel, oak,

of vast limestone cliffs, of redundant lead mines –

a place named for a dispute between two landlords.

Here the river waltzes, tripping over stones,

and its tawny shallows ripple and gurgle.

***

My mother and her two sisters, often

at loggerheads, rhapsodized about this place.

Crosville buses would bring day trippers

to enjoy the gardens, the bandstand

and the Crosville Tea House. In spring, folk

would walk the woods blooming with wild garlic,

bluebells, white wood anemones, celandine.

In summer, they would follow the river,

– dry in places where the flow

goes into sink holes and empty shafts –

to cross the bridge over the Devil’s Gorge.

The valley would be full of sounds – voices

calling, murmuring, distant music

echoing from the ancient, climactic cliffs

almost high enough for eagles to soar.

***

Downstream from the gorge, the Alun turns south east.

It meanders above abandoned coalfields,

and bones of men and boys left where they died.

In landscape shaped by Romans and Normans

it whirls into the Dee.

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

AUBADE

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

I raise the blind of the small dormer window.

A night of rain has filled the cast iron gutter.

A jackdaw is perched on the rim sipping.

Suddenly the bird lifts off to join

a clattering of jackdaws mobbing

a buzzard. We are two hundred feet

above the littoral – once under sea

but now mostly pastoral land,

the fields a dull gold in the autumn dawn.

The shore is a mile away – but opening

the window brings the waves’ roar like unending

traffic. The buzzard banks, drops – jackdaws disperse.

Far beyond are Snowdonia’s peaks

and passes: mauves, purples; shadows and mists;

endless dry stone walls; glacial memories.

A perfect rainbow forms between us

and the distant mountains – in the gutter

rainwater still as glass.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
0 Comments

Recent Posts