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POETRY

CASTLE PLAYGROUND, BEAUMARIS

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

I think of those we love the most, recall

their playing here four decades apart –

as she and I sit at a picnic table

to finish her ice cream then rehearse

our vaudeville act. ‘I say, I say, I say,’

she declares, with barely a lisp or

hesitation, ‘my dog has no nose!’

‘Your dog has no nose! How does he smell?’ I ask.

‘Terrible!’ she says, and runs to the swings.

 

She can swing herself now, pushing against

the air, holding the chains just as she should –

as her mother did – beneath this unfinished

curtain wall built from local grit stone.

Determined to be free, she must go ever

higher – because we will catch her or because

the future seems always distant and safe.

 

I stand behind her – ready to push or catch –

and see the embracing, soothing horizon

of abiding mountains and perpetual sea.

This little one, as yet focussed on each

intensive, encyclopaedic moment,

sees only her splendid new trainers, feels

only the pendulum of blood in her veins.

‘Stop now,’ she calls and, once free, runs across

the putting green to the bouncy castle.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

THE STREET PARTY

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments2 min read1.8K views

Above every Mairie flaps the Tricolour.

On every lawn, in every yard through the gut

of America – where the Great Plains began

before the farmers came with wheat and pigs

and soya fields – Old Glory flutters.

Above the reception desk in every

riad in Morocco the king’s photo hangs.

Here, things are never that unambiguous.

 

In a street near the foot of the Downs,

too steep for tables, they have strung bunting

from house to house, moved cars, hired a leaning

bouncy castle and shared barbecues.

 

This chalk, grassland common – that slopes upwards

to the flint ridge with its Pilgrim’s Way,

from Winchester to Canterbury,

for a Norman priest killed by Norman lords –

is a (mostly) English floral lexicon:

Meadow Cranesbane, Meadow Vetchling, Yellow-rattle,

Dove’s Foot Cranesbill,  Common Spotted Orchid.

 

A Skylark ascends from the unmown grasses.

I think of Vaughan Williams’ orchestral piece,

with its shimmering solo violin,

the George Meredith poem which inspired it –

‘He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake’ –

Celts evoking the essence of what was theirs.

 

The party dwindles as the drizzle arrives.

To be English is to be contrarian –

not being Irish, Scots, Welsh or ‘foreign’.

At the top of the street, a patriot with

a large, St George’s Cross drooping above

the privet hedge, has lit a bonfire

in a garden incinerator.  The rain,

now heavy, drums on the lid and, though sodden –

being dressed in England football strip –

he forces wet, tabloid newspapers down

the narrow funnel. Acrid smoke wafts up.

 

 

 

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