ANOTHER SEPTEMBER
The groundsman was already burning leaves.
Each working day, I was paid to lead
other people’s children through the labyrinth
of language – received, standard. (For some,
it was the wrong one – language or labyrinth.
They had their own minotaurs at home,
on the streets). And each day, I would drive back
to smiles and books and weathered bricks and luck.
Watching the smoke drift, I was surprised
to be still there, trying to unload
the dice from some sense of duty –
and something not a little like love.
Pages:
By David SelzerIN MEMORIAM: MISS J.H.
She was nearly deaf apparently and nearly blind
and ‘mentally deficient’ since infancy –
but could see an old friend to wave
and sound a greeting.
She was definitely Thurberesque
with her wall-eyed look and stolid gait.
She felt pain and wept.
O prisoner, love alone could not release you!
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By David SelzerWISHES
For Evelyn b. 13 1.10
Born to good music by strong women,
Ella’s ‘isle of joy’, Nina’s ’it’s a new dawn’ –
how you nestle in your parents’ untrammelled
love, how you suck with unrelenting hunger!
Born into a world of rubble, with children
buried alive, a world of chicanery
and hatreds – you have entered a difficult
place, little Evie, somewhere remarkable,
full of tears and amazing kindnesses!
Born into a world of snow, a fox’s
nocturnal tracks in the white garden
of the tall, Victorian villa, a Blackcap
at the bird feeder, a Redwing sheltering
in the laurel and, away on the Downs,
boys and girls, freed from school, tobogganing
over the fossils and flints on the steep shore
of a palaeolithic sea – how you squirm
with hunger, how you bask in so much love!
Three wishes then for you, little bird:
may you be lucky, may you be gracious,
may you always have someone to love!
Pages:
By David SelzerUNDER NOVEMBER SKIES
The rain has stopped. We can hear only the wind
and a swollen stream – hidden beneath
the high moor’s golden fern – rush through a culvert
under the road, which glistens, after the shower,
in an unexpected shaft of sunlight.
Rain clouds are blackening the mountains
to the west but northwards, beyond bracken
and gorse that stretches seemingly to land’s edge,
through a gap in the hills, we can see the sea,
a sunny blue, and a white ship sailing east –
too far away to recognise her flags.
Chance has brought us here as winter comes. Love
stays us against the dark.
Note: this piece has been subsequently published in ‘A Jar of Sticklebacks’ – http://www.armadillocentral.com/general/a-jar-of-sticklebacks-by-david-selzer.
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By David SelzerFIDO
Once, when she was very small, a dream woke me.
Dawn, iron cages, a tiger and the eager,
little zoo keeper reaching out to pat it…
She slept soundly, her menagerie too:
balding princess, purblind bear, Mummy –
though not Daddy now nor, in the garden, Fido.
Oozing kapok, hair eroded by
loving, his one eye tarnished but keen like
small expectations, he kept faith by the swing.
Love’s unreason maintained such shabbiness –
and left him out all night. Barefooted,
I fetched him in by the handle. How love’s
confusion aches the heart!
Pages:
By David Selzer