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motorway

POETRY

THE LANE

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments1 min read517 views

The motorway cuts through it. It was always

a proper Cheshire country lane with

ditches and hedgerows of may and oak

but it remained an unpaved track subject

to the weathers. Travellers or Roma –

though ‘Gypsies’ or ‘Irish Tinkers’ we called them

then – with grass for their hirsute ponies,

their caravans obscured by the hedges

and their shy kids safe from the odd car,

would camp there. We would try to explore,

to find where it led, hoping for some mansion

occupied by GIs with their comics

and gum. But, each time we tried, one of the men,

the same one always – wiry, dark haired, sharp eyed –

would send us packing with a raised fist

and a curse. One summer, near dusk, we crept

as close as we dared. The man was seated,

on a stool, playing a guitar. Somewhere,

out of sight, a woman was singing.

 

We got a telling off, home after dark,

and my spinster aunt sang, unbidden,

‘I’m away wi’ the raggle taggle gypsy-o!’

 

I drive by what remains of the lane often

and always, out of the corner of my eye,

look – as if there were something to see

other than grass and weeds.

 

 

 

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

ACCIDENTS

David Selzer By David Selzer2 Comments2 min read565 views

A sudden heavy shower of summer rain

slows the early evening motorway

to a blood red blur of brake lights.

In my mirror, I see two cars collide,

career across the lanes – and others stop,

receding out of sight into the downpour…

 

I am thirteen and a half and tall for my age –

the year of Hungary and Suez;

am sitting on the red leather back seat

of an almost straight-from-the-showroom

Morris Minor (in the inexorable green),

having dined at Heathrow’s new, five star

restaurant and sampled hors d’oeuvre

and tasted Riesling for the first time;

am being driven back to Golder’s Green

by Yvette, the car’s owner, a fashion designer

and childhood friend of the other passenger,

Angela, my aunt, a night club pianist,

briefly home from Johannesburg –

both daughters of Tzarist refugees,

both light years from the Pale,

bleached blondes, smoking Sobranie

Black Russian in ivory cigarette holders;

am listening to these nubile women,

our daughter’s age now, talk acidly

of their exes, wearily of their dads

when a four door car, overtaking,

somewhere on the Great West Road,

comes seemingly too close and Yvette

swerves sharply right, her bumper

striking its fender with a metallic thump…

 

Fifty and more years later I forget

the dénouement. Certainly, no one died.

I think of you, somewhere perhaps without rain,

watching the sun set, perhaps wondering where I am,

why I am late, while I drive homewards.

 

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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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

HERONS IN THEIR HABITATS, LOVERS IN THEIR LIVES

David Selzer By David Selzer0 Comments1 min read395 views

'The Heron Hunt', Eugene Fromentin 1820-1876

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…

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David Selzer By David Selzer
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POETRY

ACCIDENTS

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read716 views

A sudden heavy shower of summer rain

slows the early evening motorway

to a blood red blur of brake lights.

In my mirror, I see two cars collide,

career across the lanes – and others stop,

receding out of sight into the downpour…

 

I am thirteen and a half and tall for my age –

the year of Hungary and Suez;

am sitting on the red leather back seat

of an almost straight-from-the-showroom

Morris Minor (in the inexorable green),

having dined at Heathrow’s new, five star

restaurant and sampled hors d’oeuvre

and tasted Riesling for the first time;

am being driven back to Golder’s Green

by Yvette, the car’s owner, a fashion designer

and childhood friend of the other passenger,

Angela, my aunt, a night club pianist,

briefly home from Johannesburg –

both daughters of Tzarist refugees,

both light years from the Pale,

bleached blondes, smoking Sobranie

Black Russian in ivory cigarette holders;

am listening to these nubile women,

our daughter’s age now, talk acidly

of their exes, wearily of their dads

when a four door car, overtaking,

somewhere on the Great West Road,

comes seemingly too close and Yvette

swerves sharply right, her bumper

striking its fender with a metallic thump…

 

Fifty and more years later I forget

the dénouement. Certainly, no one died.

I think of you, somewhere perhaps without rain,

watching the sun set, perhaps wondering where I am,

why I am late, while I drive homewards.

 

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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David Selzer By David Selzer
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