From the Tyneside Poets' Archive

Summer Rain





I like the rain in summer


When the grass is resurrected


The trees shimmer with delight


The pavements smile…






And people run for the heaven of it –


Lust unleashed, damp igniting passions void below


The smell of summer is concentrated


In lethal doses of joy.






The cricketers scurry,


Lovers hide one another


Flowers laden with life suck up summer’s juices


Life rushes on.






Black earth rich as treacle


Farmers smile –


The cows are not amused.


But I sing and sing and sing.






Tim Heavisides






The Violent Suburb






In this road, “within easy reach of the city”,


Where the birds are screwed to the sky


And the air stings like an overripe peach,


The long, slow memory of violence


Coats the doors with a hard gloss.






Why should we wish people to live otherwise?


We all need out womb sooner or later,


Somewhere to gather the fragments of our lives,


When outside only drags us apart.






Yet the warm air nudges, whispers:


“See the houses, regular and modern,


Arranged like cornflakes packets


Along the tidy street.”






“See this man, bent with years of toil;


No white-collar worker he;


Unions have fought for his rights,


He has worked hard and honestly.


How can we grudge him his earthly reward?”






But the heat stings like an Indian dungfly,


And its ticking is loud in my ears:






“See the nations, how they rise,


The mythology of might growing in each,


The surgeons skilled in healing the war-wounded,


Each country surrounded by a deadly transparent wall.


Its diplomats primed


To give away nothing,


To boost their own interests…


See the nations, regular and neat,


Everybody’s suburbs,


Each soul protected like a cornflake.”






And what danger remains in the wild, wild wood,


Now that we’ve chopped in all down, all down,


Now that we’ve chopped it all down?






John Earl