THE SUN ON DANBY GARDENS

The sun on Danby Gardens

smells of roast beef,

tastes of my youth.

The flying cinders of a steam train

spark in my dreams.

Across the old field,

a miner breaks his back

and lovers roll in the ditches,

off beaten tracks.

Off Bigges Main,

my grandad taps his stick,

reaches for the braille of long-dead strikes.

The nights

fair draw in

and I recall Joyce Esthella Antoinette Giles

and her legs that reached for miles,

tripping over the stiles 

in red high heels.

It was her and blonde Annie Walker

who took me in the stacks

and taught me how to read

the signs

that led inside their thighs.

Those Ravenswood girls

would dance into your life

and dance though all the snow drops

of those freezing winters,

in the playground of young scars.

And I remember freckled Pete

who taught me Jazz,

who pointed me to Charlie Parker

and the edgy bitterness of Brown Ale.

Mrs Todd next door

was forever sweeping

leaves along the garden path

her fallen husband loved to tread.

Such days:

the smoke of A4 Pacifics in the aftermath of war,

the trail of local history on the birthmarked street.

And I have loved you all my life

and will no doubt die in Danby Gardens

where all my poems were born,

just after midnight.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

AN INDELIBLE GAP

(for John Green)

 

Scissure in spit-splitted earth, heaped

Sod and soil and clay, until

This mundane boxed antithesis

Of birth lies beneath backfill.

 

May dashes along the hawthorn,

Dandelions button the field

With galaxies of garish suns

That must flourish and then yield

 

To time blowing by like the breeze,

Dispersing life while leaving

A flaccid stalk and lifeless head.

Soughing, as the gathered grieving

 

Cast other blooms, single roses

On to the wicker casket

Lowered through sod and soil and clay,

A parody Moses basket

 

In that deliberately chosen,

Unconsecrated ground. No

Pious words or promises

For one left lying below.

 

Age brings increasing absences,

Each an indelible gap

Through which we are all travellers

Travelling without a map.

 

And think how all too easily,

“Time drags!” is said with a sigh.

Then there comes the final moment

When a lifetime has sped by.

 

While those presently left behind,

Knowing too well what’s to come,

Stand in that terrible silence,

Stand in the wake, feeling numb.

 

This final reckoning of years,

A life, in passing, so brief,

Yet, a life of such significance,

Its passing’s worthy of grief.

 

Friends, these are now our dying days,

Where the uncharted route lies,

And we gather as we dwindle,

As we say our last goodbyes.

 

With a final bowing of heads

We do or don’t speak to God,

Then turn and leave as that cleft is

Filled by clay and soil and sod.

Dave Alton