Monday, 18 January 2021

Thaw

 


 

Yesterday’s porcelain glaze of frosted snow,

A pale sun veiled in gossamer mists,

Childhood joy at all this, for some, persists,

As does the disappointment of the thaw.

Not sun, but rain proves to be the traitor

Washing away so many sledging hopes,

So the sister sighs while her brother mopes

Having been told, “Not now, perhaps later.”

Such is the lesson that’s never learned,

No matter how convenient the cause

Delay cannot postpone the melting snows:

An abandoned sledge is the moment spurned.

 

Spring will come soon enough, then many will say,

“I’m looking forward to a summer’s day.”

 

             Dave Alton

Monday, 11 May 2020

Covid-19 (No.7)



Roll the dice, spin the wheel, cards are being dealt.
Close your eyes! Place your bets! If doubt still lingers,
Spit on your hat and then cross your fingers.
What’s that sound? Is it milk being spilt?

The prime minister’s become our dealer,
His cabinet trying to fix the game,
So if the house loses he’s not to blame
For playing the trump as a loser.

In the Intensive Care Casinos,
Where the croupiers are playing dice with death,
Desperate punters try to win back their breath
As the jackpot of victims grows and grows.

When it’s life or death on a roulette ball,
Do you trust, the doctor’s or the gambler’s call?

                                                                                                                       Dave Alton



Wednesday, 22 April 2020

Covid-19 (No.6)



Take a strand of RNA, tie a knot
And make a wish, count phases of the moon.
Pray nothing pernicious comes this way soon,
Or if it should then it doesn’t draw your lot.
One hundred years after the Somme ended,
Exercise Cygnus played H2N2
On the gaming table: Only, it’s not flu
But coronavirus that’s descended.
It seems predictions were catastrophic,
So, were noted and quietly filed away,
Until came the contagion, came the day
For the accounting of the mounting sick.
Austerity, efficiency, not fate
Has proved “just in time” is far, far too late.

                                                                                                                      Dave Alton

Wednesday, 15 April 2020

Covid-19 (N0. 5)




“Hugs and prayers and fasting”*, such Orthodox
Devotions set to tempt a partial god
To give our species of DNA the nod
Over a contrary strand, which unlocks
The cells of our isolation. When shocks
And calamities, suddenly insurgent,
Press in upon us from all sides, they dent
Man-made certainties, and our world rocks.
Adversity is proportioned by clocks
And in the time taken for it to pass
We are vulnerable to what’s thrown at us,
As hapless churls in medieval stocks.

Faith is better placed in vaccines and drugs
Than prescriptions for fasting, prayers and hugs.


                                                                                                                                  Dave Alton

*Response to Corvid-19 by an Orthodox church in the Ukraine, as reported on BBC Radio 4’s “Today” (14th April, 2020)

Wednesday, 8 April 2020

Covid-19 (No.4)




“What is truth?” Pilate might have added, “Where?”
Can ministers of the crown really be
Our custodians of veracity?
Some welling spring of crystal wisdom is there
From which they sup, conferring clear insight
So that some sagacious course could be steered?
May be it’s hubris! When something’s appeared
That is challenging humans’ presumed might,
A scrap of DNA from the marches
At the bounds of life, maybe vanity
Should falter. Denizens of the city
Hold themselves hostage; if the cough reaches
Their door, it will be the doctor, the nurse
Who must know enough to assuage the curse.

                                                                                                                               Dave Alton

Tuesday, 31 March 2020

Covid-19 (no.3)





How long is long enough? Count the phases
Of the moon, reckon the seasons, or try
Some novel measure. This time will slip by,
Even a most dread-filled moment passes
As winter with all its flooding has done,
And though spring proves perfidious, with wind
That bites and sharper squalls of hail, we find
Our narrowed world glistered by rape seed sun.

Let us all spend Easter at home this year,
Breaking bread and passing the wine, sharing
Comfort and anxiety: what’s scaring
Us is not being able to see what we fear.

Yet green globin pulses through all that grows,
And come Good Friday, I’ll plant potatoes.

                                                                                                                  Dave Alton


Wednesday, 25 March 2020

Covid-19 (N0.2)




Spring sun risen from winter’s tomb,
Daffodils invigorate us,
Meanwhile in bleak, sterile rooms
Lie the breathless respirators.
It’s warm enough, so it appears,
To crowd together in the stores
And, while grabbing for bread and beers,
Share in passing the deadly spores.

Seedlings are sprouting in their trays,
About the beds shoots pushing through,
Tend the garden these troubled days,
Close the gate on the gaumless few.

Depends on what we cultivate;
There’s choice or chance, free will or fate.

                                                                                                             Dave Alton