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

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

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

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” (14^th 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

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

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

Covid-19

There are no rats streaming off from rigged ships,

No bell clanging crier calling out the dead,

No trundling overburdened tumbrils led

By masked spectres as the malady grips.

No crosses daubed over doors, though handles

And handshakes could prove fatal. Fast as fear

This plague flies, a traveller’s souvenir

Round the carousel of the world, dandles

Life and death without intent or purpose

Other than its own being. City shaken,

Markets deserted and futures tumbling.

The preachers of profit are at a loss,

While pubs are closing, last orders taken.

Lock all the doors…but the walls are crumbling.

                                                                                 Dave Alton

Organ Failure

Whale-weight of Pendle presses down on me

As I set out my cold steel implements,

Like a pathologist must. Rain, wind sent,

Beats a steady rhythm, and gloom seems to be

All pervasive even with the lights on.

I am charged with dismantling the music,

Ruinating racks of keys with which quick

Fingers unlocked this vault of notes.  All gone

Now, timed out into silence. It’s just old,

Not antique, not collectable, too big

To be carried out in one piece, the rig

Must be broken down, dumped, sight unsold.

Pendle plunges through a sea of mist as the spray

Of rain washes cold, cold ashes further away.

Dave Alton

Burning Letters

 

Scrape of cold clay, prepared for the ashes,

Letters, brittle with age, slipped from yellowed

Envelopes and scrunched, dropped into narrowed

Earth readied for burning. Fragile flashes

Of reluctant flame, breathed to vital fire

By a chill wind, consuming those love lines

That twined through to golden years. Time resigns

All passion, eventually, to the pyre.

Blaze begins to dwindle, paper being charred

To brittle black gossamer. Callous blade

Of a spade and flimsy embers are laid

To rest. At the end the deed wasn’t too hard.

And space enough still for the final wish,

Fine tilth of a life, indifferent ash.

                                                                                                       Dave Alton

Autumn Equinox

This day is the fulcrum, the tipping point

Over which the seesaw of the season

Balances, perfectly spirit level.

Day and night, with commensurate restraint,

Sit facing each other as if they’ve chosen

To let the year begin to unravel

While, for a moment, enjoying the sense

Of suspense in equiponderance.

Despite Day still being warm, there is a sense

Of the cold, of the dark, to come, of Night

Quite inexorably consuming the light:

Look out, the realm of darkness is immense.

An instant of stasis, as if time stalls,

As if a breath is held, then a leaf falls.

                                                                                                        Dave Alton

Dark Peak Walking

Rambling down a rubbled Roman road from

Purpled moor towards Hope, by a cohort

Of cone shedding pines. Let the gaze consort

With the view through the dale despite its slim

Exclamation mark cement works chimney

Giving the finger to farming. Hedge-row

Brambles hang heavy with blackberries that grow

So freely crumbles, it seems, have to be.

Mountain bikers, heather-faced, breathlessly

Pressing pedals to deny jagged stones

And gravity up that track where legions trod.

Endeavour fashions all there is to see

In this human nature, and sure as bones

Man passes by whether God or no God.

                                                                                                       Dave Alton