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