The Beach Ball

THE BEACH BALL

A mother and father are to be seen on the beach
With them is a small boy with an inflatable ball
When he loosens his grasp the wind takes hold
It rolls the ball and with gathering speed hurls it seaward

Now the father is seen scurrying in chase
The ball rests in pools but as the father nears
a gust blows it on again over the rocks
The father can only follow after its flight

Gulls and guillemots and baby terns flee their sea- wracked rocks
as a panting dodging figure dances forward
The ball now wave-borne is floating slowly shoreward
Surely it will catch the sandbank of the shelving beach
to fall at last into the father's reaching arms

But the wind has the winning over the waves
Relinquishing the struggle the father returns
to console his son now playing with his mother
having already forgotten the bright beach ball

And when the wind in the morning has abated
Will the ball be found on some more southerly shore
to delight another child playing on the tideline
- a bright bouncing bonus to his holiday ?

Or will the wind have changed to anger the sea
and smashed the ball in the pounding of some crumbling cliff
its remnants joining the deathbed of a thousand shellfish
picked at by the early morning gulls.

© Gerald England

Composed: Bridlington, 2nd September 1979

Publications

1981 DADDYCATION (Ashton under Lyne, New Hope International)
1997 NASA (USA)

Spring

SPRING

Spring is a young girl who having helped
her mother with chores goes, still
with her pinny on, barefoot to where
the sheep graze on a hillside by a pond
There, throwing her straw bonnet aside,
she throws her body down beside her young sister
and picking a buttercup, examines it,
marvelling at the detail of nature,
seeing the sun's colour in its petals
Her sister stares into the water
and wonders what it is her elder knows

© Gerald England

Composed: Edinburgh, 1st July 1979

1980 THE RAINBOW AND OTHER POEMS (Heckmondwyke, Fighting Cock Press)
1981 Britannic Magazine (UK)
1990 Maple Valley Vine (USA)
1992 Poesie India (India)
2002 EOTU (Internet)
2004 Iodine (USA)

Cramond Island

CRAMOND ISLAND

Twice a day wet-footed invaders tramp
over your hillsides among the thistles
sea-thrift and primroses searching for shells
washed into the bay or fishing for mussels
that cannot be eaten; discovering again
the concrete left by an army at war
The causeway built over the sewage pipe
is fallen away and officially closed
yet only the tide rushing up the Forth
can make you an island at peace
but for aircraft screaming their way to landfall

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Stronaclachar, 25th June 1979

Publication

1986 THE BLOOM (Madras, Ocarina)

Factor's Island

FACTOR'S ISLAND

O Factor of the Duke of Montrose,
tell me! When Rob Roy captured you,
stole the rents you had collected
and held you on the island for ransom,
were there then seagulls congregating
among tame trees and purple rhododendron?
When Glasgow took Katrine's water
and raised its level seventeen feet
they built a wall around it - made it nice
You would rather they'd let it be submerged!

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Stronaclachar, 25th June 1979

Publications

1980 THE RAINBOW AND OTHER POEMS (Heckmondwyke, Fighting Cock Press)
1997 NASA (USA)

Ballade of Domestic Upheaval

BALLADE OF DOMESTIC UPHEAVAL

The house is in a mess I'm sorry to have to say
It's falling all to pieces is the baby's pram
I don't know who it is is going to pay
unless all my horses win in one grand slam
Sometimes it's me who feels like running home to Mam
Perhaps Ernie will send a thousand in tomorrow's mail
Checking the Pools only makes me swear and damn
and all the while the dog just laughs and wags his tail

I did get one letter in the post today
inviting me down to meeting in Birmingham
about the plans for some new motorway
but really I think the whole scheme's a sham
and partly a plot to bring back the tram
and lure commuters back from British Rail
I take a bottle of whisky and pour a dram
and all the while the dog just laughs and wags his tail

The baby pours his milk all over his tray
and bangs his cup down with a thumping wham
then trots off merrily up the stairs to play
The wife talks about some new slimming programme
while cutting herself a good thick slice of ham
She wonders why my face has gone all pale
but says it's probably due to yesterday's lamb
and all the while the dog just laughs and wags his tail

ENVOI

Prince, can't I have just a little bit of jam ?
The butter has gone sour and the bread is stale
My mother-in-law regards me as a ram
and all the while the dog just laughs and wags his tail

© Gerald England

Composed: Oldham, 1st June 1979

Publication

1981 DADDYCATION (Ashton under Lyne, New Hope International)

Intercity

INTERCITY

Sharing its route with slow canals
meandering rivers, rolling lanes and rapid roads,
the breakfastless train sped hungrily
from a cold city of silent warmth
to a smoking hot metropolis
where compassion melted
and was lost among manipulative
manoeuvrings of committees

Walking the streets as a penance
revealed much more than all
the fruitless travelling underground
Though the high notes were out of tune
the melody of the flautist by the market
where Punch and Judy first were seen
accorded well with the day's mood
and left one memory that may alone remain
when all the rest is best forgot

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: London, 15th May 1979

Publications

1990 Eavesdropper (UK)
1995 TOPS (UK)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
1999 Black Creek Review (USA)
2001 Mir (USA)

May Special

MAY SPECIAL

It was May and it was snowing
as we drove down that delightful lane
lined by saxifrage and beyond them trees
We did not stop at Rievaulx
but only surveyed it from the car
Further on a pheasant, or a partridge,
flew down from the trees
to land behind a fence
It wasn't any special day
But later, when the sun forced out its warmth,
for our son, running over the grass
of Mount Grace Priory dodging daffodils
and trying to get in on the photograph
a girl was taking of her boyfriend,
perhaps there was something special after all

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Oldham, 1st May 1979

Publications

1980 THE RAINBOW AND OTHER POEMS (Heckmondwyke, Fighting Cock Press)
1988 Pennine Ink (UK)
1995 Current Accounts (UK)