Changing Trains

CHANGING TRAINS

It's shoo-dee-dee-shoo-shoo
on the Intercity up to Crewe
where we're happy to be able
to visit a loo that is standing still —
then it's clickety-clack-clack
on the local train back home.

© Gerald England

Composed: Sandbach, 29th December 1996

Publication

2000 Breathe (UK)

Christmas Time

CHRISTMAS TIME

No sooner summer's end
than supermarkets fill their shelves
with tempters for the Christmas spend.

Civic authorities string up lights
to glimmer through the gloom
of foggy mid-November nights.

Children open advent doors
in calendars revealing scenes
of cribs and candles and Santa Claus.

With the first of the season's pantomimes
or the knocking of the carollers;
Christmas begins at different times.

But the time that Christmas truly starts
is when we open up our selves,
allowing Christmas to invade our hearts..


                          © GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ashton under Lyne, 14th November 1987

Publications

1988 The Third Half (UK)

2000 Breathe (UK)

Flotsam

               FLOTSAM

               The inner tube of a tyre
               rescued from the rocks
               of a west coast shore -
               bouying the waves
               stringed to a boy
               paddling east coast water -
               drifters don't always
               travel with the tide;
               they get unscheduled lifts
               find new uses
               before being dumped
               in a garden shed
               forgotten for at least
               a season.

               © GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Cambo Sands, 10th July 1983

Publications

1984 Orbis (UK)
1990 Quickenings (USA)
2000 Breathe (UK)

Cause and Effect: Reflections at Keat's House

CAUSE AND EFFECT: REFLECTIONS AT KEAT'S HOUSE

That a poet lived here
wrote here
was nursed in sickness here
is not to be denied

The house is
visited by
fanatics
admirers
and other interested parties
whose interest
may be aroused
by the saved
relics
of the past
that have outlived the writer
and tend
to take
to the casual lookerin
a greater import
than the poetry
without which
the decay of time
would have destroyed
leaving only the
poetry

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: London, 1st September 1971

Publications

1972 Hallamshire & Osgoldcross Poetry Express (UK)
1980 THE RAINBOW AND OTHER POEMS (Heckmondwyke, Fighting Cock Press)
1990 EDITOR'S DILEMMA (Ashton under Lyne, New Hope International)
2000 Breathe (UK)