Clinging to the Valley

CLINGING TO THE VALLEY

screes of shale
remain where
slag-heaps rose

the machinery
and the railway line
are gone

banks of bleak homes
some boarded up
seem to slope nowhere

in the Station Café
they laugh and gossip
tell tales of holidays
and how nice it is
to get back

rain streams
relentlessly
on rows of pigeon lofts

over the mountain
where the last
driftmine
still works
life takes wing

© Gerald England

Composed: Swansea, 30th May 1995

Publications

1997 DOORS OF THE MORNING (Pittsburgh, UnMon America)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
1999 Unlikely Stories (Internet)

The Image-Maker

THE IMAGE-MAKER

"Hi there,
calling you from Southern California"
It is a business call
but i am seduced by her sultry drawl,
can think only of long beaches
with the surf breaking at dawn
and two lesbians
running after each other like children
laughing and rollicking and frolicking

This is how i see it
in late-night movies i video
for watching on lazy afternoons

She calls me transatlantic
to push her corporate image/ideas
Her voice draws me
to her "southern California"
and all i have are images
ideas created by film makers
and the media

I hear on the radio
a song that claims
"it never rains in southern
California"
while here it pours down

The TV has news
of beatings, riots, lawlessness
and i know
long after i've hung up the receiver
there is another side to the place

Yet all i can hear
is her warm wind-swept inviting voice
"calling from southern California"
and all i can do
is to fall for her charms

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Gee Cross, 1st August 1992

Publications

1993 Unicorn (UK)
1994 Aireings (UK)
1995 A TASTE OF THE PENNINE POETS (Heckmondwike, Fighting Cock Press)
1998 Creative Ooze (Internet)
1999 Unlikely Stories (Internet)
2006 SPIRIT & EMOTION (York, Fighting Cock Press)

My Last Poem About Snow

MY LAST POEM ABOUT SNOW

I shan't write again about the snow
telling of icicles and drifts.
I won't again write of how my mother
put me out in my pram
in the deep snows of '47,
the only time, she said, I would sleep.
No more will my pen reveal
the secrets of the snowmen
my brothers built by the railway line
and how the heads melted
when the steam-trains came.
I will not tell again of that December in the 60s
when I walked out of Glasgow in a snow-storm;
a promised lift to Annan at 5am broken,
I thumbed my way South.
In those pre-motorway days the route lay
through the slush-strewn streets of towns -
Hamilton, Lockerbie, Carlisle, Penrith, Kendal,
Settle, Skipton, Ilkley, Otley, Wetherby, Pontefract -
the snow reflecting the civic pride of each
as festive lights brightened the grey day.
Not again shall I write about snow
nor again tell of the return from Liverpool -
when going up Rushup Edge in my old Anglia
I skidded, ending up at 45 degrees
with a dry stone wall an inch away.
It was dark before the grit-wagon came.
They were only going as far as Edale
but towed me out and I returned
to overnight at the Kings Arms in Chapel-en-le-Frith.
The next day I dug out the car
and joined the convoy of lorries
shuffling slowly over Peak Forest toward Chesterfield.
I will not write again about snow
nor tell of the winter of '74
when the world drowned in white,
when the weathermen talked
of temperatures rising towards freezing.
I will not tell of the weeks
when travel virtually ceased
and the drifts blocked
even the entrance to the cemetery.
I will not write again about snow.
Snow is not chaste, unsunn'd
as Shakespeare would have us think.
Snow is not forgetful.
Snow is not a white-wool blanket
Snow is not ice-cream topping for a mountain cone
It does not melt like a retreating army
but swells streams and floods drains.
Snow is simply cold crystals of ice
that fall from a cloud-thick sky.
Eskimos have twenty-seven different words
but there is only one snow
and I shall not write of it again.

Until the winters of yesteryear return
- les neiges d'antan de Villon -,
until the icebergs no longer drift South,
until the earth's warming ceases
I shall not write again of snow.

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Hyde, 1st May 1990

Publications

1990 Crooked Roads (USA)
1992 STEALING KISSES (Hyde, New Hope International)
1999 Unlikely Stories (Internet)

And Every Star Shall Shine

AND EVERY STAR SHALL SHINE

Why are your poems so full of country images?
It was the confessed citylovingliving girl who asked
I hadn't noticed
It was he who knew the countryside who answered
he whose thoughts roamed about the wild moors
lapped about the shores of a lake
became thick as forests
rose high as the birds
Yet he lives in a city
Sheffield's not a city she said
Not like London New York San Francisco
What's a city?
He thought of the wilder parts of Hampstead Heath
The Serpentine that serves well as any lake
the forest around Walthamstow and Epping
The birds sing over London too
He thought of the journey along Attercliffe Road
or up Brightside to the motorway
of traffic lights huge shops and factories
She thought of The Tate The British Museum
of supermarkets open until midnight
Then they looked up at the sky
in London there was a red dust glow
New York was worse
the stars were seen in a haze over Sheffield
but on Brackenhill Common
every star shone clear and bright.

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Sheffield, 8th August 1972

Publications

1972 FOR HER VOLUME ONE (Pontefract, Poet's Press of Osgoldcross)
1986 Aireings (UK)
1991 Owen Wister Review (USA)
1999 Unlikely Stories (Internet)

Lame Dog Love Poem

LAME DOG LOVE POEM

Sat in the car on Royd Moor Lane,
by a rubbish tip and a tar machine,
a dog named Robert came walking by,
hopping on three feet
Its front, right paw lay limp
and we watched that dog
named Robert go by
before resuming our kissing

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Sheffield, 7th July 1972

1972 FOR HER VOLUME ONE (Pontefract, Poet's Press of Osgoldcross)
1988 Z Magazine (Isle of Man)
1991 Camellia (USA)
1998 LIMBO TIME (Hyde, New Hope International)
1999 Unlikely Stories (Internet)

You, Being Absent, The Cat

YOU, BEING ABSENT, THE CAT

Come to our rave-up in York, they said
You being absent, I said OK Why not?
I drank several drinks
enough, no more, not to fall foul of the law
I danced a few jives and a couple of waltzes
I read some poems while the jazz band played,
and said a kind word to the fat girl with glasses
I could have made the available lay
instead of driving off,
mumbling about thirty miles
and a poem to be written

I ran over a cat at Sherburn-in-Elmet
It came out of the dark and under a wheel
The blood was sticky all over the tyre
An old cat, they said, and always careless
It wasn't my fault, they assured me
It was expected to happen sooner or later
Just my hard luck to get involved, they said,
giving me sugary tea to calm my nerves
I drank it quickly, thanked them, said good-bye

If asked tomorrow, I shall say
that it wasn't a bad party,
reaching, you being absent, for another black coffee

© Gerald England

Composed: Sheffield, 10th March 1972

Publications

1976 MEETINGS AT THE MOOR'S EDGE (West Kirkby, Headland)
1992 Green's Magazine (Canada)
1993 The Affiliate (Canada)
1999 Unlikely Stories (Internet)
2002 Blue Beat Jacket (Japan)

Traces

TRACES

Returning home
at midnight,
lorries pass me
on the main road.

Years ago,
before I gained
my respectability,
I'd have thumbed
a lift
on one of those;
through the night
to morning
somewhere else,
new places, new faces, traces
of freedom.

I walk on home
to bed,
for tomorrow
I face
again
the workaday world.

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ackworth, 7th July 1968

Publications

1970 Bogg (UK)
1970 MOUSINGS (Sheffield, Headland)
1986 Peace & Freedom (UK)
1989 Short Fuse (USA)
1993 Processed World (USA)
1999 Unlikely Stories (Internet)

Dreams

DREAMS

There are no dreams in the deepest sleep
for deepest sleep is purest rest
and I need rest most of all from my dreams
which are always of the restless kind
My dreams are dreamt when only half asleep
the hypnotic state of the physiological psychologists
when the electroencephalograph traces a jagged line
the jumbled signals of multitudinous nerves
recalling images past-remembered
but long forgotten
Half-remembered names of half-remembered faces
flash across my dreaming eyes
ideas and false linkages
possible predictions for the future

© GERALD ENGLAND

Composed: Ackworth, 1st March 1967

Publications

1972 Datr (UK)
1992 STEALING KISSES (Hyde, New Hope International)
1993 Apostrophe (UK)
1993 Dream International Quarterly (USA)
1997 Temporary Sanity (Internet)
1999 Unlikely Stories (Internet)