By the waters of Léman

‘My brother is a Coptic priest,’
the Egyptian leant over
from an adjoining table,
concerned we might have thought
the long black robes and grey beard
belonged to a Muslim cleric,
despite the large crucifix at his chest,
and having captured our attention
continued to explain the finer differences
between the three orthodoxies,
and extolling the virtues of the Dutch.
And so unlikely a pair they seemed
that I was put in mind of a pimp
selling the assets of his finest girl,
as we studied the old steam boat
creeping across the lake towards the pier,
before rising from our seats without
obvious haste and wishing them
Happy Easter.


John H Davies

30th IV 2011

The Kiss

I pinch myself when I think
we were there for the kiss
on that warm day in June
when the world seemed to stop
in technicolor freeze frame;
you in a pastel blue frock
and me an ill fitting Sandhurst
blazer. We’d watched the ceremony
on a TV behind the bar
of the Special Forces Club
though Uncle Alfie wasn’t there
(something had come up),
then a car ploughed us through
the throng and we were caught up
in the moment and deposited
outside the palace just as
prince and princess appeared
at the balcony and kissed
and a roar went up around us.
I had not thought what that kiss
might have meant to you
and perhaps my indifference
reflected a certain aloofness
of my newly indentured family
that was to prove so fatal
to you, and me, and them.


John H Davies

29th IV 2011

Fun Fair

The boy passed the blue Post Office
savings book across the counter
and withdrew his last ten pounds
knowing that although it was his
money, the intention of kindly
aunts and uncles and parents’ friends
who had donated towards the diminishing
balance, and his father’s explanation
of accrued interest, had been rather more
long term, as he stepped into the seat
of the twister and the man clamped
the safety bar down, and he closed
his eyes and wondered whether the
exquisite feeling in his stomach was guilt,
or the anticipation of the short lived
exhilaration of the ride, and the void
when it and the money had finished.


28th IV 2011

John H Davies

Bragging about our granddads (I)

'I’ve booked a slot with him this afternoon,'
Vanya explained over a cupcake in his
international school English, and we smiled
with interest.

'He’s promised to talk to me
about his past life for my history project –
he spied for the KGB in Washington for 11
years until he was caught and given 24 hours
to leave – it’s kinda cool.' 

And when he left
I went out onto the terrace where Kevin was
cooking sausages and we made references to
the old enemy in hushed conspiratorial tones.


John H Davies

27th IV 2011

Difficult Terrain

As they picked their way
from stone to stone
and over protruding
tree roots, she explained
how all her attention
was required directly
beneath her feet, and that
if she looked too far
ahead in anticipation
of the unfolding view,
she might stumble.


John H Davies

26th IV 2011

Home

Sweet where the heart is
out of range, like
no other place;
a sickening search
in knowing thoughts
upon its coming
to town or city,
race or species.
Or simply a notion
of wanting, leaving
welcomes to the
safety of others;
an unfulfilled destination
of expired timetables.


John H Davies

25th IV 2011

M.O.T.H.S

(Memorial order of tin hats)

The caretaker of my one bedroom flat in downtown Jo’burg

seemed so pleased at my arrival, he had some boys deliver the

biggest fridge I’d ever seen, as a favour to a ‘special’ tenant,

and in his bare room in the ground floor basement hung an

enormous photograph of his presentation to a young Queen,
in recognition of long years as a Japanese prisoner of war.

Several times he invited me to a party of old comrades
which I eagerly accepted, but he always forgot, and just
as I was about to give up hope, he turned up

at my door one evening with a smile and a set of keys,
and I drove his battered old car through unfamiliar streets
and we got lost, and arrived just in time as the old chaps

took their seats; someone fumbled with the light switch;
and in the darkness the commanding officer struck a match
and lit a candle that was melted onto an upturned tin helmet

placed on the table in front of him. And round and about me,
I felt old backs stiffen, and for a brief moment as the Transvaal
sun went down, any trace of dementia had all but disappeared.


John H Davies

24th IV 2011

Making History

I’ve got this knawing suspicion
that it’s all going to be OK.
And whilst there is an element
of relief and self assurance about it,
what irritates me is that
I’ll no doubt look back
and think it wasn’t so bad after all,
when the urgency of the present
is screaming out to remind
my future self that
it didn’t feel like it at the time.


John H Davies

23rd IV 2011

Altitude

We ascended through spring
pastures of wild crocuses
and Edelweiss, and with
every gaining step
your life regressed by
increments, minute by
minute, so that by
the time we scrambled
along the ridge towards
the summit, you were a
child again, unable to contain
your breathless joy in the
thin air, with trembling knees
that reminded me of the
excitement I felt when
I thought I was about to
make a new friend.


John H Davies

22nd IV 2011

Crossing a Bridge

A territorial dispute
or a perfect union,
the knarled trunk
barged up between
the ancient stones
of the bridge
like a bulging vein
but oddly accommodated;
conjoining animate
with inanimate,
injecting life
into the forgotten
structure as it slowly
forces it apart.


John H Davies

21st IV 2011

Foxy Cat

Foxy Cat is flat.
I know this because I narrowly missed
his steaming carcass the other day
on my way to work.

We weren’t that fond
of Foxy Cat, but for his
incongruous brown brush
set against an otherwise cloudy cotton coat,
now embossed with tractor tyre tread.

Notable only for winding up our dog
was Foxy Cat,
and terrorizing the neighbour’s rabbit
by standing beyond the French windows
out of reach.

Each day I pass,
his pancake imprint becomes less.
Until one day there’ll be nothing left
of Foxy Cat.

One wrong turn -
his earthly contribution
faded to less than a memory.



John H Davies

20th IV 2011

Cwm Megan

The birds sing all day long

in Megan’s valley

despite the rain

dripping from a fir

that both threatens

yet guards the old cot

like a tall shepherd,

growing taller

as the other grows old,

drawing memory from the earth

like rising sap

regenerating simpler times

and fixing them

in the mellifluous tones

of the birds that sing all day long

in Megan’s valley.

19th April 2011

John H Davies

Omen

I didn’t believe in signs
or omens until we discovered
a hoary toad in the yard
when we moved the business.

It was sure to mean good luck
because my friend and partner
is known as the jovial toad
(of Toad Hall you understand)

and just before we had time
to tell him, we found the toad
squashed by a van and I don’t
think I believe in signs any more.


John H Davies

18th IV 2011

Metamorphosis

As he waited for the radiologist
to x-ray his hip, he tried to fix
the moment when he ceased
being a vibrant individual human
being and became just another
elderly person who fell
when the door closed on him
because he wasn’t strong enough
to hold it open against the spring.


John H Davies

17th IV 2011

Perch

Who knows how many years
it had avoided detection?
The rusting tip of a plough share,
come to light lately only
by the solitary investigation
of a curious child amongst the
furrowed troughs of clay
and brought home to be
presented as a holy relic
and placed on top of the wall
in the back yard and forgotten
again, by all except the birds,
that queue for a position
on the metal altar with dainty
pilgrim footfalls, as it warms
in the morning sunshine.


John H Davies

16th IV 2011

Me and who’s army?

‘Honorary Colonel of the Revolutionary Army
of the Rio Poco Sol, San Juan District,’

had a certain ring of the tin pot about it,

but to me it was better than any regimental silver;
a set of hallmarks of the highest sovereignty.


John H Davies

15th IV 2011

Tinitis

There it was again: a low frequency hum
lasting only a few seconds, its source
within his head; always a sustained note
never wavering, though random in pitch
with a constant volume fading neatly to silence.

He’d never met anyone who heard
the same hum, at the same time and anyway,
was reluctant to share the phenomenon
in case he was considered a bit strange,
but he liked to think he had a special gift.

Perhaps his finely attuned senses detected
seismic shifts that might forewarn disaster,
as someone passed through the space
he occupied in a different dimension,
stirring the fading rhythms of the ancients.


John H Davies

14th IV 2011

Astral Projection

A row of concrete ceiling slabs,
is the view when I open my eyes
in my head, and it feels oddly normal.

Everything where it should be:
the shelf beneath the glassless window
with concrete pill-box slits
instead of bars, that I pretend
are Elizabethan mullions,
against which the sun casts shadows
and gives form to the idling time.

But there is no sound, as my mind
conjures images of home,
and fights off the daily hunger pang
arriving promptly as the long case
clock down in the hall strikes seven.


John H Davies

13th IV 2011

A. V.

A.V. or not A.V.
now let me see…
give one side or another
the chance to pip the post,
then suffer in silence
while they spend
the next five years
making sure
they pip the post again.

Why don’t we
instead, you see…
let them vote
for themselves,
while we vote for
the important things
which it would be
their duty to implement?
Now that is the question.


John H Davies

12th IV 2011

Diversity

Although they both walked
along the same street
side by side
enjoying the same view,
she was aware
that what they both saw
would be different,
and that someone else
walking that same way
on a different day
would choose to notice
other things
in a different light.
And as she applied
this thought to the
elderly couple in front,
or the kids over the road,
she understood
how sometimes
she was misunderstood.


John H Davies

11th IV 2011

Shenton’s Heroes

In the months and years
that followed the overdose,
they met from time to time
and walked up a hill
in his memory
and got hopelessly drunk
on the way home.

And on one of these trips
they reverently vowed
to step in early
if any of them looked
like going the same way.


John H Davies

10th IV 2011

One-upmanship

Fighting a bout of low self esteem

I headed westward where I’d heard it

possible to test your wits against

a certain mountain, Cyfwry so named

and forming part of the giant chair

where sat mighty Idris, long since

departed, and in the cold silence

inadequate Cyfwry, for he was

one of three, would challenge all-comers

to prove who was the greater. And so

I came to the shores of Llyn-y-Cau

dark as ink beneath his mighty sides.

The bragging was in full flow but sharp

were his senses and he detected

my diffident entrance, for you see

squirrels are by comparison quite

small. So small in fact that old Cyfwry

began to laugh in mocking tones of

disbelief. ‘And how’ he cried ‘can one

so insignificant hope to trump

me, whose granite sides flout the test of

time; redirect rivers at a whim;

carry mighty forests on my back

and confound the works of man – Pray tell?’

‘Well’ I said, drawing myself up to

full height with whiskers splayed for effect:

‘I bet you can’t crack a nut!’   It’s said

things were quieter in those parts after

that. I headed home feeling better

but knowing I was still the same squirrel.

John H Davies

9th April 2011

Journey

We’ve come this far,
a little further
isn’t going to hurt
any more than it
already has.

We’ve come this far,
and survived,
like our ancestors
who we can thank
if so inclined.

And what the hell:
if we don’t make it
there’ll be plenty
ready and willing
to take our place.

We’ve come this far.
We won’t starve.
And what’s the worst
that could happen?
People talking?

They won’t spend
much time on it.
They’ll be too busy
wondering how
far they’ve come.

We’ve come this far,
just one more step.


John H Davies

8th IV 2011

People you meet in pubs - IV

I’ve forgotten his name, or perhaps I never knew it,
because he spoke in a forced whisper and sported
a white gauze that covered his neck like a clinical cravat,

and we had long conversations that I pretended to understand,
by nodding enthusiastically at what I thought were the right moments
because I liked his face, and the way he tapped you on the shoulder
to make a point, while his terrier sat gently at his feet and smiled.

And once he asked me something about balloons, eager for a reply,
and I said yes, and the next day he came into the back bar with a
brown paper bag containing the largest mushrooms I had ever seen.


John H Davies

7th IV 2011

Peripheral – distilled

(with thanks to Robert Thompson)

I wish I didn’t know
how far it is
to the nearest star.

I wish my horizon
was where the land stops
and the sky starts,

for then I might understand
why everything seems
so important -

the way that animals do;
whose only world
is that within their view.

How I wish I didn’t know
how far it is
to the nearest star.


John H Davies

6th IV 2011

Judicial Review

She suddenly understood
that she judged herself by how
others judged her and that she
had little control over
this for by the same measure
others’ judgement was based on
their perception of how she
judged them - through the looking glass.


John H Davies

5th IV 2011

Flying Man

Do you remember Ed
who held you on his hip
in church one Easter?
I cherish the image
of you and my friend,

who in his youth
had held himself together
for two tours of Vietnam,
and for a brief moment
shared our world.

Some guys weren’t so lucky:
like the grunt who lost it
one day and had to be
choppered from the base
for everyone’s safety.

And as the Huey sped
over The Mekong Delta
he calmly stood up
and stepped through the door
at a thousand feet
before anyone could grab him.

Ed was on the patrol
that found him next morning,
planted in the ground
feet first and standing upright,
spectacles slightly askew,
with a quizzical expression
on his face.


John H Davies

4th IV 2011

Progressive Participles

Fading shadows
Gaining light
Disappearing traces
Inverting reflections
Graduating time
Infusing memories
Conjoining space
Illuminating fate
Displacing reality
Perverting truth
Imitating infinity.


John H Davies

3rd IV 2011

Air America

The cockpit of the Cessna
was filled with the smell
of badly digested wind
and perspiration as we droned
high above the jungle,
and he talked about whores
as I traced a line on a map
with my finger and marvelled
at his confidence and
nonchalance with the controls,
and asked how many
flying hours he’d amassed:
‘About twenty’ he replied;
I was impressed ‘twenty thousand?’
‘No – twenty…’
I could just make out
the small airstrip
by the side of the mountain
in the fading dusk
and opened an air vent.


John H Davies

2nd IV 2011

Rough Justice

It seemed fair to assume

there’d be thieves in a prison,

but after our last belonging

had finally gone the way

of the others, and we still

had no idea who the culprit was,

we planted an imaginary object

under the bunk of the

most likely candidate

and beat the shit out of him.

There wasn’t any more trouble

for a while.

John H Davies

1st April 2011