by Fred Simpson
LUCKY ME!
Fred Simpson
© 2011 Fred Simpson
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems—without the prior written permission of the author.
ISBNs:
Parent - 978-1-908477-39-2
ePub - 978-1-908477-40-8
Mobi - 978-1-908477-41-5
Published by Original Writing Ltd., Dublin, 2011.
The book is dedicated with love and gratitude, to John.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Linaria, Birch Seed, Earthquake, Smoke in Winter, Crack---Crack and Mother and Child have been, or are due for publication, in POETRY New Zealand.
Girl Skin, Alienation, The Core, Lion, Interface and My Brother’s Ducks in Vietnam have been published in THE MOZZIE, Queensland, Australia.
Meeting, Breaking News, Since Then!, Funfear, “Leap, Frog!”, Umzingwane, River Remembered, Cow, Fuchsia, Suburbia and Sublimation have been published in VALLEY MICROPRESS, Wellington, New Zealand.
Fish has been published in NEW CONTRAST, Cape Town, South Africa.
Mummy has been accepted for publication by a fine line, the magazine of The New Zealand Poetry Society.
BIOGRAPHY
FRED SIMPSON was born in 1949 in South Africa but was raised and educated in Zimbabwe. He briefly taught English in Bulawayo in the early ‘70s, and then studied medicine in Cape Town.
The focus of his medical career has always been in rural General Practice, first in South Africa, and then in New Zealand, which he and his family moved to in 1987.
He continues to work as a doctor, but his ‘secret love’ of writing, (producing the occasional poem), is no longer a secret! In the past few years he has written a short novel and a two act play (both unpublished), as well as a number of poems, several of which have been published in literary magazines in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
He lives in Cambridge, New Zealand, with his wife and his dog. His two children live abroad.
Lucky Me! includes a selection of forty nine poems written over the past few years. The poems have been arranged into 7 sets of 7, and they reflect Simpson’s range in theme and style. Most aligned themselves, but some were ‘difficult’ and uncertain of their place. The composite expresses the poetic imperatives of someone who is both troubled and content.
CONTENTS
ONE Seventh
CUT FLOWERS
NEAR DEATH
PIWAKAWAKA
THIEF
TWENTY FIFTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY
SUBLIMATION
SPRING
TWO Sevenths
A POEM FOR MY SON
FISH
MY BROTHER’S DUCKS IN VIETNAM
SMOKE IN WINTER
EUREKA!
EARTHQUAKE
SINCE THEN!
THREE Sevenths
BIRCH SEED
GUY FAWKES
MOTHER AND CHILD
THE TOSS
ACT TWO
THE CORE
SUBURBIA
FOUR Sevenths
ALIENATION
WISHING
LINARIA
LUCKY ME!
MEETING
RAT
SWIMMING BACK
FIVE Sevenths
GIRL SKIN
MOTHER’S DAY
HAPPY EASTER
UMZINGWANE, RIVER REMEMBERED
FUN FEAR
FUCHSIA
FROM THE OLD SCHOOL
SIX Sevenths
COW
CRACK ~~~~~~~ CRACK
BLAKE’S WORM
INTERFACE
CARRION EAGLE
“LEAP, FROG!”
ECLIPSE 2011
SEVEN Sevenths
HER BATH
BREAKING NEWS
GULL LEGS
ON THE DEATH OF A YOUNG PATIENT
LION
MUMMY
RETINA
ONE
Seventh
CUT FLOWERS
A flower grew
with the morning sun,
an iris, blue,
with a protruding tongue.
It offered lyrics
for an empty song
for the two we grew,
and then were gone.
NEAR DEATH
Since it was Easter
she expected the full
moon to illuminate
her tunnel home, but
rain slapped the wind
screen with fury.
Then, as luck would
have it, she spotted
red eyes, and was
doggedly able to
follow the tail
of a drunk truck.
PIWAKAWAKA
Unfathomable light links
my dream and consciousness. Phloem
(growing old) arches and
resettles as I shift.
No dawn song. Lorry
tyres on the tar.
With half eyes I
scan the drawn curtain
for the dormitory moon, for
the placid wound that
offered bile instead of kiss;
and turn my rugby neck.
Soft photons etch her maiden
nose and silver pillows her
hair. Lips sip cold, and
her left ear is deaf
to the clock. Sally snorts
and I leave the bed for a piss.
My molten ache is poem
past. There is no one else to miss.
I giggle at the bowl and
conjure up the moon caught
naked in a breaker’s curl, our
stolen rose, and the 1piwakawaka’s jig.
1 A small bird native to New Zealand. Also called a fantail.
THIEF
I will steal a rose
for you again, even
at risk time, even
when a half-moon
only half conceals;
I will steal a rose.
I will sway it in
your sleeping breath
again, again will;
regardless of the
spiralling moon-pull,
I will steal a rose.
TWENTY FIFTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY
Silver? No. No, ours is better still
My Lovely; ours is grey, favourite grey,
tucked feather grey --- ‘coor- coor, coor- coor’---
calling him, calling him. Ours is spent
flame and calm metal water,
earth turning ash in the east.
Silver is too fine, a mere slit
in the spectrum. Ours is pencil shade
My Love, brush with soft bristle, Zorba
dancing, dancing on moon chalk, black
pearl, birch skin bluff-dead above snow,
and steel fish drifting in shallows.
SUBLIMATION
Like a ray
he swam, and she,
each through the eye
of the other,
their slow light
lighting up jelly, membrane, electric
nerve tissue,
forming a conduit
of dangling bulbs,
burning anew old
touches that jolted
the quivering tips
of each amygdala fold.
SPRING
We are tilted and tree-young,
Rinsed new with the rising
Sap, corpse-dyed, mesmerized
By tufts of inchoative
Green, hooded and poised
Like clitoris and tongue.
We, once-wilted, are stung,
Jolted by current to run,
Run, chased by electrons from
Root to root-bound lung,
new-sprung.
TWO
Sevenths
A POEM FOR MY SON
Among washed rocks
she runs, making heaven
with her father
on the promised sand.
Disappointment is effectively
dispensed with by a crab
held high, in triumph.
He approaches for his daughter
to hold, to marvel as the creature
moves asquint, views asquint
their primitive connection,
making heaven
as I did, with dog hair on hessian.
Her papa is imprinted,
embedded and petrified like myth,
nurtured in sequence with
splinter-hurt, ant smell, and mother-made rain.
FISH
The sun had not yet breached the line
of hills hemmed in, (gentian, jagged
hills), and the inlet at the turn was
smooth as paint.
Novice father, novice son sat down where they were
bid, as everyone but they had settled in the stern
and everyone but they was busy
with his hook.
The vessel shuddered as diesel turned
the screw, then puttered to the entrance
of the harbour where the current strained
to claim more sea.
Each was silent as the skipper crossed the
bar, then up each jumped to stab at bait
with kukri primed on oil stone. They
could not wait,
they had no time to catch the streak
of orange red nor spot the sweeping gull
miss fish, but seconds had them holding taut
their rods with leather grip.
At last the boat approached the reef and idled
as the anchor chain was dropped below her bow.
The motor cut, and hesitation held until a nod allowed
the reels to scream.
The two who brought new rods meanwhile
had coffee slosh like washing in their bowels.
They reached for sugared ginger and dropped
their swaying knots;
while at the stern burnt sailor arms were
striking, bending, gaffing
out great coloured fish both steel and bronze
without a glance.
The father and the son meanwhile, though sick, were
hoping for a snap to honour just one fish, but
every fish that one could eat was brained and
put on ice,
while barracuda (even shark) was cursed and
slashed then flung aside like factory waste
to flap around as further bait for
barracuda (even shark).
By noon the sea was flicking white and
lurching at the boat, the men were drunk,
their bin was blood and lines
were ordered out.
The welcome motor puffed alive, the anchor
clanked and slewed as it was crudely winched
aboard. The two where they had spewed
sat still, ignored.
The travel back was best forgot but the
vessel reached the harbour calm with no
one drowned, no one harmed; no one
but the bream.
Stiff fish were dealt out on the wharf and each
went off with more than he could freeze. Even
they (the father and the son) were given
one to gut;
but when they reached their mother-wife, whom
they had hoped to please, they could not
raise another knife and curve it through
the fish.
So settling for a simpler dish of turnip
stew and beans, they wrapped their golden
prize in foiled tin and gave it to
the trees.
MY BROTHER’S DUCKS IN VIETNAM
Opposite, on the bank
of the slow and final river, Ant
ducks, their paddle feet no
match for cocks’ and hens’,
hurry running in a flurry
of tail and neck, hissing and
nipping while their opponents
rape and scrape and peck.
A boy no older than Alice,
(part-time butcher bringing
breakfast rather than blade),
drops slops from his mother’s
bucket, while his dog (also
white like Alice), yaps with
imperium at their bleary
buffalo shackled in the shade.
Ant! A brother in another
world illuminated by ineffable
text which I can float to for a
visit. He was no older than
Alice when the cobra killed his
ducks, and, when I get to pay
my visit, I will gather down
and place it in his chalice.
SMOKE IN WINTER
Like ice against enamel
the wood coal squeaks
as xylem splits and phloem
spits out fat-hot sap,
and smoke – the alluring
fume – curls unmolested
into spirits, not all solemn;
but no one speaks.
Up then, up the lichensmothered
trunk it creeps,
smudging one by one
the witch-long walnut
digits, and licks them dry,
dry as tongue, eburnean
sculptures, not all solemn;
but no one speaks.
And further still, through
halted winter night, it seeks
to filter constellations
that I know but cannot
name, primal/parent smoke,
the burning eyes of children’s
hopes, not all solemn;
but no one speaks.
EUREKA!
Imagining is chemical,
sugar-powered kiss and collision,
electrified ingredients
gathered from experience
to zip, then zip undone;
molecules conjuring up song
and insurrection; catalysts
acting moon, hurrying love;
enzymes throwing flares
for Archimedes.
Even Proust, endorphin-poor,
was gifted sparks of stinging joy
from chemistry – atom-rich
lit-words;
while Einstein
had a Bunsen in his brain.
EARTHQUAKE
I was dreaming
when she broke her plate, dreaming
fragmentally, coupling infant and old, smelling
sugar burning and my father’s gorgonzola,
resigned, primed - and she shook me
less than she did
the chimneys. Already
I was underground!
It was easy then
to offer my sprung neck with the dying
calm of a trapped gazelle – even
with froth.
But as suddenly she stopped (like
Daniel’s lion) and chance was gone.
There was no end
and no substantial harm.
I had to find my shoes – perhaps a comb – and
follow them down, down,
until we hurried out to
reach the sanctuary of night.
I looked up, up
at the frozen stars,
and focused on the cluster that
warmed me all those years ago.
I thought that they might know,
from their vantage point, whether
I was riding on a blue, revolving hearse, whether
they could cut me free.
SINCE THEN!
I have always trusted in silence
To explain. No, perhaps not always but
Rather since the present never is and words
My mouths have uttered have uttered up a fence;
Since then!
I should have known from boyhood
When lemons shared were sweet, when
Chicken talk cut silent for a nimbus or a
Hawk. Then, of all times, I should have understood;
Since then!
As when the desperate bucking stopped and
Slowing calm brought sorrow joy and now
Was palpable as passing air and we were poised
As one. That was when to mute and make a stand;
Since then!
Or even now when now is not and Helen
Leaves with planes arriving, leaves us Paul to take
The driving, I must entrust the gone to silence
To still the peptide hurt of when;
Since then!
THREE
Sevenths
BIRCH SEED
No secret can be kept from flung birch seed when
the wind is up to it, when the irascible wind bends
Frost branches till they cower low,
holds them so, then
lets them go.
Like Roman catapult it sends
the seed, like crazy grain it scatters round,
like whale sperm it sprays the ground;
and we are left to stop the nose
to wax the safe before it knows.
But still it penetrates the darkest, darkest spot,
where mould stays moist, where archived thought not
folded in and hidden like a blush, not
coded locked, may find that it has won and we have got
no secret kept, no secret yet that we can take
from flung birch seed when the summer blows,
when it really blows, and flowers break.
GUY FAWKES