POETRY

Autumn Morning

The jetty is deserted in the sun. Warm light
streams to the river-bed, catching
the lines of feeding fish, bright
on the warm sand, seen clearly through
unruffled water, their movements matching
the slow currents, threading the new
growth over tyres, cables, cans, all shown
lying still in growing weed, changing fast
into the stuff of the river. Bars of gold sun
fall on them, holding the shrimps, the mussel shells,
the lives all overlooked. Martins dart past
to their nests under the boarding. The morning smells
of sea air, and new-mown grass, as ripples run
on this calm day. Even those cans and types
are full of life, each harbours its own crew
of living things. Ripples like cool fires
wander the sunlit surface, lines blown
by some unfelt wind. At the shore a few
people are wading. A few dogs and children run
on nearby grass. Over its little commonwealth of lives
of the hardly interesting, the marginal, the small,
the hardly beautiful, itself part of them all
and happily ignored, where so much thrives
the jetty stands deserted in the sun.

Heathrow Morning

Chill early morning. With the other jet-lags
I stretch my legs and, laden, disembark.
The whole is dreamlike as I lift my bags.
Some dawn is rising out of slate-grey dark.

What will England give me? Pageants of the past?
Disappointments? Bleak rooms alone?
I put my best fact on it: here at last,
ready for bold banners and grey stone.

With my cases I pass the meeting Place
(a droning sound in the distance), set
off to the Cotswolds bus, new days in my face.
Minutes in England already but I’ve met

nothing I’d call colourful or quaint.
Then, with four engines’ shuddering beat
a relic Lancaster in new silver paint
flies overhead at two hundred feet.

Second Heathrow Morning

Grey dawn at Heathrow.
Jet-lagged, eyes smarting, sleepless,
I stumble alone towards the Meeting Point
Through the grey shoals of the crowd
And suddenly
My loved one’s arms are about me,
Her lips are on mine,
And the air is full
Of light and music.

Hal G.P. Colebatch