Poems: January - June '24

A selection of some poems written over the course of this year. I hadn't written much poetry before this year, so any thoughts and feedback very much welcome.

Hedge-trimming

 

‘For goodness’ sake,’ the man yelled again

unrolling the car window this time and

unleashing all his red-faced Ford Focus fury.

‘Can’t you see this is a road

and not a bloody farmyard?’

 

We gazed blankly back.

Around us lay strewn

the overspill of summer’s end.

Hawthorn branches gone unruly,

thistles, nettles, elderflower.

 

We were neatening these severed things

by way of trailer hitched to Land Rover

which we had shoved into a narrow stretch of shade

while the smell of sap oozed through the heat

and intoxicated the afternoon

 

So that drowsy, we met this man,

his family’s cool, air-conditioned gaze

falling from behind window glass

making exhibits of us.

 

This man spoke of the early start

in the cool blue London dawn

six hours later, still no sea

and wouldn’t the hedges be better off

left uncut?

 

He raged, we listened,

we moved, he drove on,

we waited.

As the afternoon

closed around his absence

the sap thickening in the silence.

These things we have not known

  

Yes, I have seen an elm tree

rising glossily from fine photographic paper

I have heard the nightingale call clear

and sharp from a phone speaker.

I have seen and I have heard.

Yet, no matter the fineness

of the paper or speaker’s

depth of sound

seeing, hearing are not the same

as knowing.

 

So that I – no, we – are left

trying to answer the question

of how to perceive absence.

Whether to

trace our eyes over empty space

turn our ears to the unsung air

feel the absence of

these things we have not known.

Solstice

Solstice. The evening distils to stillness

and small movements: lowering orange sun:

breeze rippling green-gold through barley;

dust drifting over path's dry ground.

Amidst such indistinctness, your camera

shutter clicking was a clean straight edge

imprinting the light onto film coiled tight

which I thought then a foolish act

But now, when summer's bleached remains

lie within winter, barley field bare,

tightening, tautening beneath ragged hillsides

I am grateful for the camera.

For how it summons that summer's night

back into a form of being, these words

the shadows that stretched out behind us

growing, receding, leaving ground untouched.

All poems copyright Ned Vessey 2024