David Robison

Author: David

  • For the bonfire

    If I write the poem that remains unwritten,
    include the thoughts I dare not share,
    and screw it up into a ball.
    This could sit at the centre of it all.

    Of all the things I might have said,
    and probably won’t before I’m dead,
    doused with every note un-played,
    arranged for each love that was never laid.

    What if I took every conversation I’d ever had
    with somebody that was there, but only in my head
    and used that with the layer of twigs,
    would that make the tinder catch the wood?

    Place every place I’ve been but never stayed:
    the bench on which we sat, above the bay,
    when you held my arm that way.

    – a moment that haunts but was never grasped –
    the distant boat, the bobbing buoy, the air, the call of gulls –
    our bikes leaned up behind the bench,
    the water was impossibly clear that day.

    Stack them up, against one another,
    the driftwood words we didn’t say to one another
    And all the secrets I wish I’d asked of mother
    before she was gone.

    The evening draws in – it’s wet, but the air is mild.
    It grows in the field you played in as a child,
    and if you could’ve stayed a while,
    you’d see this most ridiculous pile
    of everything that exists that much more in the mind.

    And after chucking on all this stuff?
    It’s getting big, but not big enough!

    So toss on all the times, despite the rain,
    we dared not sneak into the lane.

    Rack the self-generated torments – the arguments I never had with a doorman.
    The “what ifs” – if Iraq had not been invaded.
    A smile un-smiled, the streams in which we never waded.

    Then there’s the neighbours to whom I should have said hello.
    and all the unexplained feelings from “down below”.
    Pile ’em up and watch it grow!


    I can’t strike the match, love.
    The box is wet and the evening damp.

    I give up too easily and bugger off.
    It wasn’t a real bonfire anyway.

    But up on the valley’s other side
    a firework explodes
    like a bomb above a town.

    The next day,
    either here or far away,
    I find myself up again that way.

    I pass, by chance, the field
    in which I played as a child,
    and oh – the pile is thatched and painted!
    A wreath is placed upon the door.
    A hedgehog lives there with a mouse.
    It’s not a bonfire, it’s a house.

    Written by

    David
    Wood stacked up for a bonfire in a field.

  • Hazel, there’s a window

    Hazel, there’s a window
    I’ve kept open, just a crack.
    It’s just in case that wayward cat
    should make its own way back.

    Why should we so miss that cat,
    that rubbed the house’s corner?
    Because I wrote it into verse
    I’ve clearly made it that much worse.

    It went away in summer
    And it still hasn’t come back.
    I’ve imagined dainty pawprints but
    the message space retracts.

    And for now I leave the window up
    as always, just a crack
    and just inside, on the chest
    next to the sewing machine, is a snack.

    Maybe I would mend something, learn to sew.
    It could rub against my leg and mew.
    Oh, I think of the cat often, now it’s gone.
    Do you?

    Would it have grown old and happy by the stove,
    or would it always be in fright?

    The previous owners had kicked and blamed it,
    so it preferred to take its chances over fields
    and through the cars.
    We thought we might forget it by scrolling profiles
    and meeting dates in bars.

    Hazel, there’s a picture
    You’re smiling on your bike.
    It was downhill and easy for a moment,
    your hair could do as it liked.

    I know where it was taken
    I rode with just one hand
    I held up the frame and froze it.
    I think of this as often, as the waves there meet the sand.

    Hazel, there’s a window
    open, just a crack.
    The nights are getting colder,
    It lets in a fucking draft!

    Another’s hand might close it,
    but what if it came back?
    The woman might peer out, into the night,
    but she wouldn’t know about our cat.

    She might not see two emeralds,
    the shadow rub the house.
    The window would be closed,
    and away would slip our cat.

    But if I heard the miaowing,
    in earnest in the night,
    I would grab a brick and smash it though.
    Damn the neighbours and their fright.

    In the cat would pad again
    and rub against my leg
    And the glass might cut the woman’s feet
    as she found her own way out.

    Written by

    David
    Silhouette of a cat on a roof

  • The reservoirs will be happy

    I ruminated about us all night,
    how we would never make love again,
    with wind and water lashing the lean-to,
    and in the morning, the downpouring still is interminable.

    A whole river tips, heeding nobody.
    The sky will not lighten, and I shan’t settle.
    I must go out. I can neither stand or sit another moment.

    A coat over a coat – the rain doesn’t hurt anyway –
    it slews down my head, face and all,
    with no hair to soak, to mitigate the flood.
    Water doesn’t hurt
    though it cares for nothing, stops for nothing.

    Traipsing past the sloshing cars and down into the sodden woods,
    I pause and clock the weight and height
    of the river’s churning guts:
    the reservoirs need it.

    Then striding uphill, lopsided and urgent,
    without even a dog to justify my presence,
    I suddenly find myself where the river is flat.
    We walked here, that day in June.
    The place was incidental then.

    A summer spent on edge,
    from an anxiously hot and ruthlessly dry spring.
    No moisture sank more than a centimetre in,
    so a sludge and previously unseen,
    reddish rings came into view
    around the remaining water at Compensation Reservoir.
    Then a hosepipe ban.

    Anxiety also hardened the soil in the yard.
    Neither of our loves managed to sink in far.
    We jettisoned seeds that were fully fertile and alive
    but onto heedless earth.
    There we are.

    And you didn’t help:
    Mixed messaging, doubts, the past not letting go.
    What with human-ness, your head on my chest.
    “We are very different,” you said.
    I took that as badly as I could.

    All the while, the seeds burst from their pods, silently as we brushed our arms and legs through the sticky willow at Staithes.
    Love clung to our trouser ends and caught us like brambles.
    We carefully picked our way out of it, thinking it was some kind of inconvenience.

    A warning anxiety would not let me go.
    And by explaining it to you, thinking I could trust you,
    I wounded you.
    Again and again, we wrongly heard,
    only heard what we feared might be said,
    goodbyes that weren’t necessarily meant and so on until,
    it became an obstinately loving gesture of farewell,
    for you to make this birthday cake.

    And you had bought me an ornamental figurine
    of a man on an old fashioned bike.
    He leans forward to the woman, who tilts on tip-toes.
    She cranes up her mouth to kiss him, as far as a silhouette can.
    This was meant to be us – obvious – through happy years,
    within reach, as easily as our parents did.
    It didn’t seem right to give it to me then.

    Predictably, haplessly, with August gone.
    I long to behold these figurines
    as if they were our shadows again.

    The seeds are germinating only now,
    when September’s solitary duck
    follows me in perfect parallel –
    no faster or slower,
    and with no more sound than the ceaseless pitter patter
    on this flat part of the river.

    It needed to rain.
    It’s been so dry this year and it doesn’t hurt.
    And somewhere, beyond these dripping ferns,
    a child still laughs at play.

    My heart will not mend,
    but the water soaks into the soil at last.
    And although I couldn’t give a fuckwit’s toss,
    the reservoirs will be happy.

    Written by

    David

  • The best blackberries

    The best blackberries have gone, I said
    as my daughter bounded ahead.

    I think we missed the best blackberries.
    These ones are a bit squishy.

    But if we collect these ones, that look okay,
    I’m sure they’ll be good in a crumble.

    I obviously wrote a poem about it.
    The parallel is real-time.

    Just how summer has passed me by
    And although still warm, the nights are drawing in.

    Entire branches of the crop are moulded and powdery,
    Some still protrude, purple-to-black, but they lack firmness and sharpness.

    Wait up, you beautiful kid!
    While you and I are here with tubs,
    Let’s collect what’s left for us.
    I’m sure they’ll be good in a crumble.

    Written by

    David

  • Hazel, a second

    When I looked into your eyes, I now confess –
    although aloud I asked, “Are they green, brown, hazel, blue?” –
    for a second, I thought of another woman.

    Who is this second woman?
    Who?

    Is it the girl then the woman who
    because of fear,
    I loved from afar, but never dared to draw near?

    The shiny haired girl from class
    Gillian and then Elizabeth?
    I never spoke to her.
    I was not like Jonathan, so brave and arrogant.

    So then, did I see Hattie who I loved so far
    beyond any rational measure?
    Like yours, her eyes sparkled, like treasure, in play.
    Bereft upon each homeward journey,
    for ten full years,
    when I was a child with no means, no tools and no verse.

    And Helen loved me not a jot!
    It was not of her that I thought,
    Even though on that mast
    I wilfully tore a freshly adult heart.

    So by then, fearing pain I turned away, for safety
    from all of Charlotte’s grace.
    True, there was something like this in her face.

    Now, in this second, I see this woman I have loved but never held.

    Let’s call her Hazel.
    Hazel is my idea, my life’s silent longing.
    An absence, an ache, she is self-inlaid with artistry and care.

    And yet instead of absence,
    I feel in my hand,
    your hair.

    My lips close on yours, and when,
    in a second, I open my eyes
    I see her real, alive and smiling there.

    Written by

    David

  • When Amy smiled

    The same as that little boy,
    cast again into this foaming flux
    by a tug at the chest

    (The new equilibrium is somewhere,
    maybe. But the basis upended.)

    The sitting, the breathing, the mindful teachings.
    Quite useless.

    All my stilless
    All sleep.
    All my effortful balance,
    All this hard-won peace.

    Brick by month, repairing the defences.
    The artisan repointing of the battlements
    that were so damaged
    by ill-considered alliances and dalliances.

    What is the use of
    all the patient mending?

    Every self-help verse,
    The delicate heart-to-heart surgery.
    The careful inner work.
    All my readiness, ready –

    Then, your smile
    reminded me:

    All I have to steady,
    bobs in a small paper cup,
    in the vastness of a sea.

    Written by

    David

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