Five Poems by Richard Fleming

 

FLOTSAM

 

The sea does not want her.

It takes the others:

her, it discards

half-dead on shingle-sand,

the reek of salty fear

on brown skin.

 

Gulls shriek

and quarrel overhead.

She lies face down

barely breathing,

a human starfish,

one black asterisk

referencing nothing.

 

Cruciform

on wet shingle,

she counts her stations:

hunger, terror, flight,

abuse, exploitation,

a merciless sea

crossed.

 

A too-small boat,

the huddled shapes,

fear, their common bond.

A heavy night-sky

bearing down.

Waves like white fists

against the hull.

 

Land

that does not want her

blurs like a mirage:

a half-moon cove,

gaunt trees

aligned like bars,

European houses.                         

 

She claws wet gravel,

draws herself

to her knees,

kneels to vomit.

Along the beach,

relentlessly,

policemen come.

 

 

IMAGES

 

This is a tree, he said and pointed to a tree.    

We have seen images, they said.  

There are many trees, he said. This tree is cedar.

We have seen images, they said.

 

Here is a flower, he said and pointed to a flower.

We have seen images, they said.  

There are various flowers, he said. This is a rose.

We have seen images, they said.

 

This is a cat, he said. See it move. Watch it stretch.

Just like the images, they said.

This is a dog, he said. Watch as it wags its tail.

Images are better, they said.

 

That is the sky. Those small birds are swallows, he said.

We have seen images, they said.

Over there are blue mountains and a lake, he said.

May we go back inside? they said.

 

 

LAZARUS REGRETS

 

I suppose I should be grateful

that I have been restored to life.

Truly a miracle, they say,

for I was dead, my youthful wife

a widow. Then came that fateful

moment: the voice, to my dismay, 

of God, or something like His voice

recalled me from that peaceful place,

a still, enshrouding nothingness

where I was free in endless space.

I sat up, watched my wife rejoice,

enfold me in her warm caress,

and back came flooding all the cares,

the daily desolation, fears,

unspooling like a ball of thread.

My neighbours wondered at my tears

and crowded round me unawares.

A kind God would have left me dead.

In death, I had at last escaped

the terror, that each human knows,

of his inevitable doom. 

A feather underneath my nose

proved me extinct. My coffin, draped

with sackcloth, waited by the tomb.

Then came a Man, a God of sorts,

whose word alone awakened me,

my winding sheets fell off, my eyes

perceived, at first, a wondrous tree,

then children carrying reports

of miracles with joyous cries.

I, through this sudden jubilation, wept

for that lost, lovely place wherein I slept.

 

 

HIS ROOM

 

It took five minutes, more or less,

to fill, with what he left behind,

a cardboard box and to compress

into its space, his life, unsigned

in much the way some paintings are,

then stash it in the waiting car.

 

In those five minutes, I remained

there in the small, vacated room,

while the red-faced landlord explained

a small arrears. Would I assume

responsibility and pay?

My conscience made me easy prey.

 

 

ICARUS

 

I am falling from high

but they do not notice.

 

The air, through wings

that promised much,

keens like a mourner.

 

Creeping ants below

evolve

to shepherd, ploughman, angler.

 

I fall unseen.

 

Someone

will dream it later.

 

I have no time

to scream.

 

The water is

hard as stone.

Richard Fleming is an Irish-born poet currently living in Guernsey, a small island midway between Britain and France. His work has appeared in various magazines, most recently Snakeskin, Bewildering Stories, Lighten Up Online and the Taj Mahal Review, and has been broadcast on BBC radio. He has performed at several literary festivals and his latest collection of verse, Stone Witness, features the titular poem commissioned by the BBC for National Poetry Day. He writes in various genres and can be found at www.redhandwriter.blogspot.com

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