929
The Organist
Wouldn't it be nice
If he could play a few more
Notes Bach actually wrote.
Brian Hick May 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 28.4.23
928
Yesterday I wrote the opening verse
For Oh Hastings with consummate ease.
It flowed as if the synical and terse
Ideas had pre-existed, just the need
To set them down, fall naturally in place.
This morning's something else, for I am faced
Again with a blank and empty page;
Yet flicking back I cannot but accept
That over the last three months I've written
Poem after poem, as if my life
Were nothing but a reason to create,
Setting all the best of me replete
And empty pages, frightening at first,
Are just another reason to write verse.
Brian Hick April 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 26.4.23
927
We're Sussex Men and Sussex won't be druv
However
We lost the Battle to the Normans
We lost the castle to the sea
We lost the cricket pitch to shopping
We lost the pier to infamy
We lost the White Rock to Victoria
We lost the Gaiety to Cinemas
We lost the Memorial to the system
We lost the sea front to the cars
We lost the harbour to the channel
We lost the beach to Dungerness
We lost the ice rink to the vandals
We lost St Mary's to the mess
But we could go on listing
All the things that we have lost
And all because Duke William
Beat Harold to the toss.
Brian Hick 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 24.4.23
926
The plough is overhead, while the north star
Sits above the park, but all the rest
Have disappeared beneath late evening cloud
Drifting up the channel from the west.
A gentle scuffling behind the fence,
perhaps our lonely vixen with her sight
On easy killings, but the noise dissolves
Into the undulations of the night,
The only sound across the darkened wood
A solitary owl call from the void,
His cry unanswered even by the gulls
Who swoop in silence, seemingly devoid
Of life, their spectral presence outside earthly laws;
As I wait for the cat to come indoors.
Brian Hick Spring 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 21.4.23
925
Why is it far more difficult to write
About the Spring and all that gives me life
Than drone for ever at the lack of light,
Dark depressive days and endless strife
Which autumn and foul winters seem to bring?
Why should the sight of daffodils seem lame -
As if Keats and Wordsworth got it wrong -
No more than a sentimental game
Ignoring the realities of long
Long freezing nights, before the Spring?
Why would my suspicious mind deny
This sudden burgeoning across the town
Where every verge and garden fills my eye
With shifting warmth, writ wide enough to drown
My shallow selfishness and let it sing?
If I weren't so blind perhaps I'd see
The bliss of solitude could work for me.
Brian Hick spring 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 19.4.23
924
I realise now there are things I'll never see,
Places I won't reach. Even though
I don't feel death is imminent - and maybe
I'll live another forty years - I grow
Ever more aware that Time is short
And getting ever shorter by the day;
For though I still feel fit, enoy a walk,
Relentless Time chips and chips away
The confidence I had that I could do
Anything, and all I may achieve
Is limited to what this fragile frame
And even frailer mind is subject to,
Despite the coming end, I'll still believe
That Life is more than pessimism's pain.
Brian HIck April 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 17.4.23
923
Enforced solitude
Should be a good excuse
To read or meditate,
Except that we indulge ourselves
In that nightly abuse of reason -
Something mindless on the TV.
After all, we've time;
We're not too tired,
The evening's free,
We've nothing else to do,
So why not make the effort that's required,
Use some intelligence
And even show that we've a brain
That's worthy of the test -
Able to endure exposure to
A few hours by ourselves,
And let the rest cave in
To Dave and the Antiques Road Show?
Good - I'll settle down and make amends;
As soon as this Midsummer Murders ends.
Brian Hick April 2011
©Sally Hick 14.4.23
921
Have I been wasting time since seventy-three,
From that first poem stumbling into view
Out on the hillside with the Sixth Form, who
Enjoyed the day, but failed to sense that he
Who took them there was brewing up a storm
Which would define his life, and even though
Blank days ensued, the need to write was so
Demanding that these very words and form
Are children to that verse above the lake
At Turner's Hill, and nothing seems to stop
The flow of verse, regardless of the crop
Of doggerel lines, imperfect rhymes, which make
Occasional haitus but can't halt
The ever rarer verses writ sans fault.
Brian Hick April 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 10.4.23
918
Long Walks
It seems we're getting older as the walks
We're planning shorten as the years go by;
The South Downs Way of ninety-three out stripped
All subsequent endeavours by some miles:
But all have had their moments and some days
Enchanted us despite the shortened length.
Perhaps we're now concerned with quality,
With panoramas rather than the strength
Of thighs or ability to out-pace
The others? Many friends no longer can
Come with us, in the wake of bodies which
Are giving out. How sad; the mind of man
Longs to stride forward past the point
Where brain decamps and knees are out of joint.
Brian Hick April 2011
©copyright Sally Hick 3.4.23