1480
Pompey
And once more
That Pizza Express
Moment.
But,
Will this
Ever be
As Valuable
As a few lines
By Picasso?
One thing I do know
This won't pay the bill.
Brian Hick July 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 29.6.26
The Pizza Express moment occurred while waiting for the next course, with the extra napkin enticing Brian to write something on it. Sally
1478
Children's voices playing in the tide,
Cut the endless pulsing of the waves.
A solitary gull rests on the air.
Grey clouds gather in the south
Threatening rain even as we sit
Waiting in the sunlight.
Tea and cake entice a red squirrel
And our table turns
Into a photo opportunity for passing tourists.
On Victoria's private beach the sun
Briefly warms us, then moves north
Exposing the brilliance of a sail
A flash of Spinnaker.
Brian Hick June 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 24.6.26
1477
I wait until the train's announcement stops
When only the tap of laptops and the click
Of iphones can excuse the hesitation
Before the first ideas begin to tick.
But words lie scrambled somewhere in my brain
And only as they spill out on the page
Shaping themselves into familiar forms
Can I begin to see what they might mean.
Six lines to go after the first quatrains;
The end's in sight and now I must display
A pithy couplet to ensure the tag
Will capture all I really wan to say.
There, it is finished, but I doubt you'll find
Any hint of what's deep in my mind.
This poem is about nothing;
Writing poems is easy -
Saying something is hard.
Brian Hick June 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 22.6.26
1472
How much do I love you?
No, not you, the Divine
But those much closer to me
My own kith and kin.
How much do I love you?
Let me show the way
Not in high-flown language
But the everyday
Where words are not the only
Way to let you know
All you've ever meant to me
Watching as you grow
From child to ratty teenager
From youth to adulthood
Caring for you day by day
Regardless of your mood.
For love is not a flowering
Of sentimental verse
A birthday card with bunny rabbits
Pussy cats - or worse -
But midnight listening on the stairs
A waiting by the door
When you were sick or out with friends
Fearing the worse before
You recover or breeze in
Oblivious to me
Shoot up the stairs, without a word,
Or make a cup of tea.
And all the time the love that binds
Us to one another
Has hidden in the crevices
Of sister, mother, brother.
Our reservation at excess
Refusal to emote
May seem off-hand to the world
Uncaring or remote,
But we know what we really feel
Deep within our heart
For love that does not need to shout,
Enduring from the start,
Will far outlast the extrovert
The banner high unfurled;
For love that does not flaunt itself
Has overcome the world.
Brian Hick June 2015
©Sally Hick 8.6.26
1451
On a roundabout near Galway
There's a dump for fairground rides,
A Ferris-wheel shorn of its seats,
A switch back thrown up by the tides.
But where are the crowds who squealed and shouted?
Where the candy floss and beer?
Where the children and the lovers
Clasping hands to share their fear?
Every happy moment passes
Every memory will fade
Every touch of human kindness
Will dissolve into the grave;
So why care if these abandoned
Rides are left to rot away;
Why concern ourselves with pleasures
Long since gone and had their day?
Do these rides so soon abandoned
Call to mind our fleeting lives,
The tiny sparks of love and gladness
Shining when nought else survives,
When even memory can't temper
Emptiness with thouhts of love
And life evolves in aimless circles,
Endless, as the skies above.
The Ferris wheel waits for the breakers
The Waltzers rust into the earth
Everything returns to dust
Until the moment of re-birth.
Brian Hick April 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 13.4.26
1439
What will be written on my heart
What truths will endure
When all the jostle of this life
And language ae no more;
When conversation and debate,
Invective, boast or prayer
Have run their course, and drifted off
Like smoke, into the air?
What will survive when I am gone
If what I've left in print
Does not reflect what's in my heart,
What I feel and think;
And how can these amorphous words
Ever hope to be
More than a distant mirage
With little that is me?
And will this futile pleading
To try to prove that I
Was more aware of what you were
Before we both should die,
Be enough to overcome
The limits of these words
Which want so much to tell the truth
Yet always seem absurd
When faced with love that reaches out
Beyond the sterile spree
Of words on paper, trusting that
You'll know the best of me.
Brian Hick March 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 16.3.26
1436
Bind my head, place coins upon my eyes,
Carry my willow coffin to the sea;
Build my pyre at the turning tide
To let the gentle flames set my soul free.
Pour the oil and set the wine,
Sprinkle salt and break the bread,
Share the fruits that have been gathered;
Do not mourn that I am dead.
As smoke drifts up towards the rising moon
The ashes settle and the sea is calm,
Let me melt away into the night
Until there is nothing for the dawn.
Nothing save a memory
The sum of all the hours passed
A clutch of fading images
Disappearing like the grass
For you will thrive though I have left this place
To generate the truth which we have known
Touching lives and healing all who come
To celebrate the love which was our own.
Bind my head, place coins upon my eyes,
Carry my willow coffin to the sea;
Build my pyre at the turning tide
To let the gentle flames set my soul free.
Brian Hick March 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 9.3.26
1435
Ditchling Beacon
I am not dressed for walking on the Downs
But having time between this morning's church
And listening to Sibelius at the Dome
Here I am - battered by the wind,
Stepping round the mud and boggy ruts
Heading up toward the Beacon's top.
A flock of sheep shelter as they crop
Downwind of a scrubby hedge which cuts
Across the open downland till it finds
The South Downs Way - but I must turn back home,
Or rather to the car park - while I search
For meaning in these moments on the Downs;
But who needs meaning when earth and sky above
Are one with me rejoicing in your love.
(Jung: I do not need to believe - I know.)
Brian Hick March 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 6.3.26
1433
She drifts by with lunch in silver-foil
To find her boyfriend outside on his bike;
And I am left to ruminate that she
Is a closed book
Save for the meal she served to us
At Joya, where she works,
Relying on her tips, before she leaves
To drift into a world we'll never know,
A way of life we'll never comprehend;
For while our paths have crossed this lunchtime, her's
Is lost beyond the smile she gave us
As I paid the bill -
And even if sometime we return
She will have moved on
Till nothing can recall today
Save for these few lines
Which she will never see.
Brian Hick March 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 2.3.26
1431
I need to find a form which is my own;
Not any form but one which can flow free
As if I wasn't writing poetry
But simply paring language to the bone
So that it said exactly what I think
And you would understand in simple terms
The depth and the complexity which yearns
To be transformed, changed from idea to ink,
Until, as if osmosis had occurred,
Nothing stands between the latest germ
Of an idea, and translation's worm
Cannot withhold the power of my word;
But here we have another Sonnet, penned
As if pentameters were their own end.
Brian Hick February 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 24.2.26
1429
knowing the rules
To write of Joy this form needs to explode
Yet, like the Masters, I'm bound by the rules;
Each sonnet, roundel, every type of mode
Encases all my verse as if the tools
I need to write have all been handed down
Unchallenged, unconcerned by what might change
Assuming what has been has won the crown
And I must keep my lines within their range.
But oh I long to cut the corset's laces
Swap pen for laptop, sonnet for simple line,
Throw out the narrow way, embrace the spaces
Sans iambic metre and sans rhyme.
I wish - but as this frenzied outburst shows
To give up form, I might as well write prose.
Brian Hick February 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 18.2.26
1428
Fifty-four years since that first Valentine -
A nonsense verse because I knew no better -
But time does not encourage the sublime
And words are just as difficult as ever.
Fifty-four years of unexpected love
Tentatively etched as if aftaid
That any moment, like a startled dove,
It might fly off before a word is said.
Fifty-four years of constant mystery,
Delighting in the day-to-day unknown,
Hidden within a lifetimes constancy,
A union which endures to make us one.
We may not be as young as we were then
But our love laughs at time - and says Amen!
Brian Hick 14.2.2015
©copyright Sally Hick 14.2.26
1427
Smile the sun is up, the train's on time,
I've coffee and a Kit-Kat as I sit
Writing this - so everything is fine.
Smile!
Smell the bacon rolls, the benefits
Of service at my seat or the sublime
Delights of doing nothing as befits
An OAP - not of course that I'm
The kind to sit around when I've the wit
To grasp each moment and to make it mine.
Smile!
Brian Hick February 2015
©Sally Hick 13.2.26
1425
A truce? So tell me now when it will end
Or rather why I should believe it will
Make any difference to the daily spree
O death and damage, killing off my friends.
A truce? A moment to pick up our dead
And bury them before it starts again
When one by one we'll drop into the mud
To vanish unremarked by those back home.
A truce? But never let us get too close
Nor recognise I've no desire to kill
You who gave me cigarettes and snaps
And shred a photograph of two small boys
And if it ever happens, would we dare
Believe our enemies, out there, might care?
Brian Hick February 2015
©copyright Sally Hick 9.2.26
1418
Morgentraum
A Christmas wedding; the church is all abuzz
With friends who have not been in touch for years
Relatives who hardly ever speak
And youngsters who will soon resort to tears
If they have to wait much longer for the bride
Who comes, at last, allaying maternal fears.
And then before the organ's echoes fade,
It's done, and they are married, to a cheer
From all their friends and soft knowing smiles
Of satisfaction from those who came to hear
Continuation of an ancient rite
Confirming married love from year to year.
The church is silent, only the flowers remain
As witness to love's everlasting flame.
Brian Hick December 2014
©copyright Sally Hick 2.12.25
1411
Dublin 20-16 November
Gatwick airport has
Decided to be human;
And about time too.
Forty minutes late
And the plane is as hot as
A wrestler's jock strap.
What she claims to be
Hand baggage would keep me for
Two weeks in the Med!
Our room has many
Hangers and a mini-bar;
They'd like us to stay.
Lunch at The Norseman;
Large party of happy Finns
Slurping up the Guinness.
Guinness has learned from
Disney to turn everything
Into a theme park.
I poured a perfect
Pint of Guinness and have a
Photo to prove it.
Dutch apple cake and
Cream will fill a gap before
Dinner this evening.
Wallace Taverna, Dublin
Grappa and double
Espresso so good that I
Could be in Florence.
Four- fifteen a m
She knocks and shouts to her friend;
Oh these young tourists.
Matt Talbot
They'd make him a saint
But all we can see is a man
Disturbed and alone.
Costa in Dublin
Breakfast at Costa
With Romanian waitress;
Good to feel at home.
Lunch back at O'Neill'sėēēéééééééé
With soup, oysters and Guinness;
What more could you ask?
A final Guinness
A last hot whiskey before
Farewell to Ireland
But we'll be back for more!
Dublin déjà vu
One week on I'm back
In Café Rouge for onion
Soup and minute steak.
I know I'm back home -
The one pub at Charing Cross
Does not serve Guinness.
Brian Hick November 2014
©copyright Sally Hick 15.11.25
