The Hard

Trying to find somewhere to eat, I walk

Down faceless sixties streets, past office blocks

And civic sites, depression setting in

With every step, until I come upon

Some trees leaning towards the rising sun

Moulded by the wind from out the channel

Terns casting themeselves upon the breeze

To float and skim on currants I can't see

But blustering round me, buffeting my nose

With rotting seaweed, hanging on the stumps

Of sea defences stranded by the tide,

As storm clouds cluster off the Isle of Wight.

          Still nowhere to eat, but by the bay

          The Channel winds have blown my blues away.

Brian Hick at Southampton 

©copyright Sally Hick 14.10.22

 Wednesday

Wednesday, and it's now almost five days

Since I've had time to contemplate some verse

But travelling to Enfield on the train

I can make time for thinking and reverse

The headlong rush which going up by car

Necessitates, for, while the music helps

To calm the jangling stress, there is no space

For language to unfold and write itself.

So here I am, pen poised and coffee poured

The carriage silent and the summer heat

An English Idyll coaxing me to spill

My locked up feelings over this blank page

          However, should normality ensue,

          I'm liable to doze off 'til Waterloo.

Brian Hick

©copyright Sally Hick 12.10.22

 Lavender

Glanced from the window of my evening train

Near Sevenoaks, the lavender's in bloom

And suddenly I am a boy again

Dancing with Mrs Bunton to a tune

I now forget but pop in fifty-eight

When we were all on holiday in Devon.

The waft of lavender almost knocks me out

As, hardly reaching to her Edwardian bosom

My innocent boyhood reels from the sweet spray

Sprinkled on hankies from the pixie pair

Bought as a souvenir earlier that day

While on the tour to Ilfracombe and Beer.

          Sensuous memories; far beyond my ken,

          For I am older now than she was then.

Brian Hick 

©copyright Sally Hick 11.10.22

 Ringlet

The large white, in perpetual motion, skims

Edgily across the falling roses;

The ringlet stands upon a privet leaf

Static as if dead, then springs away.

Taunted into action by the white

They spiral up towards the holly tree

'til both are lost from sight beyond the beach

And solitude descends on me again,

Inertia pins me to this seat, while they

Seem triggered by a sense of purpose I

Should feel but don't, relapsing into silence

And a void suppressing all creative thought.

          Day by day the garden waits for me

          But my mind does not want me to be free.

Brian Hick

©copyright Sally Hick 7.10.22

 In memoriam - Marina Pavilion

There was a time, in eighty-four

           We used to come down to the sea

           To sup a pint or cup of tea

On Sunday afternoons, what's more

The Marina Cafe may not have been

           A tourist high-spot but at least

           Its sandwiches could be a feast

For hungry trippers who were keen

To try the sands or rifle-range,

           A dip with knitted swimming costume

           Huddled up because there's not room

Under the towel for two to change.

But now this grey-glass box has slinked

           Into its place with iron spikes

           And keep-out signs, which we dislike

For all we wanted was a drink.

The cracks and patches are the same

           The thirties mosaics don't quite match

           The concrete and the pebble dash

But they would do for us who came

To ask for simple things to eat

           A cup of tea, a piece of cake

           A coffee or a juice, to slake

A thirst brought on by summer's heat.

It's not to be, we turn away,

           The carvery's beyond our purse

           And anyway it might be worse

Than letting Hannah have her say

And walking back along the parade

           Into the town for fish & chips

           Avoiding the one-up-manship

Which doesn't seem to want our trade.

Brian Hick

©copyright Sally Hick 5.10.22

                            Where does

                   A poem come from?

Some days they seem to write themselves

                      Yet on the next

                    Nothing happens.

Brian Hick 2009

©copyright Sally Hick 3.10.22

 Write!

Just write it down, ignore the iambic line

The Tennysonian rhyme scheme and the verse

Which obnly places strictures on your thoughts

And makes the outcome doggerel or worse.

But how can I, when every time I think

Of writing down my thoughts, they always fall

Into blank verse themselves, and what is more

The rhymes are there without my aid at all.

Perhaps if I were stronger minded, they

Could all be brushed aside and I would find

True freedom in free verse and vistas new

Beyond the narrow confines of my mind.

          One day perhaps a new form will arrive

          But until then this sonnet will survive.

Brian Hick 2009

©copyright Sally Hick 3.10.22