Poetry

Answering Dad back
What have you achieved this week?
Your gentle question
Stuck
In my ear.

What have you achieved this week?
I hear it ringing down the years
The thousand times
the boy has racked his brain,
"Let me see, let me see,
What can I drum up
Present for scrutiny?"

So what have I achieved this week?
Let me see, let me see
I've earned a couple of hundred quid
Painting an apartment,
Not sure that even registers
On the meter of achievement..

I had a chat in Sainsburys
With a friendly cashier,
She told me 'bout her holiday,
Mykonos this year

So what have I achieved?
Let me see, let me see
Not very much I'd say
If this poem's to be believed,
But there was one thing
Maybe this.
Seriously.

In your house at the beginning of the week,
This cold, dark January,
I got up at ten past six,
Drew the curtains, half asleep,
In the night, the frost had come,
Jack Frost, the famous one
And covered everything in sight
With sparkling jewelry
The cricket field, the russet pine,
The iron railings, the washing line,
The bird-table, the wooden fence,
The garage roof, the bare stems
Of creepers and the sleeping flowers.
Everthing
Sizzling,
Bubbling in the cauldron
Of Winter's alchemy

I stood and gazed for twenty minutes
through the steam
from a cup a tea.
So what have I achieved this week?
No feat of great renown,
But,
I've seen the visible world on a winter's
dawn
and managed
to write it down.

TONY MAUDE ©


Without Surprise
(poem for Ben on his fourth Birthday)

Here's a wise owl
For your birthday.
I think I saw him
On our walk in the Deep Forest.
He was asleep,
High in the Branches
Of the tallest pine tree,
Waiting for the night
And dreaming of the poor mice
Who would be his dinner
And of the Moon
Who would light his way,
There flies a shadow, eyes like lasers
Claws like steel and sharp as razors,
Feathers thick as castle walls,
No mercy, like a stone he falls.
He doesn't feel like you or me,
Cry or laugh or even worry -

To sail a silk-smooth August night
When silver star shed silver light,
November when the frost comes brittle,
The forest's bones all creak and crackle,
Or winter, when once grey wolves howled
It's all the same to Mr.Owl.

Warm spring days when buds are born,
Nature rubs her eyes, breaks free
Until the artist autumn comes
And splashes gold on every tree.
Then his fantastic canvas done.
With his brush, paints out the sun.
Whatever season smiles or scowls,
It's all the same to Mr.Owl.

But maybe not

One day at London Zoo.
I was waiting in the queue.
Hoping that the Kids weren't lost
I couldn't believe how much it cost.
I had to buy them funny hats
And then ice cream on top of that.
I'm not that mean, don't get me wrong,
I just hoped the money'd gone
To buy the lions juicy bones
Or even get them tickets home -
A London lion's life's no joke
And I'm sure they'd love to see their folks

We saw:

Tigers pacing nervously,
The Gorilla's distant dignity,
Rats and snake and other things
And lovely birds that didn't sing
But the ones who've stayed with me till now,
You've guessed it Ben, it was the Owls.
All day their deep eyes haunted me,
A road right back through History
To when man lived by Nature's law,
His greatest fear the Dinosaur?
And everything that's happened since -
Beggar, soldier, sage or prince
They watched it all without surprise
And that is why we call owls wise

TONY MAUDE ©


If all the music were
"If all the music were
hoovered up,
The whole world would
suddenly stop.

If all the paintings were
blotted out,
Windows would cease to let in
light.

If all the poems were collected
and burned
In a way, that would be the
end.

If all the books were drowned
or wiped.

We'd have to hide paintings
behind the eyes
Stored beside the tanks of
tears.
Music and songs on shelves
along
The tubes that run from the
soul to the ears
And poems jogging down the
track
From the heart to the mind to
the tongue and back."

TONY MAUDE ©