GORDON HALL

Three poems
 

A Cancer Amongst Us

A man already dead, he stands alone.
One full paced step away from friend and foe;
That stride already made to the unknown,
His focus - where his spirit must but go.
Our careless words just widen that divide,
Lying weasels driving truth away.
Laughter falters, wishes now denied
Slip slyly from the lips of those who pray.

Yet was he ever truly one of us,
This spectre that still stays within our midst.
And is it fair that we perceive him thus,
This man who wanly waits his final tryst.

He is the fear that haunts us all, my friend.
That dread dark fear that is our lonely end.

 © Gordon 8.2.12

INSIGNIFICANCE

There is only this
This small most insignificant of things
Things like this you might stand on
On not seeing such
Such is the way of the world

The world is a word too big
Big enough to lose myself in
In desperation perhaps
Perhaps in love or longing
Longing to be somewhere familiar

Somewhere familiar is what I need
Need to sustain me and provide comfort
comfort is something like desire
Desire sometimes lessens my fears
Fears entrenched in my life

My life is not at all important
Important only to me and perhaps a few others
Others have their own insignificant lives
Lives that you might stand on
On your way to your own death

© Gordon March 2013

This Land, This People

Forum of antiquity
unflinchingly bearing
your ruination
in the heat and dust of
rapine excavation.
Wanton to a million shuffling sandals,
kicking, slipping, tripping,
over your exposed recumbence.
They take you, quite unheeding,
snapping at your attributes,
never pausing or to unearth
the truth that lies so close.
For beyond the palatable,
sprawl the spawn of an older
Civilization, cast heedlessly
upon the wayside

Olympians to their last, and
gnarled as olive trees these
black-robed precursors of
the future stand,
slightly bending.
Worthy ancestors to
populations present,
protected by custom,
preserved by veneration,
parenting by pain those
long-dropped generations.

Fertility lies fecund in
the unturned foldings of 
red-earthed fields,
stretching indolently,
from sea to mountain,
willingly wishing to be
coaxed and stroked
into harvest yielding.

Product of the ploughing,
the sowing, the tending
the beauty of this bounty lies
ready to be reaped.
Flesh-ripe sustenance, compliant
in the plucking,
this seed from
once-forbidden lands
is now our swollen future
of hope and inspiration.
This produce of the present,
the juice of once forbidden fruit,
lies so sweetly on
the lips.

© Gordon 2013