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Flotsam and Jetsam

~ Assorted odds and ends

Flotsam and Jetsam

Category Archives: poems of place

Cynicus Historicus @Oxford and Yuste

23 Sunday Sep 2018

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

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I The Party at Brazenose

Poured house white from green bottle

Onto slaked lips

In the fizzle

Forgot the effects those

Sips would force

 

Liz and Pete

-Enthusiasts!

Danced like drunks in the rain

The bitter sweat of seduction

Increased the pain

I smiled –

But they looked rather mystified

At me

And my green shadow.

 

II Charles of Ghent

Charles of Ghent,

Dubbed by successive men

Of little wit and less sense,

Failure –

Sits in a parched glade at fifty

How pointless his struggle with

Valois, heretic and Turk seems

Compared to this

Unfathomable, but no less

Fundamental act.

 

New Inn Hall Street

Hilary, 1976

Poems of Place: 60611

14 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

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chicago, Chicago Cubs, Deep Dish Pizza, Fat Tire, Lake Forest, Lake Michigan, McDonalds, Nordstrom, The Gold Coast

IMG_1695 

When I think of you, I think of food:

That first steak – huge and bloody,

The chophouse brown ambience

Haunting the bridge;

The cheesy Wheel of Death

That defeated even Brian,

The Filet-O-Fish and fries we ate in Oak Brook and enjoyed,

The ribs we sucked and gnawed on Sheffield’s garden walk

The Fat Tires we swilled

To debrief and to decompress…

 

When I think of you, I see the Lake,

That seems not to be a lake,

Deep frozen, or mist-bound beyond the lighthouse

Arctic still even on dog-days.

I see my love braving the cold and

Apparently bound for Canada.

I remember late-night emails at the W,

Preparing for the deal that

Changed our lives for ever

 

When I think of you,

I see Lake Forest luxe

And Gold Coast widows,

The mid-western smiles,

The summer vibe

The caps and Cubs at Wrigley Field

The early morning chugging of the L

The forest of your architecture

And all that jazz;

I think of Wabash and the Wackers

The Magnificent mile

The palace of heels at Nordstrom

The smell of books at Powell’s

The shady avenues of the park,

The laughing with the friends we love,

I think of all these things you mean

And the moments you made for us,

Chicago.

 

June 13th, 2018

Poems of Place: At the M&S Café, Walsall

03 Sunday Jun 2018

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in Brands and the Management of Meaning, poems of place, Poetry

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M&S, Marks and Spencer

Poems of Place: At the M&S Café, Walsall

IMG_1502

 

Sitting amidst the rich and zingy,

Zesty feast of flavours that is

The Marks and Spencer Café,

I think of you and me.

 

And as I scan my ebbing latte’s tidal art

I think of places in this town, our town

Where post-school, we met

To court, hold hands and play.

 

I wrote you soppy poems,

Buttressed with pilfered fragments, yet in homage,

Treasured the hour before our haven closed

And the moment came to walk you to the ‘bus

 

Back in town today, ours – but not,

I’m close to where we sat and laughed

Not knowing nor imagining then,

The rich and zingy zesty love we’d share.

 

 June 2nd, 2018

 

 

Poems of Place: The Halt, 1967

04 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

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Dolgellau, Dr Beeching, Dr Williams School for Girls, Railway closures

Revising on railway line, post Beeching Chris Sheffield c 1967 c Chris Davies (2)

 

Dr. Beeching arrives at Dr. Williams’ School in Dolgellau

Somewhere on the Mawddach, excavating

The sedimentary layers of my youth

I found your smile.

In sepia, framed transgressive

And lounging between

The empty parallels of stark infinity,

You spoke:

Confident, optimistic and open

Even at a point of closure.

Full of possibilities,

You signaled encouragement and hope

Amidst the dissolution,

And with that look, advertised

The essence of youth’s big adventure

Which fifty years later I savoured once more.

 

October 3, 2017

I am grateful to Jennie and colleagues at Dr Williams on the web for permission to feature the photograph from the website which inspired this poem.

Please discover more at http://www.dwsoga.org.uk

 

 

Poems of Place: At Shotover

10 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

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Tags

Bluebells, Easter Sunday, Hope, Loss, Shotover, Thomas Tallis, VaughanWilliams

Inspired by the Fantasia On A Theme by Thomas Tallis: Ralph Vaughan Williams

IMG_0518

Sunlight scouts the forest’s weak points

And glints through dark birch parapets

Across the late morning,

This late Easter morning.

We came looking for hope,

To pause our dissertation on sadness and despair

For those we have lost;

To smell the Spring, all sweet and fecund;

To see the evidence of resurrection.

In the clearing, a process and a place today,

We hear that chord: strident, promising

Flattened and incomplete,

Then, from somewhere deep within the earth

The baseline heartbeat canon,

Which pulses strong again as if from nothing,

And shows we can indeed rise up from beds of death.

Then I see the bluebells, boisterous, on the march,

In rampant progress across the forest floor.

Thus re-connected to my optimistic self, I smile,

Past, present, future are in communion once more.

 

Easter Sunday, 2017

Poems of Place: Lunch with Tory

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

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In Memoriam, Loss, Luberon, Provence

abbaye-senanque2

We said it would be the Luberon,

Perhaps mid-September

When the crowds had left? Or mostly.

We’d find a table with a view:

Oppède Le Vieux, perhaps? Or better at Sénanque

In the hollow, amongst the purple

We’d drink Domaine Ott – barely pink, well chilled

But elegant like you

We’d banter with black olives

Or the tapenades with fig you liked

Then the smell of roast chicken would

Demand the group’s attention

And with it, we’d bring out salad leaves,

And beef tomatoes, the primed burrata.

After, some would contemplate the madelaines

And lavender honey ice creams lying in wait.

But then comforted and comfortable,

We’d pause and think of you –

And feel once more the warmth you brought.

Poems of Place: Promenade des Anglais

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Loss, Nice, Nissa, Promenade des Anglais

img_2376

(Elégie en bleu)

 

You always wore a smile

And welcomed us with warmth,

You were always best outdoors

So genial alfresco.

You loved the noise and buzz

You lived for food and friends

You were my Empire of Blue,

This elegy’s for you.

 

It took one summer’s night

To wipe away your warmth

Bring silence to your mood

And shadows to your shine

When Death crashed into you

Devastating

My Empire of Blue.

This elegy’s for you

 

For now those chaises are empty

The vélo racks are full,

The promenade is silent

Yet the sky is azure blue;

 And the sun breaks through our darkness,

As waves kiss the shore

Galettes forever treasured

As music sounds once more.

 

You’ll always be our zest,

Our carnival of joy,

The Nissa of pizzazz,

The goodness that adds life.

You’ll always be our star,

The magnet of our dreams,

The Côte within our hearts

Our Empire of Blue,

This elegy’s for you.

 

2016

 

 

Poems of Place: Hen Domen, Montgomery

15 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

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Montgomery

Surrounded by the rolling hills of debated lands

Hatched verdant and yellow brown,

And shadowed yet by galleon clouds,

The castle rock stands weathered by winds

That blow through elms and ash

Even on uncontroversial days;

And bastions slighted by the hand of men are left monument

Picked at by crows who scale the rickety finger heights

Of accidental crenellations.

I sense a magic here inside the motte,

As sentinel rabbits sniff the air and leap or run

To leave me caught in time awaiting ransom.

15 August, 2016

Poems of Place: Adventurous Training

19 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

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Farchynys, Gwynedd, Mawddach, Outward Bound, QMGS

 

Coach House Cuisine, Farchynys, Gwynedd

Friday was the dangerous day: tea came with us on wheels,

Our minibus smelling of boys and batter and non-standard tomato sauce;

Perhaps not exactly Mrs. Watkins’s Taste the Difference fish

Was stored precariously under seats in scratched Aluminum and threatened,

As we climbed the heights of Dinas.

 

Saturday often brought surprises after long fresh air days

Like Geoffrey’s Boeuf Stroganoff and the dark brown slush of

Poires au vin du Bourgogne,

The sight of which tested the saporific nerve of even Alpha boys

But nevertheless soon passed our eager invigilation and was gone.

 

On Sunday, the reward for finding long lost Roman roads

Was JAD’s Brithdir Roast: a great golden bird

Displayed with squadrons of spuds and roots

And plattered to fill us up and lift our hearts for

The journey back to Mocks.

 

The Kitchen spick once more,

The light falls in the Dayroom,

Refectory tables are stacked,

The Coach House stands empty

Yet full of the aromas of our histories.

 

Poems of Place: Acela Express

05 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by Paul Christopher Walton in poems of place, Poetry

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Boston, New York, Poems of Place, Train journeys

Boston to New York, November 18th 2015

 

Flopped, fatigued against the grain and route,

We left the dark cold concrete Boston quay

In business class, our train a silver flute

Of gleaming portholes and intricacy.

We passed sad sidings and graffitied trucks,

Framed azured skies, dark edged with orange hue,

And knew this was the day’s defensive crux

When relentless night might again break through.

By creeks and coves and whiteboard harbor homes,

We crawled then spurted to impending shade

And halted briefly where no signal roams,

Saw lights expire and all ambitions fade.

 

At this small junction, did the engine send

Its silent signal of how careers end?

 

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  • Cynicus Historicus @Oxford and Yuste
  • Poems of Place: 60611
  • Poems of Place: At the M&S Café, Walsall
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  • Another Job for Cyril (1925 -2018)
  • Poems of Place: The Halt, 1967

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