Jonathan Beale- Three Poems

Wild sea at Choshi by Hokusai

Here vertical and the perspective vie

Mountainous spume overwhelms and

Weighs as heavy as the hawk

In the wind.  The out crops parental

Eye blind.  The companies lost in

Currents

East of Ed they dance on the edge

The earth draws them

Bouts merge and become a thing among the waves

Demolish visions clawing up

Failing to hold on

As it gently

Slips and falls

So softly

Rolls

back  

Unveiling Cookham War Memorial (1922) Stanley Spencer

They could not be these without him (descendant)

In their Sunday finest of the Great War – far away

Yet raw to most – the Surrey sun reveals

The white stone – and aide memoir –

Heads bowed – automated

As they who fell under Kitchener’s pointing finger 

Spaces await filling

Those in their fragility – must – step

Onward, onward – time tricks

They’re doomed to aging and long deals

Unlikely they ‘who shall not grow old’

Their minds still too full for reflection

The tears never very far away

Germinal (2001) Matthew Ritchie

Its March 20^th

                    the air is ready

spring brings action.

       Ripe for revolution 

Just around the corner are the next, and the next….

                    A massive weight of expectation

There is always the hope that hope that encases

Every seed.

                                                                    Even the seed

Is among the driest dustiest blackest coal – life giving

Étienne Lantier that young driven idealistic engine

His red raw rage that drove him on and on….