Pebbles In The Pond

Collected Poems by David Drew-Smythe

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This collection represents a sample of work created and edited over several years. Original poems from 'Candlesong' and 'Heartbeats' are included here. Some of the poems have been published - others are new - but all of them are fragments of a moment - the ripples created when a pebble drops into a pond; although the ripples fade, the time remains.

The words are set free to find their own mark - collective strings connecting hearts and minds. Some connect, several fall short of the mark; but if just a few echoes remain then these pages are justified.

All poems © David Drew-Smythe 2002. It is illegal to copy this work. No poem - whether in part or in whole - may be reproduced in any public forum in any medium without permission or by contract. Contact may be made via e-mail address > idds at bigfoot.com

Carpe Diem

Don’t let time play the thief with the precious moments of our lives by sitting still and wishing for the moon, when, all along, the moon belongs to us. We have a string, like a child’s balloon, to keep it on.

 

Shall we build boxes round our lives and dance a dirge as we let our shadows lead the lives we want to lead?

Shall we lie bleeding, burned and battered after the bomb has fallen and regret we didn’t taste the cake we meant to bake had butchery not interceded and fried the recipe we saved?

 

Let’s need because we love and not love because we need.

Share wisdom, wine and folly, an hour, a year, a lifetime; who’s to say?  But let us love. We need only to believe.

Footprints In The Sand

 

Where the salt sea air caught your spun-gold hair, there was fire.

Bushes flamed on the hillside inside the sunset where you passed

and the wild sea winds snatched up your words then cast them to eternity.

You stood against the dipping sun, against the darkening sky,

as seagulls gathered at your shoulder like snowflakes, distilled,

teased by the wind above the ocean.

Quartz cracks cried like milk and glistened off the island

to the slate black crags and the sea-shocked rocks beyond Llangranog.

So time was held for us as the turning tide returned its memory

to wipe away our footprints in the sand.

Excuses

 

Don't get angry at my fallibility.

Shall we sit down?

 

Stand then: I shall sit and refusing one of yours

will smoke a crumpled one of mine.

Your virgin pack should have no truck with me.

 

Why was I late?

Time ran out.

 

I was behind and, so intent on remembering ,

forgot the present for your birthday.

 

I may give you this instead.

Hold The Ether

 

To know me, ask my name: it will tell you little.

To love me, stand back: when I am ready, I will love.

Love every day,deeply, differently, heart and soul.

Change horses for each fence.

 

To touch me reach out: I am waiting

but forgive me if I mistrust.

A butterfly is the same.

My beating wings are for the sun

and not the net which threatens to descend.

 

I will not die in some ether jar

to be pinned out, admired and dead.

That is no epitaph.

But, rather, seek to sip the nectar

from the flowers on the way.

That is my intent.

Yours too,

I trust.

Will You Share?

Will you be life’s silken sandpaper; enigmatic? Will you share the noise of daytime or - in silence - nightimes, saying nothing, content to be? To be as two yet one the same, each unique, uniquely formed but spilling over to each other, splashing life with life, harvesting? Will you plant like for like, love for love, given freely, unreserved and unconditional?  Given, not beholden nor behoven?

Will you share the faintest touch of clothing as we pass or sit knee to knee at a table, toe on toe, sharing coffee spoons, skin on skin, the rough with the smooth? Will you share the day after the night before when acid dregs lie in the bucket, telling tales of weakness played out in bravado?  Will you share the headache, the heartache of being contradicted or contradicting when we’re driven to distraction by a stubborn will which clamours, right is right?

Will you share the fragments of a broken dream, the rage, the failure among the pieces?  Will you share late night languishing over lost art that will not come or ride the priest of passion that explodes in anger; the bloody rose, the trampled daffodil?  Will you soothe the fast frustration that lingers in the soul, festering doubt, needing to bleed the poison from the wound?  Will you suck the wound and share the poison, spit out bitterness: spit on gold?

Will you share the devils, demons, fears and phantoms who lie in wait among the cobwebs of memory - all those ghost-regrets, mumbo-jumbo things which brick up the conscience - the pangs, the pricks, the tricks of circumstance that never forgive? Will you share the cerebral skeleton dance, the closet tarantella, claustrophobic and madly, wildly mad; frenzied in so little space, cracking cranium, soft skulled, splitting hairs between what is madness and what is just mildly mad?

Will you share belief, brush lips to kindle fire, let fire surge through blazing veins to a body burning to be kissed, caressed, touched to the quick - all breast-surging, urgent breathing - beasts who babble harmonic grunts, who pigsqueal passion to please the man in man and the woman in woman; the female he and the man in she? Will you hold when holding’s needed but let loose when fancy flies free?  Be full of trust and in the understanding of love, enough to stay unthreatened?

Will you believe when others doubt or mock or try to shock you out of your belief? Will you take equal shares in the universal truth, the leveller, who plainly states that, as we lie in the aftermath of love, we'll still look ridiculous with just our socks on?

Ego/Id

 

I have a cupboard in my mind

Where I lock away my desire

To shoot a mouse with a shotgun

Or electrocute the cat,

Stuff the dog

Or put the goldfish in bleach

To see if it turns whiter than white.

But I have a special shelf,

Fireproof and waterproof,

Where I keep a gun to shoot myself

If I should open the cupboard.

Nightstallion

 

Uncertainty

In the half-light

Bred a sterile stallion

To cover nightmare's ready loin.

Sire

Of mirror images,

In the dawning light,

Half reflected

Roller-cutting rowels

On spurs jog-jangling

Down

Another Rotten Row.

Savage unsatisfied bellowing;

Hind-quarter hooves, alternate,

Battering

Broke the bridleways of thought,

Smashed the glass of being

And bled out sensibility

In troubled wakening.

The highwayman of dreams

Uncoupled from a seedless mate

And melted

Into the fertile mind

To take his place in the arid waste

Of another morning's stabling.

Child's Power

 

If

I tear the wing

from a fly

it dies

in circles spinning

without hope.

 

I did it once.

 

One wing

sang its spin

in swansong to the floor.

 

Ego

Iago, crushed it out of life

and my conscience beneath my boot.

Better To Travel

 

In life we live

on the verge of technicolour,

reaching out

for the unreachable,

knowing if the wish came true

we'd unfurl a fuller-bellied sail,

because we travel

in fear of unfulfilled arrival.

 

In death we almost made it;

but in the making was the point.

Jeg kan godt live ...

Jeg kan godt live uden dig men jeg vil helst ikke - for the light that shines was a light loved and a light loved was a light lost. The light lost was the kiss of Spring and the kiss of Spring was the Summer sun. The sun of Summer was a love missed and a love missed was the final cost.

Dear, gentle, friend and lover, you were my mirror in confusion. We can never uncry what was cried nor untie what was tied. Our reflection was truth, not lies. Because of other lovers our tomorrows died. No regrets now, save unfinished conversations and a question mark - save years to make some sense of sorrows which touched us both - save four lives collided - two lands divided - hearts spun apart to find rescue in other spheres.

If we peel away the years and say it is forgotten - if we let it simply fade without a word - then we have lived a life in so short a space for so much nothing. I need to thank you for our time. You need to know I loved you. I loved you then, I have loved you since and love you still. Though you may share it with another - my love will linger with you long after the life in me is gone.

Echoes

Mute land and solitude.

Moonlight flight of Mallard

flash beyond the pond

and tell-tale ripples

ebb.

Soft footfall

on Autumn leaves.

A Thrush sings

in December.

A Blackbird bakes

at dusk.

Cattle pulling grass in the darkness.

The sound of sea on shingle

and voices.

Always voices.

Ding Dong Bell

 

In their play, I have my part:

Ding dong bell ...

Teacher go to Hell.

A wrecker on the set.

Simply Scrooge to spoil the fun.

 

My coffee cup is empty

But they are brimming with ideas.

So much is just beginning.

 

I prowl the corridors,

Blow up the budding Waynes

And raise the ersatz dead.

 

To a groan and with a groan,

I bring the curtain down

On a certain Oscar.

Drake

 

From bank to bank

The Long Pond glitters

Through a thin-veined veil,

Littered up with clumps of feathers,

Brooding,

Heads in wings.

But one old drake

Will not brook

This impertinence.

He struts, fretful as a colonel,

Across the frozen waste

And tests each crack and crevice

For a break.

Which found,

He quacks triumphant orders

To muster minions

Who march in line astern

Towards his victory.

Puffed up proud,

He waits for the first soft plop

Of reclamation.

 

I Know You

 

I know you.

You are the one with a thousand faces:

You are the moment and the past.

 

I knew you once.

You were the one with the bamboo mind:

Always bending and imagination.

 

I will always know you.

You are the one who touched me;

Just once.

Autumn

 

A leaf

In weeks will grow old;

A dead rat hanging from the tree.

As the juice of time passes by

It will wither and mould

Lying in the gutter.

On the lawn,

Scattered and tossed by each wind

Will jump and flutter

To its own destruction.

Lord Of The Dance

 

"Dance, dance, wherever you may be,

I am the Lord of the Dance," said he.

We are both in the dance of Life.

We waltz, pirouette

And fall arse over tip.

You can keep your Two-step

And your Twist:

No matter who our partner is,

We'll both be lying on the floor,

Broken-backed emotionless.

Brief Encounter

 

Eye catches eye refracted:

Smile

To smile retracted.

Each picture fragmented

Changes

For the next meeting.

 

We rub shoulders in a crowd,

Jostle

In a queue

Or pass along the other side

Because we did not meet a mutual friend.

 

Shall we not touch each other

In some way

Before we part?

 

Let's embrace with our prefatory, hello.

To touch with hands,

Mingle fingers

Or meet lip on lip

Is as easy as to touch with words

When we may never meet again.

Dawn

 

Liquid on the hilltop

Drawn with morning mane flown out,

Its cantering sparks racing-plates from the dew.

Powdered breath proud nostrils push out

To part the mist and set the dawn on fire.

Here, this April dayrise, is one such mate for you.

With the dew-beat of your hooves

My morning,

Not yet moulded, meek mechanics,

Breathes

And for a while

Cheats the hum-drum day.

Shooting The Fox

 

As a child, I killed rabbits in the corn

Or broke the necks of Seatrout in the stream

And dreamed I was a hunter.

But here,

Now ...

Now, as the trees shift shadows,

I am haunted by my doubts.

Twigs crack to cock my trigger.

My slant-eyed goddess of the undergrowth

Creeps low, watched and waiting.

The moment:

Muzzle wavers.

Fingers tingle:

Now? Is it now?

Unnerved. Too sudden!

The night explodes.

Too late to suck back shot

Or stifle sound

As the thunder shocks

And pellets rock my fox

By the duck house door.

She stops and stares.

Who dares?

Then drops

Like a beggar's bundle.

Dead.

The fox was shot last night.

Oh, ducks, rejoice.

I shall clean my gun and dream again.

Mother's Trunk Discovered

In the half light of the attic

the leather trunk sits long forgotten

with its contents cobweb festooned;

the playground of mini-beasts

who feast on swollen pages

part damp and disarrayed.

 

Now, your memories, cocooned in dust

from the daily débris of so much life,

speak secrets in their innocence.

 

Father's love letters

once so carefully preserved

pop out with faded photographs

breaking bonds of sticky bands

quite decayed and in confusion

to mingle with the treasures of your youth.

 

This is your legacy come home

after forty years in limbo.

This is your essence distilled.

This is all the sum of us.