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Dave Lewis Poem
He never once mentioned the pressure of his blood
or his Mam
I found dead on the floor
his Dad’s cancer
or his younger brother
not once, during the best years of my life
he fixed cars
with a pipe slowly smoking
a magician with gauges and valves
he drank small amounts of beer
most nights
talked of governments,
jays, woodpeckers and herbs
and fishing
he once caught a 200lb conger
he threw it back, no big deal
walked his dog over a hundred years old
until she died too
he never once mentioned it, but we noticed
the angle of the briar
the bedraggled churchwarden
the butter in the beans
that one extra potato
the few extra pounds
but not once ever
did he bring up our grumbles
our impoliteness
or our dirty shoes
through fleeting visits
he just smiled, understood us like Buddha
he gave without receipts
or IOUs
would it have mattered
if we’d found the tablets in his drawer
or deciphered the consultant’s scrawl
papered vaguely on the wooden table?
he wasn’t expecting guests, I guess
and then one random Sunday,
memories of mountains
and meadows
and fox cubs
and bullfrogs,
warm summers
and the scent of tobacco
went out
from 'Sawing Fallen Logs For Ladybird Houses' 2011
http://amzn.to/seDv8w
Copyright © Dave Lewis | Year Posted 2020
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Dave Lewis Poem
High home summer hill
Straining, sucking, sitting
Staring, stopped and stick-
A pit-prop tight and gripped.
The trees across the valley
Much higher than he can go now.
I pant to reassure him
In time with his withered eyes.
His tongue, tombed gritty green
He’s faithful, though he’s fading
Bones in death-grey jumper
Where will he lead me next?
from 'Layer Cake' 2009
http://amzn.to/vXCEFa
Copyright © Dave Lewis | Year Posted 2020
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Dave Lewis Poem
You came in a beat up old blue Landie
with tales of sleeping giants on your lips.
It was your first night in the cottage
when the Wye was skipping over stones,
dividing the spiked water milfoil
with sacred Pumlumon Fawr sunk into the sunset.
We watched a heron draggle
in and out of the water crowfoot beds,
trusted we’d see muntjac or wild boar tomorrow.
Look, there’s a kingfisher, jewelled above the otter’s holt
and later a dipper, teeter-totter,
near the yellow-cress.
Watching frogs collared by ripples
we wish for a grass snake or polecat.
Skipping past horse-tail and great willowherb
you trace the sand martins with your miniature fingertips
while I collect peppery chives from the bedrock
and turn my once carefree soul to my stomach.
from 'Scratching The Surface' 2019
https://amzn.to/32GSMGl
Copyright © Dave Lewis | Year Posted 2020
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Dave Lewis Poem
…incongruous car
alien
shiny-red, carwash-clean
not the usual
sharp edges
not stolen, like glances
not abandoned, like puppies
not torched, like memories
not peeling, like marriage
not rusting, like opportunity
not dumped, like dreams
not burnt out, well…
his coat was left on a rock
overlooking the industrial estate
while drinkers and drivers
leave the Rose and Crown
past farms
and blissful sheep
his purple face
his bloated tongue
the hosepipe and
the kitchen knife and
the stomach wounds and
the shiny-red, blood
he stares like buzzards
catching hot air
from the engine
as the coppers
let the fumes out
they joke about it
concerned as cows
“What a waste
of leather seats, ha ha”
before they drive home
to tea with the wife
“Good day luv’?”
“Aye, usual.”
from 'Urban Birdsong' 2010
http://amzn.to/rN5hBG
Copyright © Dave Lewis | Year Posted 2020
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Dave Lewis Poem
born beneath a tangle of stars
cream cry Hamal
blood-warm straw
away in a manger
the whistle of distant collie
but all too soon
a frosty breeze chews the nostrils
the farmed proletariat
mass in trucks with fear
spindle limbs hacked, knife hung on a hook
dragging her chair across the carpet
mother mews the table herd
clatter, scrape – silver on bone china
manufactured in the factory
nestled underneath the familiar glue-speckled hills
vinegar-sharp conversation about oppression
dripping mint on the lottery of sex
a rabble wrapped in wool shawls
animal logos defining irony
blind to the tender meat we are
from 'Reclaiming The Beat' 2016
http://amzn.to/1Rt6DSF
Copyright © Dave Lewis | Year Posted 2020
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Dave Lewis Poem
Walking at dusk through the old park,
the golden glow of forgiveness
hangs in the air long enough
for you to steal it with both hands
but you choose not to,
you choose, deliberately,
to let the sun set on that particular episode.
You walk the other way,
past the lake, past the flowerbeds
until you become traffic,
become a remnant,
for I will not open that wound again,
will not offer the exquisite beauty of autumn
in exchange for your eyes,
those all-consuming lips,
that soft touch and hard hug.
No. It will not happen again this sharp day,
I promise, I swear in my best verbs.
Until tomorrow then.
from 'Roadkill' 2013
http://amzn.to/1hQ3OKa
Copyright © Dave Lewis | Year Posted 2020
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Dave Lewis Poem
Historical crooner, troll-like in burrows
your eerie cries are supernatural.
Lacking red, yellow and orange
but you shear the air to make up for it.
I walked a few steps around your island once. Got
so tired in a day with sandwiches and pop.
Marvelled at your fifty million mile journey
from Bardsey, (just down the road really) to Brazil, Argentina
and Southern Africa.
You hang on the gale like the washing on my line
and use your super powers to trace the planet.
Crystals of magnetites within the eye
you navigate better than Shackleton.
Ginsberg’s puffin, who cries at the moonlight
come home to me at night.
And you connect for life
and say hello with a kiss.
As old as me
but much wiser I see.
from 'Going Off Grid' 2018
https://amzn.to/2Ei8gUl
Copyright © Dave Lewis | Year Posted 2020
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