Colin F. Jones

~ Spondon Bells ~
Part 1: THE WARD

Deficient to life is time
cushioned by erosion,
of the muscles and ligaments,
of the cranium,
incompleteness of endeavour,
of pain, of love and youth.

Life; disorderly conquest,
bound by order of time;
fractured;
loose ends of broken threads,
spasmodic and intermitting.
Ripeness and decline,
the decrepitude of purpose:
juvenility returning briefly
tickling primogeniture.

Each is his book,
the book being time.
Each page a page of life:
an inflammable content,
temporary, without copy.

First cry of pubescence:
adolescence to incunabula,
then temporary balance,
the pain of others… then death.

The slim sapling bends more easily,
misunderstanding the wind.
Thicker limbs feel the pain
of resistance.

Frail ones live in hope;
there are some who hide from wind
and shatter in still air,
or are never disorganised enough
to live.

Some stars extinguish
before being seen to die;
no yellow leaf apparent;
no running to seed;
no mellowing.

Spring remains in every winter,
as agile thoughts with crippled feet;
youth in a cocoon of anility;
compressed; depressed; often angry,
a boy in an old body;
an athlete unable to perform;
a humbled defeated pretender,
being destroyed by time.

So it is a time to remember,
recall past summers… winters;
subrogation of time with time,
fearing the lack of it,
with less years to live
than have been lived,
left for restoration.

While that which is passing:
while it is with you.
While you can recall before recalling,
that which you are,
and will be; and die having been,
while time is with you,
it is time to hear children,
hear dogs bark; notice flowers;
kick balls in the park,
be once the child.

A Day by the Sea

Now the ship, bearing less sail,
upon a mast not able to carry more,
on a fragile hull, old fashioned
from whatever timbers were available,
when trees were plenty and wasted,
when limbs were irrelevance.

Now the ship makes slow progress
towards the same sun,
and the final port;
then dry dock and death,
and whatever after.

The captain,
he looks through a narrow scope,
seeing the second wave,
due to technology,
seeing beyond true sight;
seeing too far,
beyond the ships capability.

From old maps he navigates
with new instruments,
that would have saved him time
in passed time,
reduced recall; recall of events,
no longer significant
to recall as events.

The horse is gone, and comradeship,
absent in metallic conveyance,
isolating the traveller
inside his burden of convenience.

The captain from ancient rocks
watches the tide rise in his eyes,
the horizon ever more distant; fading;
great swells, grey, rearing,
far above the deck and tattered sail;
and he sleeps feeling the spray,
tasting the salt;
the wind entering his mind;
the tide lapping his feet.

Voices!!

Children’s voices come nearer,
like seagulls flying from the east
fluttering and squawking about him.

He feels quiet joy, elation!
A peace he had not known before.
A closeness with life,
and like a gull soars
out across the freshness of the ocean,
sweeping the contours of the waves,
dipping and diving.

Mountains skim by below,
margined by rivers,
and meadows, and forests,
quaint villages,
and animals: and animals.

When his eyes open,
they do so with a snap!
Unblinking they stare,
looking at nothing.
Seeing everything.

The silver birch was queen
in the wood; Devases wood,
due to beauty and to
where she stood in the very centre,
a bloom for the purpose
of youth’s harmony.

‘Twas where they met,
the Spondon[1] ruffians,
pretend barbarians, robin hoods
and all manner of nobility.

‘Twas Alice’s wonderland
and Crusoe’s island:
and the world of English boyhood.

Big Monk[2], the forest adventurer’s Everest,
rose in the mind unconquerable,
waiting for time to pass;
for limbs to grow; and courage.

Big Monk did not see the summer,
it lived a cruel autumn;
the great due to its greatness,
being humbled – humbled unto death.

With the king gone,
what of the wood?
What of the queen?
Was the future the weeds?
The hair upon the magnetic mountain,
they all wished to scale?

He can’t go now, the adventurer,
to view the great tree.
He’ll never climb it;
what is left to climb?

Was there ever a Big Monk?
If they leave him there…
If they don’t come to move him,
he will drown.

The sea is restless,
the tide moving in
will soon be about his only activity;
his mind.

But they will come.
Wheel him away… just before the big wave,
to become an infant again.

They will know what is best for him.
There are no cobwebs in the loft
but they cling profusely to the structure
that supports it.

“We have become a relic without value,
yet one influencing duty;
to be preserved in half manner
until we become fragments.

Ashes in the wind,
make final, make just,
the decapitation of Big Monk.

©Copyright 2002 by Colin F. Jones