Than to arrive

THAN TO ARRIVE

It's partly true.  Arriving at

the bed and breakfast hours too soon,

unsweating, unached, unexhausted,

unthirsty -- that's a lot of un.

But post-concert bike home through snow,

cashless, phoneless, with frozen brakes,

and feet swollen in new shoes,

call-boxes that nobody makes 

for, nobody makes good, the first

dark and stripped of tech, half a mile

with feet and bike to the next (in light --

will it work?).  Reverse charge push-dial

instructions in Australian voice.

Did you, or I, not hear the sound

of the other speaking? Try again.

We had at least one further round

before somehow my phone box got 

your mobile with all this striving.

We fixed to meet at a spot nearby.  

You hung up and started driving.

Let me say and be senten-

tious that arrival had it then.

This is the first poem I've blogged from the output stimulated by my following Jo Bell's book 52: write a poem a week. Start now. Keep going.  I succeeded in writing 52 poems from the prompts in the book!  I took sixteen months, so this was a poem every 11 days, not one a week, but that represents a tripling of the output rate I'd had before.  I don't expect to keep it up.

The 52 prompts in the book are a most varied yearful.  'Than to arrive' was written in response to prompt 29, for a poem relating to a proverb.  The adventure in the poem took place in England, which is why the  Australian voice in the automated instructions was more or less unexpected.

Long-time readers of this blog will know my fairly strict rule of not putting poems on it unless they have already been published elsewhere.  'Than to arrive' is in The possibility of living: poems from Poetry Space Competition 2018.  Buy it.  I find myself in very good company.

Delius and Gershwin

A CONCERT

Yes –

putting Sea drift with Porgy and Bess

worked like an unexpected rhyme.

Loss, self-deceit, eastern seaboard

made their shared chord.

The above was written in 2004, after a Cambridge Philharmonic Society concert featuring the two works mentioned.  It earns its place in this blog, let me admit, by virtue of self-publication.  I fielded it using the #losslit hashtag on Twitter.  It did well compared with my tweets in general, if not compared with other people's #losslit tweets, so I offer it now.

I have found a seam of creativity by following the book 52: write a poem a week.  Start now.  Keep going by Jo Bell. My rate of production hasn't come to one a week -- after nearly a year I've only just got on to number 37 -- but the book's prompts include published poetry that has opened several new planets to explore.

How I learned to ride a bike

THE WALL AND THE STABLE DRIVE AND THE LANE AND THE NEXT VILLAGE

I learned biking late, and later still

heard how aged six, not understanding brakes,

I'd crashed against a wall. Eleven years,

while that unlearn eluded memory,

cycling balance eluded me too, made

bicycles a phobia. But –

"Rode Hugh's moped" is in my diary.

Not why, or who came up with that idea.

A stable drive was long enough for me,

longer than any pushbike I could fear.

For months, I risked no balancing on wheels.

Urged to a Christmas job some roads away,

too far for bus or walk, and to these skills,

I tried my sister's bike on Boxing Day.

The moped ride had not been fluke or fake.

I whizzed to the next village down the lane.

Uphill I found was harder. It would take

longer and the straight line was extra strain.

My ageing feet now say "Walk bad, bike good."

The prequel crash continues to elude.

The above was my contribution to the 26 Memory Maps project.  The map I drew for it is this:

The 26 Memory Maps project was the brainchild of Neil Baker (no relation).  Taking part in it did me a lot of good as I convalesced from a knot of health problems in the summer of 2017.  At the time of blogging, cycle journeys are again out of bounds for reasons of convalescence.  I have been putting this time to good use by following another creative project.  Work produced under that other project will be blogged, according to my usual rule, as and when it gets published.

Meanwhile, take a look at 26 Memory Maps.  50 contributions besides mine!