Poems by Stuart Nunn

Tyley Bottom ©

Near walk’s end, the way takes me down,

off the flat tops where sheep play happily

at madonna and child in the April sunlight.

I have the valley to myself, but there’s something

out there, up there, where woods conceal

more than they shelter, and I’m the lone rider

braving the canyon. The distant silhouetted cows

could be watching Chiricahua. Coded signals

ricochet from hanging wood to broken wall.

The pheasant’s cracked-bell cough is warning

of my approach, calls in the air support –

and a pair of buzzards menace lazily.

There are eyes on my back, and ears

alive to each footfall. Abandoned sacks

could be watchers from the bramble clump.

Defiant, I squat on a rock to write these notes.

This valley will be better off without me.

Birdsong holds its breath till I move on.

Forest of Dean adit

Health and Safety forbids it now,

but I’ve taken children through here many times.

They scramble down from the entrance,

torches passed from hand to hand,

assemble giggling in the tunnel’s mouth.

Are we all here? Mind your head.

Tania, watch where you put your feet.

And where the floor begins to rise

and half-blocked passages go off to either side,

we stop and do the education bit.

This was their way to work, back in the days

when this was England’s iron heart,

and here they’d labour, your medieval siblings,

ten, twelve, fifteen hours of darkness.

Now – torches off on a count of three,

and feel those staggering minors

brush past us in the black. No – don’t shriek.

It’s only history. We can banish it

by switching on the lights and minding the puddles

as we troop out into sunlit woods.

The Australian pelican

Pelicanus conspicillatus -

monochrome as a white-tied hooray Henry.

Hangs about in tide-deserted creeks,

can stand like this for hours,

survey the town from a strategic lamp-post.

They patrol like jumbo jets, rendering

the impossibility of flight in wing and glide.

In air, the clumsy beak becomes

go-faster streamlined. The wings spread wide

deny earth’s inevitability.

But see the yellow, glittering eye –

it shows no possible emotion beyond greed.

The old man’s neck gobbles in flaps.

How much better they are at a distance –

the very superior Australian pelican.

Capoeira¹ on College Green

A drum taps, mid-afternoon, hands clap.

Organised, emancipated, a knot of youth,

cross-legged, surround two dancers –

no - fighters, though fists miss, feet swing

taut but harmless. No - dancers after all.

They know their places. Tagged in by twos,

rhythm-shaped, each leads, attacks,

and then responds; loop, swerve, coil;

each move a practised tactic, understood,

but startling, an aesthetic of aggression.

Innocent, but practised in will and body,

they dance this city’s history, bringing home

the bondage. Spectators, half interested,

can’t know how these twining limbs

echo shackles, a forgotten continent.

Sweat gleams on shoulders and breasts

that dance across enslaving oceans,

celebrating subjugation but defiant.

Across the green, the gothic bells that rang

for slavery’s continuance are decently silent.

1 Capoeira – a Brazilian martial art and dance form which originated among slaves of African descent.

Dead-Heading

I am in shorts and sandals

and the end of spring announces itself

in narcissi turned to paper

under my dead-heading hands.

But on TV snow still swirls around

the reporter and the running cops,

and a long-haired boy says

he can’t explain it.

My tulips came up the wrong colour,

primitive DNA asserting life’s imperatives:
I dig them up, leaf and corm

and dump them in the recycling bin.

For the smiling gun dealer spring means

extra things to kill: game birds, students,

women who chose the wrong market place.

Dead-head them, every one.

Yate Shopping Centre

She parks by Claire’s Accessories, where they know her,

crouch by the chair to chat, compliment her lip gloss,

talk as though hairbands, earrings, glitter spray

will straighten out her spine, let her walk and bring

running the boys they hope against hope to win themselves.

People know them now because they were on Points West,

but don’t speak to them because, well, you know,

it was murder. So they walk from Tesco’s, past Shaw’s

to the greengrocer’s, buy fruit, as though when they get home,

it won’t be just the two of them, and she’ll be back.

He speaks to everyone, as though they know him,

with his red braces showing in all weathers. His gait

is worse since we first saw him all those years ago,

when he might have had a chance. Now he swings

his empty shopping bag, and smiles, and smiles, at everyone.

This is their hunting ground, now that darkness is falling.

They show each other how to hold their cigarettes,

and talk to girls, and not take any crap

from parents. They eye each other carefully. It matters

which shop they look at, how the obscenities wound.