Derrick Gaskin

When all these numbers are finally crunched
As electrical spasms jerk each thought
At equations of such simplicity –
Patterns emerge that were there all the time.
Nothing arrives without arithmetic
Shaping paws – or stripes on a cat’s long tail,
Calculating the way it thinks and purrs
To heal itself as some illness takes hold.
Adding this to what’s seen in cold night skies
That seem far away, everything becomes
Clear, almost algebraic, not simple
But chalked on a blackboard for a child to read.
Do subtracted lives shrink in importance,
Pale figures, vague shadows in the distance?

Darkness everywhere when we open our eyes
To tears in the tide’s never ending song.
Oblivion everywhere before we could think
Of being oblivious to right or wrong.
Beauty everywhere until we lose
Our souls, stolen before we can blink.
Silence everywhere, as stars burn
Not for us as we never learn.
Innocence everywhere as their animals kill,
Not for food, just for the thrill.
Freedom everywhere as they forge our chains,
Blood, rust and tears washed away in the rains.

(for DC)

I remember walking through quiet landscapes
Of English poetry, feeling distant nostalgia,
Drawing out of shadows all those words,
Ideas, metaphors, similes, the usual mechanics
Great poets used in synthetic dreams –
Half asleep, your lightning hit me awake.
For hours, days, an echo of that flash
Rattled around my head – what was it?
Waiting, crouching in a hedge of words
Pulling back dead leaves of autumn, I searched –
And there it was again, streaking across the sky.
Hauling myself up, starting to run, trying to find
The exact spot where you pinned that thunderbolt,
Something so different from the mundane,
From the ‘normal’ careful herd of words,
Like cattle meandering from an open gate,
While yours was a stampede of syllables.
Somehow I tried to avoid the crush of images,
Grabbed one of your poems by the horns.
Slowed it down. But tame it? Impossible.

And that’s how it’s been for 7 years.
The maturity of youth – would that fit?
The rush of a teenager already adult?
But the other evening I saw
Millions of wings soar into the heavens.
Like words in your poems, each bird
Separate, yet close to its neighbour.
Never touching, turning, rising, falling,
A cloud, a murmuration of starlings,
Its amazing shape, ever changing,
As if a master was painting
A living canvas. And then the finale,
As the last line of feathered bodies
Completed their aerial dance, just as night
Fell – but not fallen – the sounds of words
Chattering in my brain. Knowing that
Once those songs have been written
In the sky, or crafted down on your page,
This world would never be the same,
Could never be as perfect, again.

For winter’s twisted trees there is no escape.
The Earth turns, no longer at the centre,
A mere speck in the sandstorm,
The sun knowing what power is, unlike
Those under a warm comfort of snow.
Trees writhe, oblivion short lived
As the agony begins and roots stretch.
Icicles slowly die, drip by drip.
The distorted trees squirm, the thrash
Of each bud, the struggle to stay asleep.
The sun, relentless, hammers the heat
Into shape, jerks the worm from its bed,
Pulls flowers apart, rips the clouds
Wide open, summer’s tears weeping
Over leaves and sheaves of wheat
By the shade of spent trees
Buying time until autumn.

Stretched into the night then twisted by the
Sun. In the early hours and at first light
Nightmares dance as one, accepting this life
As flowers fade and petals fall from sight.
Some seeds will live beneath these autumn dreams –
Small weeds are we, some with a tall belief:
To not believe each soul will die alone,
Separated by that eternal thief.
He takes without remorse, his conscience clear,
There is no force, no dragging by the neck,
It’s timed by that quick moment in the womb.
No master dealing cards in this stacked deck:
Each of those rich shadows bestowed at birth
Will be eclipsed by a spin of the Earth.

Midwinter must not be the chilled wind,
Emptying tears from a child’s eye,
Shivering a mother’s fear. Midwinter
Cannot destroy the flame of youth,
Nor the embers of age.
This eve, heralding a special day,
Should not be a solstice of despair;
A longing for a Heaven that is not of Earth;
A craving for the end of guilt, survival
Of what was once a life, hearts frozen
Outside a world still full of compassion.
Midwinter would not be the end of warmth
If summer flowered in our minds.
Scattering seeds of our future onto these dark days
Is not an act of desperation
But an act of love for future generations.