DAVID PUNTER - POEMS

David Punter is a poet and writer based in Bristol, UK. He has published poetry extensively in magazines and journals on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as six small pamphlets. He performs his poetry regularly, both solo and with a group of poets and jazz musicians called Echoes and Edges.

​A General History of Mutiny

rigging
(it’s all rigged)
chance game
twixt decks
of hands
 but now at the top-sail furling out strong wind
sweating swearing
in press
gang-way
of companions
cap’n swings
(will swing)
down below
in fire
eternal
with the padre’s
bowl of lemons
as we heave
mainbracing (the mainsail) our yard-arms angle at 70 degrees
above the swell
ocean
widow-maker
but a captain
(as the capstan turns)
will be widowed
in his many-windowed 
poop cabin
tonight
will taste of the sea make his pleasant reconciliation
with the fathers of oak and sea-green teak
all ship-shape (what is the shape
of a ship as it dwindles
down to nothing
below the
keel)

At Dusk

Whitened grass and deeply pinkened clover
shapes collapse and show their own reserve.
The ancient tumulus lurches and turns over
settling life’s journey in a different groove.

Silhouettes of love, shadows of flavour,
no black and white, just widely haloed grey.
The girl at dusk wears a mallow for a favour
glinting vermilion in the sun’s last ray.

No drum is beaten, no violin’s last glory,
no maddened clarinet assaults the sense;
the pause prolongs the finish of the story:
A pitch-black army pitches night’s black tents.

The Customs Post
​

Out here in the brackish fen, I have almost forgotten
What brought me here, or how I was enrolled;
The canvas roof of the storeroom’s damp and rotten,
Mists roll in, enveloping me in cold.

So too do the goods, six-foot tubes of metal,
Crates warped with travel, shapes that defy the brain,
The dimensions all awry; outside there grows the nettle,
Thistle, dogweed, wild produce of the rain.

The trucks arrive on roads I cannot see,
Camouflaged man with faces of iron unload
And then are gone while I finger the key,
Briskly unlock, stamp on the inspection code.

That’s all, it seems, that I’m required to do;
I’m not paid – my meals arrive in trays,
My metal chair sticks to me like a deadly glue,
Grim nights succeeded by even grimmer days.

I have my pride; I keep my one room clean,
The store looks after itself; other trucks come,
Remove the contents, pass on to places unseen;
My mind empties, my extremities are numb.

This is a place for entry and for leaving,
But while I may I keep a kind of order;
Outside, the winds are suffering and grieving
But at all costs, we must maintain this border.

​

How can the Hedgerows
​

How can the hedgerows
     and the purple of the bluebells
memories like rabbits
     scuttling off the path
or like swallows
     criss-crossing ahead of the car
on tracks, always on tracks
     a flash of fur
as a weasel pounces
     a sliver of dark light
in rain-diamonded undergrowth
     a brilliant unforgetting
of old ways, never hidden
     but memoried as a small boy
in school uniform
     lost by a dark lake
on the edge of the swamp
     eyes wide for what
might appear nodding
     At the top of the forest
where his run might end
     before it has begun
unnoticed, unrevealed
     by the innocent hedgerows.

​

Love and Water
​

The clouds are piled like turrets formed of gold,
The silver water slides along the quay;
My morning body against your sleeping thigh,
The heron darts down from the moving tree.

Pale zebra-fish and green and purple wrasse
Trace rivulets of pattern on your arm
And incandescent colourings of delight
Break like defeated waves upon your calm.

Our love is like the water as it flows
Through channels to a landing-place unknown;
It imitates the starling as it glows
And brings forth all the glory in the bone.

​