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HEATHER GATLEY - POEMS

1/10/2019

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Picture
Heather Gatley was an English teacher for many years in International Schools. Born in Cyprus, she has travelled all her life and currently lives in Taiwan with her husband. She has two grown up children in the UK, one a philosopher and one a film maker. She has written all of her life and one day hopes a book will materialize. Poetry is her first love and her father used to read her little snippets of Shakespeare as she sat on his knee long ago. Her mother was her biggest influence, with tales of London life and dreams of travel. Her favourite writer is Joseph Conrad.

​Bungalow

​Something there is
That does not love a bungalow
The mournful fact of managing
Only the one floor from now on
The cold carpets and damp smell
Of must – from never putting on the rads
The sterile emptiness and long silence
Of the clock-ticking front room
The damp skirting boards where the bank
Rolls the rainfall down towards the walls
In winter, spring or fall
Something there is that fills with fears
At a home so squat and near the ground
Like the little villages seen upon a hill in South America
So beautiful, garlanded and bedecked
Yet disappointing on approach
Because so Lilliputian, small
False as a fronted film set
Empty as the mini archways, steeples and domes
That reveal themselves to be so many tombs
O give me always the second floor
The window for the peeping sun at dawn
The stairs to climb in hope
Descend each morn
Leave bungalows for empires and the Raj
Not English villages and shrubs
With tottering lonely ladies in garden gloves
Who watch from windows lonely as the rain
And wait to shuffle off away from pain.

​Dark Past

​Who knows why one day
Swerving by chance into a lonely cul-de-sac
Of sugar-cane and dried up river-bed
The stomach draws down your heavy heart?
 
Or pausing in the seraph-wind of midnight
Beneath the stars behind the turquoise Eucalypts
An empty rush of bats’ wings carries off your soul?
 
Black and dark are the hills of Spain
Electric burns the air
Where screams were stopped in the common pits
Of mass graves dug upon a whim of hate.
 
They left their doleful sighs of despair and grief
To whisper in the arid reeds
While brave tight-lipped relatives agreed
To move on.
 
Now the clean soul of a new generation
Scrambles its nails in the harsh dust
And the remnants of ageing grandfathers
Scowl bitterly as the land gives back its past
 
Here is a place of unfledged sorrow.
Only the hot vibrations of a silent day
Leave you confused – make you want to run away.

​Hardwick Wood

​We'll walk once more through Hardwick Wood
Where the ice-age maid and her wight once stood
Along the Mere Way by you I'll be led
Surveying the bluebells that now lie abed

We'll pause to a backdrop of rolling gold corn
And remember our children at play on your lawn
So wide is the sky as we fade slowly away
And we'll talk of it all; say: back-in-the-day!

The ponies will come to your handful of grass
You'll tell me you laugh when you look in the glass
And we shan't think of frailty and heavenly sway
With a spring in our step as we walk the Mere Way.

​Hardwick Wood with Anne

​Along the tunneled green path
Long and straight as a die
We chatter and stride
Into the ancient ice-age wood
As the Chiff Chaff sings
And the bluebells lie green and dying

See there on the ground
Feathers ravaged by sparrowhawk
Or Fox.  And here is the ancient dyke
Where stone-age man dwelt

Through the gate and suddenly, the sky.
A field of corn, ripe and fullsomely breathing
Away the curves, out to the horizon
Golden, elemental, undulation.

Here we stand.  I, strong as the day
And you, shrunken and battered.
But your spirit strides forward,
Taking us through the space we have deserted

Come, you say.  Look.  Breathe.  Follow
I will show you the riches of this flat land
And her ancient byeways
Let us walk tall for our remaining days
And face our failing futures head-on.
Though my vessel is weakened
My spirit was always strong
And steadfastly, I can show you
The way that we can go on.


​Indigo Sky

I like to write of indigo mornings
the old castle stone-grey against the sky
at the turning of the peninsula
now the faithful gather to remember
 the church bell- tower silent and stranded,
the squire's portico’d verandah empty
instead I stand on the shore looking out
Far and far filled with fears that I may cease,
I see the air lit up in a white flash
and wait the windrush on the bombed out spit
of night time sortees,  sinister search lights,
Moments of terror Fused by cowardice
 We are the runway to their greed and plans.
My mind is seething, full of scorpions
and will not settle, for I see the past 
All deserted and alone, testament
To good thoughts, crumbled by dark treachery
Old radios silent. Don't turn them on
Curl you aching bones away from it all
Sink down to the shore, the indigo sky
Try, and float to another dimension.

13/11/2016
remembrance Sunday
Woke to Nigel Farage shaking Trump's hand

​Pantoun 2016

The myst’ry hides out in the bay
A bell tolls underneath the sand
An ancient figure turns away
The falcon cries in distant lands
 
A bell tolls underneath the sand
The blackened wreck sinks to the shore
The falcon cries in distant lands
The island sails forever more
 
The blackened wreck sinks to the shore
You cannot see beneath the waves
The island sails forever more
This is the thing your dead soul craves
 
You cannot see beneath the waves
An ancient figure turns away
This is the thing your dead soul craves
The myst’ry lies out in the bay.
 

23/05/2016
Walking in the sweet May time, the tide far far away

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