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Best Poems From
C RICHARD MILES
(1961)
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221.
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Black Frost Morning
It's cold this morning, numb-thumb cold
Whose keenness nips nail-bitten fingertips
Even beneath the knitted thickness of mittens.
But, surprise, surprise no white this night
Has failed to make pale powder-puff frost
Appear upon the gloss-green grassy park
Yet on the drab-drawn slab-stone streets,
Glassy dark, burnished black-ice gleams
Obsidian mirrors of a scowling, jet-clad sky,
Whose turned-up corners only vaguely dare
Suggest some shades of day-dawn purple
As black-frost mutters havoc malevolently
Whispering deathly-cold under its grey breath
Suggesting that unwitting steps should slip
As grasping hard-bound ground, magnetically,
Draws us, unsuspecting plodders, down to doom.
C Richard Miles
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222.
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Black Night Haiku
Night turns starless black
As lumpy stratus custard
Clogs sky's colander.
C Richard Miles
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223.
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Both Sides Of The Fence
Is it green that Ive seen on your side of the fence?
Down my way, it is grey on my side of the street.
At a loss, I will cross to learn, to my expense
That I find, in my mind, that your lifes not so sweet.
Now I view it is blue on your side of the fence.
Now I know, as you go, that things for you were hard.
I am sad it was bad, now Ive seen the evidence
That for you, it is true, life has dealt a losing card.
So Ill sit, for a bit, on your side of the fence
And well chat over that awful trouble you have met.
Sad to tell, it is well I have had experience
So that I, by and by, can comfort your upset.
But its clear, you appear, now youve conquered your setback,
To have brought your support for my problems thick and dense.
Help me to battle through all the hazards on my track
And Ill go, sure and slow, to my side of the fence.
Hand in hand, we can stand confident, my faithful friend.
Now I know, it is so, then there is no difference
And I must, only just, keep on fighting to the end.
I will track the way back to my side of the fence.
After all, I recall, as we empathise and laugh,
I have found, that your ground, to rise to your defence,
Is as flat as is that which I tread along my path
So Ill stay, all the way, on my side of the fence.
Yes, well go, here below, on our sides of the fence.
We are fine, all the time, on the green side of the fence.
We will find we wont mind the mean side of the fence.
It is good that we should, on both sides of the fence.
C Richard Miles
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224.
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Bowers Row Second-hand Memories
Although shut pits no longer spit their
Packed-grit, black, thick-slack phlegm from
Hacked pick-carved sun-starved bronchioles
Deep in the high-spine Pennines' pulsing chest,
Green-seeded heaps of spoil-hill snot still blot
The gang-scraped Yorkshire landscape
And make me hark back second-hand
To an almost-unremembered past when dad,
A flat-capped gap-toothed lad, was shipped off
To one of his dozens of cousins who culled coal
At Bowers Row in thirties' raw austerity
To learn a lesson of what life might be
If he would not apply himself assiduously at school.
Meningitis and the tide of war perhaps prevented
This apprentice painter from the pit's pull but
Maybe the visit did its bit to re-inspire him.
At Bowers Row, spring flowers grow now
Where all was soot-stained grey but there may
Still be some pale remembrance of a lad,
My dad, who made his one descent inside the mine,
Confined close-coffined in a pit-cage for a day.
C Richard Miles
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