© roy ballard 2012


Here’s my hand, depend upon it

and my love whilst I’m alive;

I, my love and this poor sonnet

are contrived for you to thrive.

Summer turns to late September,

matched we are and yet star-crossed;

the breath of fate upon an ember

flares a light that had been lost.

History and rainy weather…

not for me to reason out

mystery and us together.

We shall live the season out

bringing just what needs to be:

me to you and you to me.

 
Multiple Sclerosis

She comes in slowly, hanging on the air.
'MS' I'm told 'She's only thirty-one'.
They park her gently 'til her name is called.
She's pushing on the stick. Can she get up?
Uncertainly she rises; dials whirl;
the altimeter spins; horizons fall;
the ground revolves; the airspeed clock goes mad.
Her head is high. By God, she's bound to stall
but up she gets and makes toward the desk.
I watch. She's leaving; careful with her things,
she mounts a tricycle and slowly checks
the brakes, trim, undercarriage, radiator, guns,
or so it seems to me. Then chocks away!
Beyond the tarmac enemies await
but out she rolls; intrepidly she flies
to join The Few who dare the dangerous skies.


















Harvest moon
once
seen
not
quite by chance
now fades in the daytime haze






Pheasant shoot at West Harling

Upon the painted meadows contented cattle graze;
the distant, towered churches brood on half a million days.
Black Carr is dank and sedgy but Micklemoor is high;
so here the Ancients settled and here their bones still lie.
The beaters whack the branches; the sportive springer runs;
they drive the tribe of pheasants to the boding line of guns.

Wrapped in the reeds by Roman Wood, the stag stands in alarm;
his ears pick up a warning, his nose the scent of harm.
The duck seeks hidden ditches, the fox forsakes his lair;
the pigeon flies across the sun and dodges like a hare.
The pheasant sounds his brassy bell, he whirrs his wings to fly
and every ear seeks out his voice and every gun the sky.

Across the heath and forest, six thousand years ago,
their fathers' dress was formal when hunting they would go.
In buckskin boots and sable, with feathers in their caps,
in moleskins and morocco they were well apparelled chaps.
And pheasants do require it, when coming to be killed,
that turn-out should be proper, be it corded, tweed or twilled;
the greasy mark of tractors, a trace of ferret stool
and hints of dogs and ditches bother nobody at all.