Frank Halliwell's Poetry - Page 5
D U S T
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
A friend wrote a lament to dust.
She swore and fumed and long discussed
A publicly proclaimed decree
That dust was her sworn enemy!
But dust we know, has long withstood
Endless attacks by womanhood,
And warded off from dusk to dawn
Their sprays and rags and feathered wands.
It merely moves from place to place
Drifting around with easy grace,
Till once again it gently drops
To shelf and desk and tabletop
And settles down scorned and eschewed,
There to remain until pursued
Again in unavailing chase
Around the house from place to place.
But in the end, they suffer pains:
Sore backs and arms: -the dust remains,
For dust is an eternal thing
Always benign, not menacing!
As husbands know, the dust exists
For writing notes and grocery lists,
For jotting down phone numbers too!
- A handy kind of residue!
For one may write on dust with ease,
And save the paper, and those trees!
...A notepad that is heaven-sent
For guarding the environment!
o0o
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M E T E R
With apologies to Robert Browning
"How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix".
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
We sat round a table, a dozen or so
Discussing the merits that make poems flow.
You need a good story, for that need is prime,
And then perfect meter, to accent great rhyme!
But how many rhymers are there that you meet
That feel if it rhymes, then the job is complete?
No careful thought given to meter and stress
Produces a rhyme that is apt to depress!
If you rode with Browning to Aix down from Ghent,
And galloped the whole night 'til horses were spent,
You'd know, come the morning, long after that time
That meter is very important to rhyme!
For you can imagine as you ride that course,
You feel the great strength of your galloping horse,
The rippling muscles, the four flying feet,
The ring of the hooves on the cobblestone street.
One syllable added or stripped from that race
And both horse and rider will fall on their face.
Good meter transmutes poems to their apex,
And that would be great news to carry to Aix!
o0o
I M A G I N E
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
In this desk I keep my magic,
All the grist to feed my mill
Cryptic entries in my notebook..
Written with my magic quill!
I'm immune to bonds that hold men;
Bonds of place and gravity
And may fly to where I wish to.
Anyplace I want to be!
I can venture to the future
In a rocket powered by rhyme,
Or I can rewrite history
Back in the mists of time.
I can take you to the Arctic
And we'll never feel the cold,
Or dive to find a galleon
Laden with sunken gold!
For no boundaries hold the poet
As they may hold other men.
He's transported in an inkling
By the power of his pen!
We need no trains or cars or planes.
Nor ships to span the sea,
Imagination carries us
To where we want to be!
o0o
I Remember
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
I remember as I wander
Through recesses of my mind
A lot of incoherent things
As passing years unwind.
Frivolous, unimportant things
As memories overflow.
Things unimportant even then...
So very long ago!
The train is racing toward us
Black smoke belching from its stack
The monster shakes the very earth
As it roars down the track!
Tensing on the bridge above
The railroad line below.
The passing train wraps us in smoke!
..We flaunt our bravado!
For we were young an brave and tough
And stood our ground like men
Against three hundred tons of steel,
..A smoking Dragon then!
We stood against its fiery breath
And smoke that made us choke
Of course we knew that we'd survive,
It was a boyhood joke.
Yesterday I watched a train
As it rolled down the track.
Although they do the same job now,
There's something that they lack...
They whine and stink of diesel oil
There's no romance to-day!
So give us back those big steam trains
That thrilled our yesterdays!
o0o
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FLIGHT 4590
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Proud icon of our modern world
Our stratosphere explored.
She flexed her mighty muscles
While her power surged and roared.
The brakes released, she raced along
Swept by the turbines' wrath
But just ahead, a strip of metal
Lay within her path.
A tire pierced quickly explodes..
The shrapnel from the wheel..
Can not be stopped by aircraft skin
Destroyed by shards of steel.
A ruptured fuel tank quickly spills
Its vapour to the air.
Ignited there by hot exhaust
It streams out in a flare!
Two engines starved of fuel shut down.
The hand of fate is nigh...
Her speed too high to hope to stop..
..Too slow to reach the sky!
She struggled from the runway
And clawed to gain some height
With tongues of flame streaming behind
She seemed a forlorn sight.
We see a stricken aeroplane
A hundred souls inside
People with friends, and goals and hopes
That now will be denied!
They looked out of the window
And saw within the frame,
Their fates were written on the wind
In smoke and yellow flame.
A mile or two of struggle
And then the fatal stall,
The crash to earth, the violent fire,
The final smoking pall...
I watched it and the world watched too
I couldn't look away!
I fear that I will always feel
The horror of that day!
o0o
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The Poet's Toast
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Hail, poets! Raise your glasses
For I'd like to make a toast
To thoughts that dissipated
With the sunrise, like a ghost.
Here's to all those moving words
That might have brought renown!
Those words that stirred the poet,
But were never written down.
Exciting words that thrilled you
In the middle of the night,
When there's not a pen or piece
Of paper anywhere in sight!
And you lack the motivation
To quit the comfy bed
To store them some place safe away.
...You close your eyes instead.
Consigned to misty memory
Until the bright new dawn,
When they have vanished with the night,
And all your words have gone!
They've gone to join ten million words
Of others and became
Elusive words that stole away,
And never brought you fame!
o0o
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THE HOURGLASS
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
The sand runs swiftly through the glass
For me as well as you,
The lines etch deeper every day
My mirror proves it's true.
We're here for just a little while,
A mere instant in time.
A single flutter of a heart
In life's great pantomime.
The act of birth; a miracle!
...A death sentence as well!
For just beyond the wondrous joy..
The tolling of that bell.
Old age should not a burden be,
Though we may feel that's true.
..Consider it a privilege
That's granted to a few.
o0o
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THE CRYSTAL SEA
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
The crystal sea is all around
Surf crashes on the shore.
We hear the sea birds' piercing cries,
And hear the breakers roar.
"Swim between the flags",they say
Within the safe enclave,
Where life guards watch, but may not see
The shadow in the wave.
The surfers come from miles around
To ride the surging flow.
Uncaring, perhaps unaware
Of what may wait below.
And from the headland, I can see
Out past the breaker line
They're waiting for that perfect wave
That long rolling pipeline.
Each bobbing on the heaving sea
like fisher's floats they wait
For the surfing addict's golden fleece.
-From here they look like bait.
Out there beyond the foaming surf
There lies a great unknown
Unpenetrated, unexplored,
An enigmatic zone.
When life first ventured onto land
T'was from the sea it came.
As moths are drawn to candle's light
She beckons like a flame..
We have a kinship with the sea
Our make up makes that plain
But always, we trespass upon
A Carnivore's domain.
o0o
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CANADIAN WINTER
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
At dawn you hear the crackle
As the sap in frozen trees
Splits the tree trunks like a gunshot
Down below fifty degrees.
And the crying of the kee birds
As they circle in the sky,
In ever smaller circles
'Til they vanish bye and bye-
Up their fundamental orifices,
Or so the story's told,
In their fruitless desperation
To escape the awful cold.
Turn on the car's ignition
And all it does is groan!
You forgot to plug the car in,
And the motor's turned to stone.
But the sun on newly fallen
Snow's a magic fairyland,
And windows all display the art
Of Jack Frost's gifted hand.
There must be other places
Where the weather's more perverse,
And the moment that I think of one
I'll write another verse.
o0o
THE COST
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Do you wonder where we're going
When you watch the news to-day?
Are we really on the right road
Or has mankind lost its way?
True, we live a life of plenty
That's the envy of our race,
But our industries exact a cost
That's really a disgrace!
When the chemicals and sewage
Have killed all the coral reefs,
When the seaside towns are deluged
By the tides without relief,
When the last river's been poisoned,
When the last fish has been caught,
When the last great tree has fallen,
When the board room has been taught-
That pursuit of gold and silver
In the end is asinine,
When you've garnered all the money,
You can't eat the bottom line.
o0o
C H A R A C T E R
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
The road is long, the job is tough,
Success is hard to find.
The goal seems always out of reach
For most of our mankind.
While most will say, "It can't be done!"
A few will say, " I can! "
The difference between the two,
...The measure of the man.
o0o
H E A R T L E S S
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
They said that I must write a verse
About the month of May.
They said that I must write "Free Verse",
-That rhyming was passe'.
I have no quarrel with free verse
But I can not agree
That wanting for a better name,
They call it "poetry".
The black Crow has a strident call
A harsh, unpleasant thing,
But changing what you call the bird
Won't make the black bird sing.
In grace of flight, the Turkey is
A true inferior,
But calling it an Eagle
Will not make your turkey soar!
Just listen to your inner Muse
And not to those "who know",
For if, in you, a poet dwells,
Your heart will tell you so!
Your rhymes must be a perfect match,
And metered to an art.
If you can't feel your poem's pulse,
Your poem has no heart.
o0o
Sheepdog Trials
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
My Putih is no working dog,
Not black and white and quick.
Golden Retrievers don't run sheep,
He couldn't take a trick.
I took him to the sheepdog trials
In town last Saturday.
And though we didn't know the rules,
I knew he'd like to play!
We watched them work from frosty morn
Until the sun was low,
Though every dog was keen to please.
The sheep were much less so!
Chased out in threesomes on the field,
They stood and wondered why.
They muttered idly to themselves
And gazed around the sky.
Within the ring the trainer waved
His dog to wait apart,
Until the judge's bell was heard
To indicate the start.
This dog is black and tan and small,
He doesn't have the size,
To bully and outwit three sheep
To hope to win the prize.
He lay, taut as a wound-up spring,
His focus on his prey,
And setting out the path he'd race
Along to start the fray.
Then with the bell he fairly flew
To outflank those three sheep
And quickly cut their best escape ,
So to his will they'd keep.
Advancing like a hunting cat
Upon his skittish prey.
And feinting first to left then right
He made them back away.
They stopped ! They froze and stamped their feet
They didn't like this game!
The little dog was unimpressed
His aim remained the same!
Mind games! The sheep were adamant
That they weren't going to play!
The dog must make them move again
The clock brooks no delay!
A half a dozen lightning moves
A few feet to each side
The nervous sheep have moved again,
The trick has turned the tide.
Eventually he gets them through
The gate and through the chute
And finally into the yard.
The crowd claps their tribute!
A few more dogs now try their luck
Most end with some offence
One dog attempts a frontal charge
The sheep leap through the fence.
Another cuts across between
The trainer and the sheep,
Which blows the game entirely
And makes the trainer weep!
My dog and I were going back
To head out home for tea.
And passed that small black clever dog
Tied to a shady tree.
And while they passed the ribbons out
And trophies to display,
He lay there dozing in the sun
Day-dreaming of the fray.
He knew he'd made the day worthwhile
And proved that he was versatile
I fancied that I saw him smile
He KNEW he'd won the day!!
o0o
Blossom 2
(A lament for an old friend.)
by Frank Halliwell ..
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
Jimboomba, Australia
Public Domain
She's always been my nemesis, but mowed my grass for free,
She's left her teeth marks on my cars, and once or twice on me!
I always knew the time would come when she would cause me tears,
But thought that time was far away. "They live for donkey's years!"
No more will children offer her fresh carrots at the fence
No timid visitors will cringe at her belligerence,
No longer will the peaceful night be shattered by her bray,
Nor will the days a month from now be as sad as today.
A mound of fresh-turned earth now scars the grass beside the dam
And salty tears for her now join the tears I shed for Sam.
Another life has reached its end, another time to cry,
For Blossom's joined her mother in that meadow in the sky.
o0o
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