Sonnet Board Fragments

Over the years I hung out on the Sonnet Board I contributed non-serious and occasional poems just to join in the shenanigans. The first one here was written as part of a challenge on the theme of time set by Mike Alexander around  New Year 2009. Funnily enough the sonnet itself contains a bit of a time warp. I remember the leather clad Leela as figuring in an adolescent crush, actually she did not appear as Tom Baker's 'helper' until 1976. I was 21 at the time and probably should have known better. She was gorgeous though!

Who's Girls

Through every unforeseen reincarnation

he always had some woman by his side -

a ditsy blond with plans above her station,

or Amazonian queen who'd hitched a ride.

Each Saturday I'd watch the Doctor's antics

ensconced behind our paisley G-plan sofa;

he’d dissed the Cybermen!  But no romantics,

the girl was just his cute, platonic gofer.

Today's tabloids would soon dig-up some dirt:

- Leela's love of whips and kinky sex,

- the Time Lord's predilection for 'up-skirt'.

OK, he may have saved us from the Daleks -

his pick-up line still oozed with cornball slime:

'Our love will last beyond the end of time.'

Turning Point

I have always loved the sea and sailing boats. Perhaps it was all those Arthur Ransome books I read when I was little or the exploits of Sir Francis Chichester and Gypsy Moth IV. Although in real life I am a complete landlubber prone to violent fits of motion sickness even while the cross-channel ferry manoeures out of  Dover docks, vicariously I'm out there, 'Master and Commander' crossing the wild empty oceans. 

My colleague Tim and I brightened up boring office moments during the early months of 2005 by following the progress of the British sailor Ellen MacArthur's successful attempt to beat the solo circumnavigation record. The sonnet imagines what it must have been like to round Cape Horn and set course north for the long haul home. What an inspirational person, both for her adventurous spirit and more latterly her charity work relating to cancer and environmental issues. I did try to email her the sonnet just after she rounded the cape, but the format of the expedition website would not let me.

How many times did you rehearse this moment

alone upon the empty Southern Sea?
Pretend instead you’re tacking down the Solent
beating against a brisk Southwesterly;

helm hard to port, you trim the sheets, the bow
rears up, she gybes; you know this simple drill
by heart, it never fails. The compass now
swings north, you watch the mainsail flap, then fill.

Try snatching a quick cat nap between squalls -
adrift in dreams, you stray through spectral dunes
un-haunted by the petrels' plaintive calls,
some wilderness, water-less as the moon’s. 

Now half awake, you fear a fatal error,
and toss between dull tedium and pure terror.

Ellen's yacht, B&Q/Castorama battles through the Southern Ocean.

I don't often write poems in response to specific news items. The so called 'Boxing Day' tsunami in 2007 was, along with 9/11, an exception. I do wonder if in some way we have evolved to simply accept natural disasters. Over 220,000 people were killed by the huge tidal wave, but it is not something which we dwell on. Death on a much smaller scale - the Boston Bombing or the soldier stabbed in Woolwich have more profound political consequences, simply because we can point the finger of blame at a particular individual or an ideology. 

The same day as the tsunami struck it was reported that earth was also hit by a powerful, invisible wave of gamma radiation from an ancient explosion on the other side of the galaxy. The coincidence of these two events underline just how much we live at the mercy of natural occurrences. Our science and ingenuity may have shortened the odds a little, but we are still subject to the overwhelming forces of nature just as much as our hunting forbears in the forests of the Perigord.

SGR 1806-20

Your final postcard showed a turquoise bay,
remote and jungle fringed. ‘My paradise
regained’, you wrote. A cruel twist - next day
the tsunami struck, and brought your swift demise.

Paint blood red bison in the deepest cave,
cast in bronze Poseidon astride the sea,
carve smiling angels upon a vaulted nave,
launch satellites to probe the galaxy,

ingenious as we are, pundit or seer
admit it’s luck. The neutron star that burst,
as Lascaux's hunters felled a fleeting deer,
rained gamma waves hours after our worst
tsunami struck: we live on borrowed time,
with hidden fear our ruling paradigm.

SGR 1806-20

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