Places and Poems

DAVID STUART

TWO TRICKS OF THE LIGHT

By the beck and Washdyke Wooda single scintilla of electric blueflashes across sluggish waterand then is gone; the first kingfisherI've seen there in forty years

Its Latin name Alcedo Atthisthat sounds like 'alchemy', the art

CONTENTS

7. Two Tricks of the Light 19. Willingham Woods

13. Grimsby 24. Irish Eyes 12. Grimsby 24. Habrough Pylon 14. Thornton Abbey 26. Newshams 16. Immingham 9. Killingholme 21. Grasby Bottoms 11. Messingham 23. Near Grasby Village 13. Grimsby 24. Habrough Pylon 15. Thornton Abbey 25. Newshams 17. Immingham

TWO TRICKS OF THE LIGHT

By the beck and Washdyke Wooda single scintilla of electric blueflashes across sluggish watersand then is gone; the first kingfisherI've seen there in forty years

It Latin name Alcedo Atthisthat sounds like 'alchemy', the artof pouring precious metals, blueand gold, and transforming them.

But its other name, halycion,the bird according to the Greeksthat built its nest on the seaand raised its young there.

Yesterday, from behind smoky glassa daring moon slipped ecstaticacross the face of that busy old foolthe Sonne, ushering in a middaytwilight that charmed and enveloped us.

two tricks of the light, the firstfierce, alchemic, gone in a flash;the other, more measured, unearthly;yet each with the same effect.scarring our memory's retina

KILLINGHOLME

Five hundred glinting carsblack, silver, blue and redwaiting in mosaic metallicpieces in a pin-board game.

Two monstrous hunchback cranescreep, stoop, grub and scoopthe coal dust and ilmeniteinto mute waiting trains.

Behind them stands the refinery,a thousand firefly lights,cracking towers stacks and cablesall wrapped in intestinal pipes.

Two guardian flares stand, aloofover the tanks, colour coded, aestheticreminder here that nothing sleepsbeneath the flame and plume of smoke.

Yet over there, an unlikely copsegreen credentialed, a safety zonewhere fox and muntjak, hawk and volelive out their oil-protected lives.

And last, the shallow pools and reedswhere once clay and gravel were dughome now to songbirds, seagulls, tealand aloof, like ciphers, two swans

MESSINGHAM SAND AND GRAVEL PITS A wasteland string of proto-lagoons fringed by ridges and banks and heath, with clay islands, mudbanks and shallows where rush, reeds and sallow whisper beneath the gorse, hawthorn and willow. A relic of profligate days when we carted sand and gravel away to build our road foundations., But someone with an ecological eye no mere twitcher, saw the potential, for creating half a dozen overlapping interdependent habitats. So home now to heron, great crested grebe, widgeon, mallard, waders, geese While on the heath hedgerow birds rabbits, a woodpecker, butterflies, moths, and insects flourish.

So out of waste comes plenty out of emptiness a place of quiet beauty, a gentle foil to all those concrete roads and buildings.

GRIMSBY Why do we need so many, the hairdressers of Grimsby's streets? Surely no reason to be finicky Yet for choice it can't be beat. There's Top Knot, Allure and Sizzers Kool cuts, Snip-it, and Panache His and Sirs, Grimsby Barbers and Scruples Beautilicious and Cutting Edge There's Ashes Unisex Barbers Heads Together, Allure, Eureka or, if you fancy something exotic There's Istanbul , Turkish or Slavika. That last one's a delicatessen I chose it for its appropriate rhyme I'm sure when you buy up your sausage They'd be happy to give yThere's hairdresser for every situation Park your car, shoot the breeze, and then live it up, go on! live dangerously get your hair done at Aura or Zen.

THORNTON ABBEYBehold! The strange compatibility of unlike objects, things that just don't go together like chalk and cheese, War and Peaceso to the gentle pillars, arches and mellowed stonesof the Augustinian abbey, chapter house and choirhave been added, a robust Gatehouse red brick fortress-like, sufficiently'inappropriate' or 'unsympathetic, you'd guessto bring any local heritage officer out in a rash However, the Gatehouse's mock-turrets, portcullisarrow-loops and bogus battlements were so admiredby the local squire and some bishop thatthey felt they had, in piety to flattenthat over-reverential Chapter, nave and choir next door, and build a 'goodly mansion'modest but so-called, seemly, in its stead.

A sort of divine justice was served... three years later; his funds dried up, and bankrupted, the squire watched as his house fell down, leaving us these still emotive ancient Abbey stones, along with the brutish bolt-on Gatehouse for us to visit, treasure and admire.

IMMINGHAMA town of many parts, new, without a clear identity,Yet it has its monuments, like a building's footings.First, the Bluestone...an erratic boulder that glaciers dumped on the ancient marsh;then the Pilgrim Monument ...marking the Puritan escape from persecution;and finally the last tin house .... relic of Tin Town,built for the first dockworkers in 1912What's more to say? The Civic Centre witha brand new Tesco, sadly moth-balled, recession hit;the sculptures, beds, baskets, tubs and evenrowing boats overflowing with flowers.There's Churches Pentecostal, St. Andrew's, Methodist,four Primaries, and a brand new Oasis Academy serving four or five sprawling estates.And the distant backcloth, towers, chimneys, flaresand smoke, where oil , coal, chemicals are processedor loaded or unloaded from ships or trains. And further still, beyond the marsh, the Humber estuaryand the open gateway to the North Sea and the world.

IN WILLINGHAM WOODS Stacked waiting for the lorry to take it away for pallets, shuttering, pit props, or pulp, stand ordered piles of fir pine and larch. But to one side, stands bigger stuff like oak and chestnut, maple; the sawn wood exposed, with its with curling grain, close textured. Those Italian fiddle-makers sought out pine, maple, apple, pear where the tell-tale grain was indication that music lay in its depths. So they clamped, planed and amber dipped to create that familiar double-curving shape with f holes, belly, scroll, and purfling; then with ebony, box and rosewood, pegs, bridge and fingerboard were added, and gut wound with silver made the strings finally the bow, slender, Pernambuco tipped with silver and mother of pearl and with horsehair clothed and tensioned. Now as the bow touches the strings there comes that Sistine chapel finger-touching moment of creation, when the silken sounds evoke songs of passion, sorrow, pain and solace; a fitting end to a walk in the woods and contemplation of a pile of timber.

GRASBY BOTTOMS Late autumn's grass and stubble dip down from the bare Wolds edge to where birch and alder, hunched like storm clouds, mark the entrance to Grasby Bottoms Wood. Although the sign says, open only May to September, with a wave you disappear between the trees, leaving me standing, mildly bereft, until I stride out and catch you up. It's happened before, in the Vyros Gorge where, once again, you waved, trudged off disappearing into the gorge's tunnel, where prickly pear, cypress, yew, juniper crowded the red and ochre rocks. These occasions: that casual wave the walking away, into trees or rocks might have seemed only tokens a teasing short-lived loss. Now I know better ................... They were in fact merely dry runs, precursors, of a 'walking away' more profound, a separation irrevocable

NEAR GRASBY VILLAGE At the foot of the Wolds, below the spring line, where birch trees sidle over clay and greensand there's a piece of pasture, fenced in, gated, with wooden stable and a single white horse which we used to call and talk to, and pet. The horse is there again today, fence, gateposts, stable, all fine; but I wonder if the horse notices that he's only one visitor this time.

IRISH EYES at HABROUGH The usual track by the waterworks and gas terminal, broken chalk crackling under foot, and badgers digging under the terminal's fence. Suddenly as if from the heavens a solo voice, such clarity in the high air, is singing: 'When Irish eyes are smiling.' He's on the pylon's pinnacle, jeans and sweater, brush in hand painting its uprights and struts. From his vantage point surely he can see all the way to the horizon where her Irish eyes ....and incidentally . mine too.. ............. are smiling.

AN OAK IN NEWSHAM'S

Close by the Lake, only a stone's throwfrom the hidden slabs that markthe abbey's foundations, an ancient oak standsits roots reaching back to times monastic.

Sadly a sort of slow death had been assailingthe tree for twenty years or more; the stump'sa yawning cavity blackened by campers' firesand surrounded on all sides by tangleof broken branches, lichen, and lesser plantseager to colonize the fertile space.

In such protracted death-throes, who knowswhen the final ending comes, it's so unlikethe deaths we know of our loved ones.Some catastrophic, others stretchedover weeks or months, but all in the endcrowned with certain necessary finality.

But not the oak;It lingers, settles, decays, yet in the springdelicate shoots pierce the forest flooror erupt between the broken shards of wooddenying that absolute negation of lifeto which we've become accustomed. But as the tree blackens, crumbles, sinks, already there is that hint of reincarnation .... (even if it's not turned to coal, as Herbert's sweet and virtuous soul was promised). for the seasoned wood in the joiner's hands might be fashioned into lectern, tables, chairs armorial chests or chests of drawers. And even if that's too much to hope for at least it will warm our stoves or fires with kindling, firewood, or charcoal, a death by cremation, unequivocal.

These poems may be about places but they are rarely faithful descriptions of the landscapes there. They are more to do with the thoughts which come to mind when faced with or immersed in familiar places. The landscapes themselves may be rural or urban or, more likely, those strangely attractive places between, the 'edgelands' of Farley and Simmons. Landscape geographers used to use the word 'rurban' for these places, but I'm not sure that word doesn't sound too comical.David Stuart

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