Thursday 18 February 2016

Crossing

As is sometimes traditional on a Thursday, there is a poem which was started in the Wednesday evening meeting of the Barcelona Poetry Group.
     The theme this week was Mortality and the discussion was lively and interesting.
     The idea, or the memory for this poem came when another member of the group was describing digging up her dead hamster to find out if it had, in accordance with the faith of her parents, resurrected.  It hadn't, though her memory is carefully blank about what she actually found in the buried box!
     My poem has absolutely nothing to do with dead hamsters or lapsed Mormon faith, but it probably says something profound about my brain processes that such an anecdote should bring up my memory of jumping off a bus.  Almost!
     I can still re-live the experience: the horror of knowing that the best you can expect is a serious accident; the time-stopping trick at the moment of crisis; the exultation of survival.  All of those are at my memory's beck and call.  And the realisation that the whole incident must have been over in less than two seconds!
     Although there have been a number of drafts of this poem, the original structure is preserved and this is one of those rare works where the narrative, feeling and meaning flowed together.
     I still don't really know how "I stopped, upright" but I am very glad that it did, in spite of the vague sense of underlying invulnerability that I think it added to my character!


Crossing




It was not when I was knocked down.
No.  That was bump and bruise –
and tears of course.  But that
was accident, not what you’d call
The Smirk of Death. 

No, those fell words for me were,
out from school, and number 30 bus.

The bus was open deck, with pole –
unthinkable in these strict
Health & Safety days.

It didn’t really stop at my true stop.
There was a crossing and, mostly,
the bus would pause
with time enough for me to leave.

There was a gap.  I,
hand on pole, stepped off.

The bus accelerated and I,

. . .  and I, as if in Ten League Boots
took giant steps until,
in that split-second age that
stretches from a life to nothingness,
I saw my hand and told myself,
quite calmly (as it seemed to me)
just to, “Let go.”

The hand responded,
though momentum bumped me
dancingly, until I stopped, upright,
and watched oblivion drive quickly
up the Newport Road.

Breathless. 
Uninjured.
Startled. 
I was alive. 

Wiser?

Who can tell?

Perhaps it needed blood
to strengthen faith that
Death would come for all.

Perhaps I’ve lived my life
as if I’ll always
see the hand, and speak.





My "true stop" was The Carpenter's Arms, although the bus actually stopped outside the Esso garage.  Both have been demolished: the garage became a video store and the pub, a metro outlet of Sainsbury - nothing remains the same, except the memory described in the poem.  That will never change.

As always, any responses will be welcomed!