David Gale
Bio: David Gale is vegan, poet, mountaineer and owner of rescue dogs living in Gloucester in the UK. He started out as an archaeologist and has made a number of career changes while discovering poetry on the way. His poems and haiku have been published in numerous magazines on both sides of the Atlantic. Instagram: @sshhpoems
The Leigh
We cleared a whole month in name, in conscience, before venturing out.
Such was the guilt of the unscathed we let the winter darkened shadows turn
sand dry before leaving our familiar corridors our dry low risk island estate
free from the New Year regattas of bobbing miniature craft on the town streets
and homely glebes.
We took the unprotected road through countryside to the church
long abandoned by the village the dead-ended road a silent lane of empty farms,
parked and strode down the field of pastures uncut heavy and lame in fallowness of early
spring.
At first we were drawn to a survivor an ancient ash with a royalist trunk
and time-hollowed rim of withered branches praying to the sky in our way
to descend the field to be stopped in our easy stride by the curving touchline
the constant field mark of the contouring heap of flushed-out countryside and street litter,
the hapless fleet of beached tree trunks held in hoggish lift.
We stepped over the paling entered the riverless flood zone of the two metre sump,
walked for a whole mile across the silt scuffed sea of dock leaves a new green
flushed out, clasping as desert flowers past thickets threadbare of life probing eyes
under the wingless skies.
And then the invisible peel of church bells tolling across the emptied landscape,
all warnings being long lost carried far down tossed out to sea.
A Word Of Knowledge
Discovered by some recent repair work
this has been left exposed
to give some idea of the simplicity:
the ten commandments restored by his wife
and many friends, the heating apparatus
installed by his niece, the ensign
laid up on disbandment of this service, the deaf-aid apparatus installed
by his many friends together
with this brass tablet placed on the demolition of the old church.
A word of knowledge was given
for people with metal in their bodies,
God wants to bring salvation in many ways.
He was blindfolded and a cup
of coffee was placed near his nose.
Is that mint I can smell?
He could smell the chewing gum
of the person praying for him.
We hope these stories capture
something of what God is doing.
If God heals my toe
then maybe I'll consider his existence.
God is our refuge and strength.
We try to facilitate the invasion
of humanly impossible situations
placed here in oak tablets,
in loving remembrance,
dear father, dear mother.
M is for...
the eighth sinbitter sweet within my heart.
A slow dancetouching earth
and waking the dead.
The broken places
and my body leavesno scars.
From the house of oppositesa simple vision
of White Cliffs,frost fairsand sweets.
Sounds of a cellarabandoned,
wonderingon the hill.
My part insongs for Eve
and lettersfor the inheritors.
