Jonathan Davidson: Selected Poems

Jonathan Davidson

• Publisher: Smith|Doorstop Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781910367216
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Jonathan
Davidson has a loving, observant and wry regard for the frailties of the
human condition. He makes fresh something we thought we knew; writing of the
everyday the way Vermeer might be said to paint it.' — Maura Dooley

from Early Train

Poem

I wanted to cross the tidal river

by means of the ford the Romans found

and stumble up the shingle beach

to a new life on the northern shore.

And I wanted to have passed halfway,

midstream, drifting, a man heading south,

taking in water but likely to make it,

his heart set on seeing the turf maze

and buying a drink in the isolated pub.

And I will see him gather up my life

like a number of stacks of small change

stood on the mild- or bitter-puddled table.

The Boy

We walk the lanes. Tucked into a corner

of country, they map the boundaries

that hold the fields and coppices and covers,

and catch the sunlight, refracting years.

The fibs and half-truths, lies and leadings-on

of small roads are a fabrication

and fabric of a history that’s dumb

but deeper than dates, and goes further in.

Often a tree or stump of stone roots-up

a nodal point of intrigue, the chart

not telling the palpable truth, that livestock

grazed or were fetched-in near here, or that

a small boy lived at the track’s end, or that

he disappeared one summer, happy or unhappy.

The Cul de Sac

Next summer the silver birch will shimmer

in a cold breeze and the rose trees will turn

yellow and red.

Now a black car slips into a driveway:

the sweet thump thump of tyres

and the dead quiet when the engine cuts.

A cat drops from a shed.

A light snaps on and a door slams.

A gas fire is sparked into hissing heat.

Green or blue curtains close.

Breathless, a giddy child is danced in a front room.

When he is stopped he stares at the long mirror,

at the shiny picture of himself,

a hand raised in greeting and goodbye.

Pastoral

Always a rogue chainsaw snarling

across sodden down-at-heel fields,

and a dog shouting at travellers,

the yelp of a five-bar gate

being yanked open or slid shut,

and the flashing lamp on the new

item of machinery showing

its return from behind the hill

to the blue corrugated barns

after a day’s cultivation,

and the red sunset foreclosing

the unsecured loan of daylight.

Sketch of my Father

I see you at a distance, complete,

your compact figure wheeling a bike,

one slight hand only on the handlebars,

or else pulling the pedals up a hill,

fighting the gradient. You are not angry

but some people have unnerved or even

disappointed you and now the days

are oddly shaped,...

Table of contents

• from Moving the Stereo
• from The Living Room
• from A Horse Called House
• from Early Train
• Previously unpublished in book form