Hi Arthur,
A fine narrative, finely drawn ---
but "rosy cheeked" and "blue-eyed" feel a bit cliched to me. His quiet
smile's also mentioned twice. I'd work a tad more on his physical
description... (the things he does are more interesting!).
Bob


>From: Arthur Seeley <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New Sub: November 1956
>Date: Mon, 5 Jan 2004 08:20:20 -0000
>
>November 1956
>
>He was a good sort of feller.
>The soft burr of the Fens was on his tongue,
>and in the smoke and stale odors of the billet
>his rosy cheeks shone
>around a quiet smile and pale blue eyes.
>He moved away from foul language
>and brute mouths, without judgment
>of their struts and boasts and wide wet lips.
>He read, darned his socks,
>wrote letters home or snoozed.
>
>Before our time there,
>he had worked his father's fields,
>hoed the long rows of kale
>through rods of rain
>or helped around the yard
>but brought here now
>to bend over engines, plugs and pistons
>and the warm reek of oily steel.
>
>Sometimes he'd cock his head
>and follow with his spanner
>the flight of swallows
>over waves of wheat.
>
>But we found each other out,
>he and I,
>one gray afternoon in November
>when a Canberra fell from the sky.
>
>A circle of silent boys,
>stunned by enormity,
>enclosed the huge pit in the mire.
>We moved, slow as grazing deer, over the shambles,
>flicked muck over torn bits of people.
>
>He moved beyond me,
>lost in echoes of the yard
>pealing with the protests of a roped sow;
>poked with a broken spar a thigh bled pale as pork.
>It rocked and sucked in the mud, slid to his persuasions.
>
>He turned his mask of quiet smile and rosy cheeks
>and blaze of pale blue eyes upon me
>as I stumbled down the bleak perspectives of his mind;
>a land of no horizons.

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