AN AUTUMN POEM

 Inspired by an October journey through Hardanger:

Unlike the seasons with their yearly cyclus of change, we, human beings (if it is not presumptuous to call ourselves that), have but one cyclus.

From birth through the years of youthful discovery, our Primavera. We wander through a wonderland with the confidence of total knowledge based upon the ignorance of the unknown (or that that has yet to become known).

Then the long summer of love and hate, and growing mistrust of our fellow beings. And the discovery that the total knowledge of our youth was an illusion, and we really don't know very much at all.

Our Autumn of slow physical demise, whether the golden age of falling leaves and maturing beauty, or the anguish and foreboding of that that is to come, diluted by nostalgic memories of the richness that life once was, or brooding over lost opportunities and nurturing bitterness.

Then comes our final season; the icy cold winter of demise. Nostalgia torn to pieces and fragmented by dementia, the benevolent prison of the old age home, a friendless, lonely decay and THOSE GOD DAMNED HOSPITAL CLOWNS with their silly fluorescent red noses destroying the last vestiges of our dignity!

Bertie the Wild Rover

Bertie is a wild rover.

He puts on his tweed jacket with patched elbows, wraps a tartan scarf around his neck, and struts out the front door of his little suburban terraced house.

It’s Friday evening and his wild roving is about to begin.

That wonderful adventure in time and space that repeats itself every Friday evening.

A couple of hundred yards to the end of his street, a turn left, over the railway bridge, and another couple of hundred yards to the junction.

This wonderful journey of discovery has reached its final destination, the entrance to the public bar of Bertie’s old friend, The Horse and Groom.

He approaches the bar, “same as usual Bertie?”

Bertie takes his half pint and snuggles down in the dingy corner of the pub that he has occupied for over 50 years.

Soon another “Bertie” enters the pub, “same as usual?”. 

And eventually the pub is full of “Berties” all with their same as usual; a pint of bitter, a tepid brown ale or a frothy Guiness.

The bartender has a photographic memory, that can discern between every single identical “Bertie” and their desired beverage.

Conversations erupt, “How’s it going Bertie?”, Not to bad, it’s just these bloody immigrants, they’re taking over the country.”

Boats full, why can’t the Royal Navy torpedo them before they cross the Channel?”

“It would never have happened while Enoch was alive.” “I’ll be voting National Front this time, they’ll get the buggers out.”

As closing time approaches, and the bell rings for last orders, one of the “Berties” stands up, coughs to clear his throat, raises his half pint and makes a proposal; “What about a singalong?

Immediately, in torturous disharmony, a pub full of grumpy “Berties” break into song as beer glasses Klink together;

“And it’s no, nay, never, No nay never no more, will I play the wild rover, No never no more!”

And all the “Berties” agree; “They don’t make songs like that anymore.”

The wonderful journey in time and space has reached its nadir. The “Berties” return home slowly to their nice warm beds.

Somewhere in the English Channel on this dark cold night, a mother is desperately trying to keep her little child from drowning amongst the screams of terrified human beings clinging to a sinking rubber dinghy.

Good Night Bertie! See you next week for “the same as usual” and a good old “singalong”.