Alan Brayne – a retired teacher and lecturer from England now living in Malta. Recently self-published a book of poems, fiction and essays, Digging for Water. The author of three novels set in Indonesia: Jakarta Shadows, Kuta Bubbles, and Lombok Flames. Interests include art, film noir, the I Ching, philosophy, walking. Just recovered from working out how to set up my website: alanbrayne.com.
Behind the silhouettes of palms,
The morning rubs its eyes
And spreads its arms:
The blanched sky of unsparing dawn
And a hover of mist on the hills.
Those hills stand worn. Drab brown
And clumps of trees; seems like an age
Since they glowed with shocking green,
A hundred years ago when it last rained.
Oleanders line the road, majorettes with pom-poms
Flashing white and pink at passers-by,
Cascades of sugared ice and candy-floss,
So cute, so pretty. So poisonous.
The dusky olives, weathered, introverted,
Extend unripened fruit that vow to swell:
No treachery there. For untold time
They’ve kept that pledge and nourished us.
The prickly pear flicks open its stiletto
If I stray too close, and the grit of the morning
Clogs my throat. I have waited all year for this moment,
Yet I tread as if this burning season stalks me,
Used up, dehydrated.
Then the sky begins to deepen. A curve in the road,
Glimpses of the ocean, a bath of joyful blue,
And my being finds release, the day shines clear,
And I embrace this summer’s heat for one more year.
MALTA, GOZO, CAMINO
Three islands in the blue
Where hordes of invaders have come;
Others will arrive, and just
As surely be gone.
The British came and chopped down
Most of the olive trees. Who needs olives,
Anyway? Just a few perhaps, enough
To soften our earwax.
The churches survived,
One for each day of the year;
Limestone buildings soak in the sun,
Resplendent bougainvilleas
Stream down mellow chunks
Of clotted cream.
And here am I, a descendant
Of those men who chopped down the olives,
No longer a proud colonialist
Civilising the globe, but a refugee
Escaping the wind and the rain
And the endless grey of a nation
In terminal decline.
But all I’m stealing is sunshine,
Which belongs to everyone and no one
So I hope it doesn’t matter;
A gift freely given
Should never be returned.
And these dots in an ocean of blue
Shine golden like the spring,
And each day feels like spring
In my final shelter.
A GOZO SPRING
The yellow flowers are brazen,
The smoky blues are shy,
The tiny pinks glance up and wink,
The reds shoot for the sky.
Patchwork greens bedeck the hills
Which recently lay parched,
The thistles bristle in the wind
Beneath the gusty arch.
The pitch clover’s calming lilac-blue
Coils in newborn heat,
The crimson pea quails timidly,
A heart too small to beat.
The oleanders bud to dress
For one more summer ball;
The prickly pear just couldn’t care,
Thick in its leathered wall.
This is a Gozo spring, my friend,
Which fills my soul with cheer
And as I near my autumn’s end
I’m grateful to be here.
DAYBREAK IN MARSALFORN
The dancer curls like smoke,
playing the flute with her toes,
bubbles streaming through water,
a song that was never composed:
And yet they sing it.
The little fishes sing it
as they ripple through the ocean,
they sing it soft and slippery,
a song that no one composed.
Cool orange, purple-grey,
the skyline through my window
and the waves that pirouette
on this gently waking day:
And I will sing it.
I cannot hear the fishes
and my voice is old and scratchy,
but how I sing it, loud and thankful,
this song that no one composed.
For other contributions by Alan Brayne, please follow the link below:
Poetry in this post: © Alan Brayne
Published with the permission of Alan Brayne