Tag Archives: snow

Bruce McGuffin, ‘Tunnels’

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A snowy field — sun sparkles on the ice —
Devoid of life to those who do not know
That underneath a furtive swarm of mice
Live out their lives in tunnels through the snow.
My dog, who finds them out by smell or sound,
Runs snorting through the snow in wriggling glee.
Then back and forth ecstatically he’ll bound
Until some mouse has nowhere left to flee.
For so it goes with mice as well as men,
Those tunnels where we run turn into traps
When forces that are far beyond our ken
Play out their game until our ways collapse.
Do waiting mice envision what impends?
That somewhere up above a canine snout —
Deus ex machina to mice — descends
To pierce the snow and pull those trapped mice out?
Few things in life will make that dog as glad.
The mouse may not rejoice — its life is through.
But whether killing mice is good or bad
Depends completely on your point of view.

*****

Bruce McGuffin writes: “When I was a boy winters were longer, colder, and snowier than they are today, and I had a suitably adapted dog: An 80 pound husky of indeterminate parentage. By which I mean a local ski instructor took his Siberian husky to Alaska one winter and she came home pregnant. We named him Frosty. In my defense I was 7 years old. His favorite pastimes were eating, sleeping outdoors in the snow, and hunting. Dogs roamed free in those days, and he brought home squirrels, mice, and more than one skunk. Frosty also bit the older boy next door after he punched me, which made Frosty The Best Dog Ever.
This poem started out as a paean to The Best Dog Ever, but slipped the leash and went off in a different direction, as poems sometimes do. It turns out that some of my favorite poems are the ones that get away.”

‘Tunnels’ was first published in Better Than Starbucks.

Bruce McGuffin grew up in rural Central NY, where children and dogs ran free through the frozen woodlands in winter, and waded in the creek all summer. It was ok if you like that sort of thing. His graduating class voted him Class Intellect, which was not exactly a compliment. Spurred on by lack of economic opportunity in that region, and the desire to know more people who didn’t think reading books was “weird”, he spent too many years in college then moved to the Boston area and worked for 37 years as an engineer in the field of radio communications. It was fun. Now semi-retired, he lives in Antrim NH with his wife Ann and occasional visits from two children who come for the skiing if not the company. His poetry has appeared in Light, Lighten Up Online, The Asses of Parnassus, Better Than Starbucks, and other journals.

Photo: “Sniffing the Prey” by Emyan is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Political poem: George Simmers, ‘Navalny’

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In memory of Alexei Navalny, killed at the IK-3 penal colony,
16 February, 2024.

1.
Rough and chivvying cold winds blow
The helpless dead leaves to and fro.
Leaves have no say in where they go
But we’re alive so can say no –
Let us praise those men who show
Resistance to the easy flow.

2.
Navalny, prisoner in the snow,
In numbing twenty-eight below,
Has paid the price for saying no;
He’s gone the way we feared he’d go.

That’s Putin, making sure all know
That retribution comes in tow
For those who won’t go with the flow.
‘All dissidents will finish so,’
The message is: ‘Go with the flow,
Or you too could end on Death Row.’

I imagine his warders: Did they know
A twinge of guilt at this, or show
Regret or shame? I doubt it. No –
Why should men let a conscience grow
When they can just go with the flow?
When life is so much easier so,
When every television show,
The papers and the radio
All radiate a conformist glow
Incessantly, so all men know
Life’s comfier with the status quo.
It’s only awkward sods say no,
Go their own way, not with the flow.
Those have a dangerous row to hoe,
And who can blame the average Joe
For on the whole deciding: ‘No,
That’s not for me. I’d rather toe
The line, collect my wages, know
I’m safe and needn’t undergo
What brave men have to suffer. No,
Go with the flow, go with the flow.’

3.
In Moscow brave girls risk a blow
By laying flowers in the snow
To honour him for saying ‘No’.
Brave girls. I admire them so.

*****

George Simmers writes: “This poem began because our local Arts Festival announced its theme as ‘Flow’. Which made me grumble a bit: was I supposed to write stuff about how nice it was that rivers flowed? Not my style. But then I thought about people who go against the flow by saying ‘No!’ and that suggested a subject and a rhyme scheme. It was only after I’d scribbled a few possible lines that I came across a photo of young women in Moscow placing flowers in the snow as tributes to the murdered Russian dissident, Alexei Navalny. In some towns, such protestors had been arrested or beaten up by the police.

“It’s thirty-odd years since I visited Russia. That was at the time of perestroika and hopefulness. We had a contact in Moscow who took us to see the sights, including the Arbat, a popular meeting- place. He said: ‘Can we stop and talk here for a few minutes? I ask because a few years ago If I had been seen here in conversation with a foreigner, I should have been arrested.’ Freedom was precious then, but repression returned.

“Navalny was a lawyer who campaigned against the corruption endemic in Russian political life. In 2020 he was poisoned with Novichok (probably by the Federal Security Service) ; after hospital treatment in Berlin that saved his life, he returned to Russia, even though he knew of the dangers. He was immediately arrested, and ended up in an Arctic Circle corrective colony. The exact circumstances of his death still remain unclear, but while in prison he had suffered from malnourishment and mistreatment.

“Writing this poem I remember Auden’s words: ‘Poetry makes nothing happen.’ Auden pointed out that political poems make the writer feel better, but have no positive effect in the real world. He was right, as usual, which is why I mostly avoid writing poems about politics. But I don’t really see this as a poem about Navalny. I could have chosen to write about Alan Bates and his twenty-five year battle for justice for postmasters, or about Kathleen Stock and others, who opposed the dangerous ideology of the Tavistock clinic. Going against the flow matters everywhere, not just Russia. The form is monorhyme, mostly because that’s how the poem started, and it wasn’t too difficult to keep going. Monorhyme is easier than it looks, so long as you choose the right rhyme word to start with. Don’t try it with ‘month’ or ‘silver’.

“Nalvalny’s death made a news splash in February, but since then more recent horrors have displaced it on the news pages. So maybe this poem will do a little good as a reminder of a brave man. Thank you for re-blogging it.”

The poem will be part of the film ‘Wordflow’ (a film by John Coombes with a soundtrack of stories and poems by Holmfirth Writers’ Group in a continuous showing from 10am-4pm), presented at the Holmfirth Arts Festival in Yorkshire on Sunday, June 16th, upstairs at the ‘Nowhere’ bistro, Norridge Bottom, Holmfirth, HD9 7BB.

George Simmers used to be a teacher; now he spends much of his time researching literature written during and after the First World War. He has edited Snakeskin since 1995. It is probably the oldest-established poetry zine on the Internet. His work appears in several Potcake Chapbooks, and his recent diverse collection is ‘Old and Bookish’.

Using form: nonce form; John Beaton, ‘Wolves’

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I’m wakened, drawn towards the ice-thin window,
to witness scenes as faint and still as death.
How bleak the moon; how bare the trees and meadows;
sky’s pale maw overhangs
Earth bleached beneath star fangs.
Night’s curled lip sneers on shadows
of mountains set like teeth.

Two bow waves shear the median of the valley,
iced hayfield yields as feral muscles glide–
hoarfrost disturbed by wakes of live torpedoes.
Grey shoulders breach and lope,
implode and telescope,
impelled by ruthless credos
of chilled and vicious pride.

The wolves tear savage furrows down the nightscape;
their eyes are shined with blood, their mission clear.
Grass springs back shocked to green behind their passage–
twin tracks traverse the vales,
cold comets trailing tails
leave scarred in frost their message:
the wolves, the wolves passed here.

*****

John Beaton writes: “This describes a real incident on our acreage when I woke in the middle of a frosty night for no apparent reason and looked out the window. I was struck by the grace, power, and sense of danger the wolves evoked.
“The first three lines are pentameter and the endings alternate—feminine, masculine, feminine. The next four lines contract to trimeter to give a sense of speed and acceleration. Lines two and seven have a masculine rhyme that closes the stanza and ties its parts together. The overall rhyme-scheme is xabccba. My intent was to convey the power and motion of the wolves running and I built in alliteration and internal rhyme to help with this.”

John Beaton’s metrical poetry has been widely published and has won numerous awards. He recites from memory as a spoken word performer and is author of Leaving Camustianavaig published by Word Galaxy Press. Raised in the Scottish Highlands, John lives in Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island.
https://www.john-beaton.com/

Photo: “Wolves With Northern Lights (Color Corrected)” by edenpictures is licensed under CC BY 2.0.