Just Sitting

Image Source:

Whilst sitting at a the Moulin Huet Tea Rooms listening to some excellent live music, I looked out over the bay below and saw a lone skier.

I had been trying to write a poem about the music, but ended up with this one instead. I hope you like it.

Just Sitting

The bay laid out below
Rhibs, gin palaces, dinghies
their blue and white hulls
a uniform, reflected in the still water.
Further out a wakeboarder
wipes out, again.
I feel their frustration,
I know that frustration,
and knowing...

For there was a time...

There was a time
when I would cut the wake,
my rooster tail danced
from side to side,
a curtain of diamonds
which chased me
and Illuminated my life.

The boat curves gently
it's serpentine wake
envelops the skier,
returns the rope;
and building speed
the dance begins again,

and I,

I watch from my chair
with a tear in my eye.

John Carré Buchanan
21 June 2014

Colours

I wrote this poem for the next Guernsey Poets Open Mic. It is on the subject of 'Colours'. I hope you like it.

Colours

Phosphorus flares illuminate
with eerie shimmering light
ethereal clouds that drift
like spectres on the wind.
Angry orange tracer
leaps skyward from the ground
a sudden flash of brilliant white
leaves eyes awash with stars.

Moonlit shadows flicker,
amongst the tussock grass.
Where a company on its belt buckles
slowly makes advance.
Then on his chest a poppy blooms
it's petals scarlet red.
By morn' it's dried to rusty brown
against his kaki vest.

Black ink on creamy parchment
convey the fateful news.
Rosy cheeks turned ashen grey,
Tears from green eyes flowed,
they rolled past her soft red lips,
to the turquoise blouse below
to form a stain, like drops of rain
above her heaving breast.

A life time later; upon her chest
a plain red poppy’s pinned
beside ranks of rainbow ribbons
on which his medals swing.
All around the white marble;
troops, dressed in gleaming best
rally on the colours - their colours
and remember comrades lost.

Yet beneath that clear azure sky
amidst all the pomp and ceremony
A single teardrop breaks free
from a bright green eye.
It slips gently past thin red lips
where a glint of sun its prism splits
into a whole spectrum of colour
which sparkles as his soul goes by.

John Carré Buchanan
13 February 2014

If you click on the link below you can listen to me read this poem.

Bereft

Image Source:

A poem on loss, I'm not sure if it still needs a little work, but for now I'm happy with it.

I hope you like it.

Bereft

He sat, bereft.
The powerful youth of yesteryear,
the man who’d faced all-comers, without fear;
gone.
His shrivelled frame trembled in a chair.
Fingers caressed the picture in his hand.
Monochrome locks on porcelain face,
she had always been his Grace.
Now he sat all alone,
in the house they’d called, home.
Cold walls closed in.
His broken heart,
left their home, bereft.
The fighting spirit;
gone.

John Carré Buchanan
16 September 2013