Poetry

Gathering Sea-Coal with Johnny Buckle

We shovel the wet slack, scrape it into sacks,
shuddering. It's March, Hartlepool beach,
and we're fed up, perishing for god's own fuel.

He tips his cap to the sleet blowing in from Siberia.
He's been everywhere, faced worse than this;
ice hanging off the mast, torpedoes, pirates.

Soft John and his tales, his treasures.
This coal's enough for us. It'll dry all night
in the hearth bucket, and in the morning
my aunt'll build the fire up;  a smoulder
as if we'd boiled the sea, fogged the room
with yellow net and sulphur. Now, marrars.

One time I come across a box . . .
We rake twigs, shove odd chunks
of spar in our pockets, keen to be off,

but he's scanning the horizon
for what might be at this very moment
on its way back in. Once it was a crate -

Parker pens; he'd cracked it open on the sand,
perfect but for a touch of rust on the clips.
Another time, a roll of silver foil, big as lino,

singed both ends. An oil drum with a mermaid
crouched to spring. And the best yet; the tin of photos;
a Jap lass in a wedding dress, four grinning kids,

old men in white suits, uniforms.
We'd seen them, spread on his sideboard.
The doubloons he'd slung back, or so he said.

It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago

‘It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago.We've a full tank of gas and
half a pack of cigarettes. It's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. Let's hit it.’
The Blues Brothers

Tomorrow you'll sit back and contemplate this spread of drizzling fields.
Not now, not you; your hat well down, your pallid elbow at the window
of a pale green Buick on a freeway in the 60s.

And not this viaduct dear god and not this catalogue of sheds and barns,
the earnest cyclist in the mac, that harmless roaming dog. Not here
above a place you never thought to love and don't quite hate enough.

You'd sooner wake unshaven to a different day; a slow train west,
a festive smokers only carriage loaded up with crates. Hard luck.
You own this battered face, the passengers who wince from your O Christ.

Collect yourself. Somewhere you fell asleep, backed in. This train
is ready to set out again to where you've been. It's almost dusk.
Step down. Above you there's a blurred board ticking off

the twenty-four hour clock, a Wakefield afternoon.
A fast train eases in. It's yours. You could get on.

Ann Sansom, Alumni Poet

Ann Sansom graduated in English Literature from Shefield in 1994. She has published a pamphlet and two books under the name Ann Dancy, and as Ann Sansom:

Romance, Bloodaxe Books 1994.

Vehicle,   Slow Dancer Press 1999

In Praise of Men & Other People, Bloodaxe Books , September  2003