Don Pearson Poems

(To Elvina, my companion along the roads we did take, and to Eldon and Alexanna, whom I love so dearly that they must find their own way, without a map.)


(ii)
...

When I’m mature and old and fat
I’ll wear a suit and bowler hat,
I’ll shave my beard and cut my hair,
Respectable (if full of care.)
Until that day, I want some fun,
For I am only Sixty-One.
...

Oh thou, my sister,
Who art not my sister,
Listen to the wise counsel
Of thy brother
...

(For all of us for whom such news has always been from somewhere else)

Reports are coming in from the UK that a large number of insurgents were killed today in an air strike. The strike took place on Teignmouth in a hitherto calm area of England, two hundred miles West of London.
An Allied spokesman dismissed claims that those who died were civilians, saying, “We had indisputable intelligence of a meeting of insurgents and carried out a precisely-targeted strike on their position.”
...

Chains of freedom
link the living to the dead,
Lorca to Dylan,
the road
...

I have crafted my own cage
and locked myself within.
Sometimes April’s warmth
breathes on me
...

(For all at Brook House and Overbrook, Dawlish.)

In Flanders fields that May,
watered with chlorine tears,
...

I know from your stance, from the look on your face,
That I must atone for my sins.
The sins of silence.
...

(A forum-based role-playing fantasy adventure.
For those who have stimulated my imagination.)

Here, in this place of light and shadow,
...

(In memory of and acknowledgement to Pastor Martin Niemöller)

First they installed CCTV in Teignmouth,
To deter vandals and to catch litter louts
...