POETRY FROM HAWKEDON POSTMAN RICHARD WHITING

This piece which has been commended by the Suffolk Poetry Society.  The poem is ‘ekphrastic’ meaning that it is inspired by another piece of art. In this case a long guitar solo at the conclusion of Neil Young’s ‘Like a Hurricane’ with the title coming from within the lyric.  I wrote this a few days before lock-down. The song was playing on Mary-Ann Hobbs’ slot on BBC Radio 6 Music as I drove towards Hawkedon House. The news was bitter (to use a euphemism) and these birds, briefly, took my mind away from the bleakness that was beginning to be all pervasive.

The rest of the interpretation is down to the reader!

That Perfect Feeling

The news bulletin disappears, 

its breath smelling of apocalypse. 

Even the sky seems sad,

as if the seasons themselves

were suspended. 

And then a brimstone flitters

across a verge. Sun pulls

apart the clouds

as the first real warmth of Spring

settles on my face. 

Blue sky reveals two buzzards

drawing circles, one around the other,

cracking mews across the valley.  

The radio sends out a length of guitar, 

to join them

the musician 

seeming to follow their flight, 

picking out their progress along the fret,

and they to mirror his mood,

a synchronicity. 

The song is over. Two distant buzzards

melt into cloud, the radio falls silent. 

I was dreaming, attending the only festival

I shall catch this year, up there, suspended

briefly by a chord. 

Richard Whiting