EMAIL INDIGO DREAMS
A TOUCH OF MIDAS
BERNARD M JACKSON
ISBN 978-1-907401-84-8
Indigo Dreams Publishing
Publication 07/05/ 2012
Poetry
DCF
138 x 216mm
132 pages
£8.99 U.K
ORDER HERE
FARMS OF LONG AGO
In time-forgotten coombs and dells
Where cottages lay sleeping,
And half a hundred hedgerows
Sprawled down muddy tumbled lanes,
Where soughing breeze brought steeple bells,
Their ageless vigil keeping,
And birdsong from the coppice
Echoed woodland-sweet refrains,
The farmer ploughed with faithful team
And set his stock to grazing;
His sheep roamed o'er the hillside,
And his hireling pitched the hay.
The farmer's wife would share his dreams
Beside the hearth a-blazing,
When final tasks were ended
In the old, time-honoured way.
But horse and plough are far and few
- The farmstead is no longer;
The hen-run by the five-barred gate
May now be seen no more;
For those once-familiar faces,
Seen in England's country places,
Have been buried with their grandsires
In a world that passed before.
SKY-PATCH IN DECEMBER
Ice-blue, waning,
ocean sky
is silvered down to furze of trees,
cold islands fade,
and waxen seas
flush out a magpie, gilding flight.
With strange accord, as cruising by,
town's gasping traffic,
nose to tail,
is burnished on the homeward run.
To no avail, a syrup sun
gilds Neo-Gothic towered church
and daubs the lurch
of drunken crows.
- For day is done
- - - and down it goes,
as down from blue to smouldered grey,
last bastion - - - a flaming ray,
smiles out upon a sickle moon.
A TOUCH OF MIDAS
-Poems 1986-2011-
A Journey Down The Years
The long-awaited ‘Best Of’ by popular poet and reviewer Bernard M Jackson.
It covers the period 1985 – 2011 and, as the subtitle says, it is ‘a journey down the years’.
Many are written in the traditional style loved by his followers.
“Bernard M. Jackson’s poems have a rhythmic flow, frequently rhyme and always possess emotive and perceptive insights.”
Pamela Constantine
“...a man who is at home and at ease with all poetry forms and subject matter.”
lan J. Carter - Quantum Leap
“...a poet of worldwide acclaim and universal reputation...He bears ample testimony to the dictum ‘Style is the Man’.”
Dr. S. Radhamani, Pachiayappa’s College. India
“The anthemic ‘Simply This’ is one of the finest poems ever published by this magazine - and that’s over 8,000 poems so far!”
Reach Poetry
Bernard M. Jackson, a retired teacher, has for many years been prominent as a poet and review writer in the small press poetry scene of the UK and India. A number of his poems and reviews have also been extensively featured in various poetry magazines in the U.S.A., Greece, Australia and Korea.
He is an honoured member of CINQUE PORTS POETS (England), and has been accorded membership of the INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION of WRITERS and ARTISTS (Blufton - Ohio, U.S.A.).
His poems have been published in THIS ENGLAND and EVERGREEN magazine, besides being included in POETS ENGLAND (Norfolk Anthology) and quite a number of UK anthologies and magazines.
Besides being the chief review writer for REACH POETRY, he is Articles Writer for the QUANTUM LEAP magazine and current POETRY ADVISOR to Norfolk Poets and Writers.
His work in India is rather more widespread. He is UK Advisor to METVERSE MUSE (Visakhapatnam), Advisory Panel Member of POETCRIT (Maranda - India), Associate Assistant-Editor of Poets India International and established Review Writer for BRIDGE-IN-MAKING, CANOPY, and VOICE OF KOLKATA (Calcutta) magazines.
Within the UK many of his featured articles have been published by POETIC HOURS (Nottingham) and have regularly appeared in WRITERS' FORUM Magazine.
His previously published collections include A FEATHER FOR YOUR THOUGHTS * * NOW YOU HAS JAZZ * * A SEASON'S GOLD * * BALLADS OF A NORTHERN TOWN * * A LEEDS CHILDHOOD, each of which is available from the author.
B.M.J., as he is popularly known, is the proud recipient of a Gold Medallion award for services to poetry, together with FELLOWSHIP of the TEMPLE of ARTS ACADEMY, based in New Zealand.
SONNET - TO THE MOON SO BEAUTIFUL
Moon of cremola, in deep yoghurt skies,
Whisked from vanilla of crystalline stars,
Sweet falls the evening; your mixture belies
The dark bowl that bears you in the night's bars.
Around you, thick cloudings of blackcurrant jam,
And milk of spilt promise to moisten your shoon.
If I might consume you, my mouth would I cram,
But, like lapped cremola, you vanish too soon.
Could I but change you to low-fat cream cheese,
All poured upon night in heavenly spread,
The skies would be moonless; then at my ease,
Your smile would be plastered all over my bread!
Ah, custard of Cupid, some mouth-watered force
Decreed your selection for day's second course.
A TOUCH OF MIDAS
Rising glow of neon
balms the backs of motorways,
cascading careless
coffers into night.
Down dark parades the traffic roars,
while
somnolent by measured shores,
where falls of satin,
sudden, gaudy,
curtain all suburbia,
cold time creeps on.
- - With a just-like-that,
an old black cat
slips deep into oblivion
as, somewhere
in a sidelong street,
the icy edge of ten-o-clock
nips at the fingertips of winter,
leaps
glistened roofs,
whose glaze stray moonbeams hold,
then out across wet walkways
where
the neon spreads its gold.
A GREATER GOLD
My song is not of palaced kings
Carriaged in pomp for rare delight,
Nor of bold war, nor martial things
whose wrongs uphold the cause of Right.
Ambition's dizzy heights shall sway
No pride in me; I shall not pine
For shades beyond this passing clay,
Deserting dreams and what is mine.
Though friendship's cup be frothed with ale,
I would not seek the tavern's glow.
Aye, feasting might the world regale
With richest fare - But I'd not go,
For I belong to quiet span
Whose life extends through simple ways,
Where never prize was greater than
The treasured weft of homespun days.
So I'll not yearn for high estate,
With power's rod and wealth untold,
Nor morsels from the hand of fate,
For I have found - - - a greater gold.
NIGHT-WALK
Twelve o'clock,
a cold cloak clinging
dampness on the late-night air;
the calm vault singing
silent bells, and everywhere
a myriad cascade of gems
to keep ablaze their night with stars.
Cold midnight,
and, while Jesmond sleeps,
the street lamp's amber
stains that storeyed tower,
and the paned and pin-pricked
worlds from curtain peeping,
half-detached and out of sight.
- A witching hour!
My footsteps treading
sanded sounds by gravelled ways,
as through the night
a house-dog barks
ambivalence, that strays
quick-slinking fur from hunting-grounds;
While, out of dark eternity,
the season's cold nocturnal things
have battened down their savage wings
to hoot their age-long
anguish in the park.
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