Skip to main content

Ready, Steady, Go...

Thank you for dropping in. 
What an amazing thing it is, that I can talk to you, and to myself, like this!
Well, welcome to you – and to me, this being my first blog.

I thought it’d be interesting – for me anyway – each month to print out a poem of mine, and to review it; to gather a few of my thoughts and perhaps gather some of yours?

I’d love to hear what you think.

Here’s a poem which I’m fond of.

Does everyone have favourite poems of their own – I mean, that they’ve written?

Of course, an acceptance by a magazine, a placing in a competition, commendation, short or long listing – any sort of mention in despatches – has to generate a warm feeling about that particular piece. 
Which is what happened here.

But sometimes – even when, to tell the truth, it’s not what I’d think is one of my best – I just feel warm towards it.  Maybe if this one hadn’t done very well in the big wide world, I’d still be fond of it.

Why might that be?
Well, I love dogs – their ability to offer companionship, their living in the present, unconcerned with the past and what’s yet to come, their honesty and transparency, their response to love.  And one little puppy plays as large a part in this poem as all the various people – the group of school girls, the innumerable seamstresses, the other pilots and the whole unmentioned military hierarchy.
Sometimes it’s like that: one small apparent insignificance determines the outcome.

And there’s something too about inevitability, about how once a path is chosen and taken, things just have to follow.

So it’s strange, but I can sort of imagine being Yukio; doing that extraordinary thing without feeling at all heroic, and not actually thinking about the effects of the action on others, but doing it just because you have to, as it’s expected of you and you said you would.  Definitely not being brave, or particularly loyal, patriotic or devoted to a cause.
Just a late teenager, observing a rite of passage into a weird, unreal and in the event never-to-be-achieved manhood.  

Poor Yukio.
And of course, poor US sailors.  But Yukio (and I) never really thought much about them.

I wrote the poem after splashing around on the net and coming across a photo of the little group of pilots, complete with puppy.  There they were, waiting for what tomorrow might bring.  And there they still are, in black and white, still waiting – unlike the unseen school girls, who dropped their branches and went back into the class room.

I hope the poem has something to say to you.


Corporal Yukio Araki, age 17
of the 72nd Shinbu Squadron, 27th May 1945


The school girls wave their cherry blossom branches
then he flies south towards Mount Kaimon,
wearing the Rising Sun, his waist hemmed in
by a thousand single stitches.

Yukio remembers the flop-eared puppy
passed between them the night before –
his life ahead – and those branches that waved
between girls, releasing their fragrance.

There is the spirit: there in the passage and passing
from one to another – each girl with her branch,
and of one little dog who is scented by milk
with no fears of his own, yet

shifting his weight to balance himself.
Yukio flies on.  He must aim for the middle –
the gap between gunwale and waterline –
while bearing the Rising Sun.

Each stitch disappears before it emerges. 
The school girls have gone back indoors.
Some other pilot will steady the bowl
which whitens the tips of a puppy dog’s ears.

Yukio has said goodbye to the mountain.
The gap narrows.  As he draws close
He’s sure he sees waving again, and deep
in his throat as he cries, he tastes milk.



Kamikaze pilots wore a headband with the Rising Sun, a belt of a thousand stitches (one each from a different woman, it was said) and flew past the southernmost tip of Japan, Mount Kaimon, on their final mission.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Signpost

Here’s a signpost – originally distinctive, being unique and handmade, and now even more so, with the evidence of ageing.   … numbers, distances, which way? While all signposts are interesting in their duty to inform, their presentation of choices and their simple declarative presence, I find this one special. It’s not just that it has much to say in terms of where you actually are, in which direction you might choose to go, how far your destination is (down to quarter mile accuracy) and even if your chosen method of transport is suitable. It’s also special in the simple elegance of its design, with the arms’ supports and the bevelled edges of the main post rising to that unexpected point. But the specialness goes further.  My friend James Ravilious took me there just at this time of year, over twenty years ago.  It was then upright and brilliant white, with crisp black letters. He certainly thought it was special, photographing it lovingly, in May 1988 ( Chawleigh Week Cross –

My blog this month isn't a poem – nor even several...

  My blog this month isn't a poem – nor even several. No, this time it's a set of little films of poems. After sharing them with several of you, I apologise straight away if you've already seen them, but you might be interested to hear some thoughts on the matter. And if you don't want to hear me thinking about making films of poems, just ignore what follows and go straight to the YouTube link.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbwJYkDeGIs&list=PLbC1BOoALpN-xyuGJCIAqJjImAi1aAfrY   I hope you enjoy the films. And please tell me what you think! You may remember a couple of the poems appearing in past blogs, with me writing about the possible presentation of poetry in this way. Time was when poetry existed solely as the spoken or sung word – it took some time for it to be written down.  Now, for the most part, it exists and flourishes in both these forms. Recently, and refreshingly, it seems to have been recovering more of its original orality. Now we liv

Apples

  One day I shall sleep in the shade of an orchard where wisdom has grown unnoticed. An apple falls releasing a thought. Surprised, I recall how old laws are discovered.   There are rich pickings for hens round rough trunks of old sagging apple trees acquainted with gravity. So here I will sleep like a satisfied scientist with new knowledge.   Orchards are peaceful places, especially on a sunny early autumn day. Perhaps the awareness that the year is drawing to a close, finding fulfilment in all this fruition suggests that work’s been done. Or maybe it’s even something to do with that unnoticed sense of gravity pulling one down which Sir Isaac Newton claimed he encountered in his orchard. One way and another, this is a time and place of rest. For us, as well as apples... For me, to sit against an apple trunk, or even lie, and think of nothing very much is indeed restful. On the other hand for Newton, it was more likely the beginning of a mass