40. David Hutchinson

Multi-talented purveyor of poetry and champion of the arts

Poet and spoken word artist, David Hutchinson BSc. has led a varied and interesting life in which he has been a light aircraft Pilot, a North Sea fishery protection officer, a college tutor and a farm worker

He is currently Creative Director of the Poets of Esnoid and a sponsor of the National Youth Orchestra 

He writes short stories and even shorter poems.

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Poems

Love Poem to an Inanimate Object
Only a Picture
Lament
If You Can Cry
Darkness
The Sea

Love Poem to an Inanimate Object

(With thanks to the Riding Lights Theatre Company, York)

In all my dreams I see you
in all my waking hours
your smooth slim shining body
and the elegance of your lines.
I long for you to take me
across the endless miles
to destinations far away
for ever and a day.
I’ve seen you at Leeds Station
kissing with your friend,
before you both went up to London,
and came back at half past ten.

To think I could not join you,
just sends me round the bend.

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Only a Picture

Henry Moore - Four studies of miners at the coalface (1942) © The Henry Moore Foundation. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2022 / www.henry-moore.org. Image credit: Michael Phipps

It’s only a picture about down t’ pit.
seen by anyone with half a wit.
It’s black stuff with wax, 
that’s all.

If it’s only a picture. 
Why does it talk?
I can hear it, smell it, feel the heat,
I can hear voices and the pit props creak.

Stand close and look. Don’t interpret 
let it talk, it tells the truth.
The three-foot seam, the sweat, the fear,
the fear that no one will admit.
There is a beauty, a stunning beauty,
within these images of truth.

40 years gone. 
There were those who didn’t understand,
those who could not agree, 
even some who could not see.
To you, who could not see or agree.
          Fuck off ya bastards.

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Lament

I would like to give you the beautiful earth,
and a gift of the morning air.
The gentle breeze that kisses the flowers,
and the memories of those hours.
I would like to give you the stars above,
and the velvet peace of night.
The beautiful promise of a coming day
in the freshness of the dawn.
I would like to give you the boundless sea,
and the sun lit lands beyond.

But the truth is: life’s just a shadow
that passes in a day.
And the only thing I can give you now
are white lilies on your grave.

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If You Can Cry

Dedicated to Young Minds

If you can cry, give this to the world.
Give it your love,
your passion,
your humanity.
Give it your sense of beauty on a summer’s dawn
when the air is like wine
and the promise of a new day is a priceless gift.
It will not last for ever
nothing lasts for ever
give while you can.

My train from King’s Cross was delayed the other day,
an incident on the line,
the coach went quiet, no one complained, no one spoke.

We knew.

While across the fields of Hertfordshire
the sun was setting over the ripening corn
in a scene of splendid and exquisite beauty.

But somewhere a mother, a father,
brothers, sisters, and friends,
are weeping tears that will last a lifetime.

Oh why, must 14 years of childhood end like this?

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Darkness

There is a darkness that cannot be entered 
even by light.

It is a feeling within the mind that is unreal.
It is a sound that never stops.

It is a colour that has no colour
whose substance is untouchable.

It is nothing, but it is real.

It is silence in answer to a question
that cannot be answered.

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The Sea

A Paradox

S.S. Broomfleet. Sailed  from the port of Goole bound for Ipswich on the 13^th December 1933 with a crew of 13. Lost with all hands in a storm off the Norfolk Coast. 

An empty sea touches the soul,
with peace, with tears,
with hope, with grief. 

By a cast iron range in a house of clocks and days
Lucy grieves for her love who will never return.
On the sands of Norfolk his body lies.
Sailed on the 13th with a crew of 13.
Lost: with all hands.

For years after on those sands
the sea would give like tears
a harvest of coal,
black as grief, black as night,
that from the east grows into dawn.

Now on those sunlight sands children play
remembering all their life those priceless days
as they run their heedless ways.

Forever on those sands the surf.
The Sea’s perpetual angelus:
of grief, of tears, of hope, of peace.

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