91. Allan Wilkinson

Singer/Songwriter poet with a passion for music

Allan Wilkinson Iis a skilled musician and collector of classic rock, folk and Jazz recordings. He has worked with a number of South Yorkshire poets to add accompaniment to their words and once provided the musical accompaniment to an ensemble production of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood. He broadcasts two excellent weekly radio Shows Flick the Dust Off and the Jazz files. There are catchup episodes on Sine FM and on Mixcloud

Poems

Radio Interference
These Hands
The Wheelbarrow
Hunters in the Snow
Clair De Lune
Sandal Ghosts

Radio Interference

Beneath the sheet she was tucked in so tight
as Caroline called from the wild North Sea.
Humming those pop tunes long into the night.

The silver machine remained out of sight
under the pillow for no one to see.
Beneath the sheet she was tucked in so tight.

To find a strong signal around twilight,
she held the tranny as high as a tree.
Humming those pop tunes long into the night.

The voices would bring much joy and delight,
Johnny Walker, Tommy Vance, Simon Dee.
Beneath the sheet she was tucked in so tight.

The Summer of Love’s most radiant light
brought carefree days before the licence fee.
Humming those pop tunes long into the night.

It was never the same after the fight
when the ship came to ground - no longer free.
Beneath the sheet she was tucked in so tight
humming those pop tunes long into the night


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These Hands

I draw these lines and scratch my back
with the very same hands;
one moment I create a sketch,
the next I solve an itch.

These hands show clear signs of ageing;
the skin more transparent,
blue veins and brittle bones show through,
and seem much more pronounced.

This hand here, the one on the right,
once formed a cold clenched fist
and then landed, somewhat provoked,
on an old friends’ top lip.

This was the first and only time
it was used in this way;
a mistake, it has to be said;
a moment of regret.

The hand on the left, however,
almost lost a digit,
once again, the fault of the right,
when it misused a tool.

These hands, creators, death talons,
hang on to these thin wrists,
waiting to be used or misused
as days, months, years, march on.


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The Wheelbarrow

A rusty wheelbarrow at rest
Basking in the afternoon sun
As another evening descends
Its day done, a duty fulfilled

A memory then springs to mind
A thought of many years ago
When such an object was misused
An unfortunate accident

I drove it through a pane of glass
Which was inexplicably propped
Against the wall of a new build
Invisible to sleepy eyes

An unexpected shattering
Stirred the late afternoon stillness
The sudden sound of running feet
And the inevitable cry

I was kicked out of my first job
With no fanfare, leaving behind
A rusty wheelbarrow at rest
Basking in the afternoon sun


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Hunters in the Snow - Pieter Breugel the Elder (1565)

Hunters in the Snow

Inspired by George Szirtes - The Photographer in Winter

At the far end of the long hall,
hunters gather in the snow fields.
Dogs run alongside, heads bowed,
majestically framed for the long trek.
The outdoors beckon as the magpie flies

and children play their cold games.
Upon frozen lakes they bravely skate,
as bent wives stoke the winter fires.
A Flemish scene for a greetings card,
a biscuit tin, or perhaps a ceramic mug.

Bruegel’s hands once clasped icy brushes,
with the continual threat of savage frostbite.
Yet the warm Vienna gallery betrays this noble effort,
painted on a winter’s day, five centuries past,
now hanging at the far end of the hall.


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Clair de Lune

The flickering light on the piano
dances on the keys like a melody,
a manuscript lie open at page ten
Debussy's rich and sublime Clair de Lune
un-touched and un-played for many years past
waits quietly for that gentle longing hand.

She comes in at dawn and places that hand
on the closed lid of the grand piano
and runs her fingers along those days past,
her weak heart beating out the melody
of the now familiar Clair de Lune,
just as the tall grandfather clock strikes ten.

Long gone ghosts from those days of nineteen-ten
make their presence known as they guide her hand
to play those first three notes of Clair de Lune
and bring to life that ancient piano,
that D flat, F and then A flat melody,
once more to journey long into the past.

But as those old weary hands touch the past
those long slender fingers, which count just ten,
they fail to find strength for this melody,
a challenge for her tired arthritic hand
which matches the wood of the piano;
a silent whisper then, of Clair de Lune.

The cadence and rhythm of Clair de Lune
once brought her joy in the long distant past,
younger hands on a younger piano
first played by this wayward child of just ten,
who now looks down on her tired weathered hand
as it searches for that pure melody.

The walls can still hear Claude's sweet melody
the majestic, eternal Clair de Lune,
but this old Miss Haversham's cobwebbed hand
lodged somewhere between the present and the past
now catches her reflection - decades ten,
as dust settles on that old piano.

Her children count ten at the piano
and recall the past, which goes hand in hand
with old Clair de Lune's graceful melody.



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Sandal Ghosts

Above the silent battlefield
the kestrel hovers still
its vulnerable prey unaware
of its sharply fixed gaze

A reminder perhaps
of those long forgotten ghosts
that remain undetected
by the detectorists' wand

Whose Herculean battlements
and lofty parapets
once cast long shadows
reduced now to mere abstractions

The echoes of clashing blades
reflect off these ancient walls
while the vole finds its hole
and the kestrel glides away



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