Pennine Poets

Simon Currie

Simon Currie has been a member of Pennine Poets since 2002, and Bradford and Huddersfield groups since 1999. Wrote poetry regularly in 1970s, till friend in Wales, R.S.Thomas, advised prose instead. Background of neurology, colonial history (Ph.D. 2005), landscape history in Yorkshire and botany.

Selected Poems

Sailing On

Our century, just gone,
is now getting called
the last one.
It is slipping astern,
the tow-rope parted.

Towards the horizon
the imperial century
of Nelson, Victoria,
fades from vision,
a sail blurred at twilight,

and beyond, a shadow
rides in line, watched
only by stars, for Diderot
those points of light
but coalescing no longer.

Father-in-law, at eighty-four
beguiled to make the millennium,
is now left on a lee shore
marked for development,
his century gone before him.


Butcher's Boy

takes over a shop
in the nearby village.
Brawn-coloured, more
bullock stalled than Adonis,
he must spend evenings
carving chunks from himself,
cuts of loin and leg
that grow back overnight.

Sunday will give respite
and closing Wednesdays.
My turn now, squeamish.
Think what to avoid:
"Have you any spare ribs?",
"I'd like some of your tenderloin"
too near the bone.

His 'phone rings. I motion to him,
overhear that he is soon to wed.
So sweetbreads are off.
Will it get halted,
a wife put her hoof down?
Or might things escalate:
veal, with baby onions?
"Your bacon's good". He blushes
but liver's gone: that eagle.

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© pennine poets 2006