Poetry
This is a poem I found in a small collection written in the 1960’s
New Day
So this is a new day
More like an old
used cold second-hand day
So I never lived this one before
Nor did anyone else
A new day in everyone’s life
Yet to me it is much like the others
There’s time of course
for the day to distinguish itself
There are also ways I could make this day
quite unlike any other
This poem is from A Broken String of Beads, a book of poetry written between 1974 and 2005 to accompany his earlier work Midnight Till Three. Jack had hoped to publish in 2010, but he was unable to do so in his lifetime.
Night
Time transcends my slumber
and every star above
suffers to please
I wonder
where is the gentle dove
Incoming tides
will bring you
face to face the moon
Then all the shine
will slowly fade
and she will die
too soon
The next three poems are taken from “Midnight Till Three”, a book of poems by Jack Simcock, published in 1975, available to purchase separately from the autobiography upon request.
Autumn
One summer was their green life.
Yet in their dying
they most please the eye.
Celebrated is their silent fall.
And as they lie,
some sprinkled here,
and feet plow through
some drifted there,
eyes meet a winter sky.
Summer
A Summer’s noon is on,
emerald blush
and blossom.
Seed plumes powder the hill.
A breeze sweeps the sun
and a thigh quivers.
A head turns in the grass,
back from a blue wilderness.
Love-green cows
rust in a galaxy of buttercups.
Old lanes with their fresh white lovers
tremble in mottled shade
and dandelions pine in a child’s hand.
Still Branches
The day waits quietly
as though nothing has ever happened before,
as though all that will happen today
will be for the first time.
In still branches the day waits.
I wake without memory,
without anticipation.
I wake with closed eyes
from an ecstacy of pining
unrequited love long ago,
weak from a boy’s heart
broken for life in dreams.
First love is lost and sought in dreams tearfully.
The pleading is remembered,
lived with.
Morning is to accept the loss.
I rise and go about my day
and again everything is old
and I do everything the way I always do it.
I say again what I said yesterday
and everything I see I remember
and everything is saturated in the past.
The day waits quietly to be remembered.