David Henry

I was born in Glasgow. Teenage years spent in North Berwick, East Lothian, before studying Psychology at Stirling University. A qualified social worker, I have lived in Aberdeen since the mid 1970s. I'm a 'late-starter' poet, although it seems on reflection that quite a lot of my earlier professional writing was 'trying to be poetry' behind my back. I find my current influences are often around the interfaces between People, Nature and Technology. Other important activities in my life are: Amateur Radio, Sculpture and Spiritual Healing.

OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF BABES

So, Britney's spearmint chewings
Have sold for an arm and a leg
On eBay?

Pay-dirt from the LA sidewalks
Spat through gritted teeth
At pestering paparazzi,

Scooped by forward-thinking speculators,
Investing in the futures of celebrity gum.
The dental impressions were plausible

But surely this is a tongue-in-cheek hoax?
Does it just show the crazy lengths
Some folks will go to zoom in close
On pouting, voluptuous lips?

Or, are they willing to pay a fortune
To penetrate the veil of glitzy video,
Hoping to see past plastic smiles;
Lay their hands on something Ordinary?

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STUDIO TOUR (DOORS OPEN DAY)

From a rain-glazed cobble street,
Up the well-worn winding stairs
We climb through a heady mix
Of turps and electricity.

Levelling-out above the weather,
We have access to all areas.
The honeycomb of corridors
And cordoned-off spaces,

Each cloaked in a singular way.
Raw materials spin centripetal
From the core of an idea.
Shreds of evidence about the medium

And the modus operandi.
Paint bespattered ghetto-blasters,
Coffee, fags and Coke.
Stimulation, inspiration, distraction,

The burglar's tools required
To break into a different state,
Stealing visions away.

Puckered palettes, poised
To kiss virgin white.
Teasing passion from thin air.
Works in every stage of becoming,

From that first synaptic flash,
Through the roughest of rough sketches,
To some kind of completion.

For one afternoon,
We are privy to the more-than-ordinary mess
Round which art will coalesce.

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JOINED

There is a point in all these journeys
when walking becomes lost
in its own rhythms,

vigilance fades to the bare necessities,
and different kinds of noticing emerge

edging gently alongside
as though they always had been there.

Out of the air a line of words,
drifts in like some distant wood-smoke.

Far enough from the ways of home
to shrug off the predictable,

sufficiently quiet
to hear the inner workings,

you begin to remember much more fully
what it is you know.

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WILD FLOWER

In the early morning sun
so still upon the roadside grass
she sits, in Lotus.

Eyes closed,
features smoothed and half in smile,
within feet of juggernauts,
she is completely present

yet, so very far from here.

In the quietness of the mountains
almost anyone can reach
a state of contemplative bliss,

but it takes a special kind of trust
to look for it like this.

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THE EEL BURN

This little stream
carved the beach, and our lives,
into separate worlds.

Beyond it, was far enough
from home to feel dangerous
and wholly different.

At that age, we wanted a Wild West
with deserts, forts and hide-outs.
Nature, and leftovers from The War,

were bountiful with their props.
We crawled on our stomachs
over rampart sand-dunes,

knitted with couch grass.
Fired at invisible enemies,
past concrete tank-traps.

Peered narrow-eyed
through pillbox slits,
making machine-gun noise.

Scanning the estuary,
as they would have done,
expecting invasion fleets.

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ANGLES OF INCIDENCE

Meteoric thoughts burn up
in the higher reaches
of my mind.

Some, so nearly tangential
to the atmosphere,
bounce off into space.

Others collide head-on.
Brief fireball extinctions
on a dark sky.

A rare few, with an attitude
just right to survive
re-entry,

make it through.
Sprinkling cosmic seeds
upon a barren day.

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THE MORNING AFTER

The boom is up,
the storm-cone hoist.
This distant cousin of an ice-cream day
seduces with its anarchy.
Pennants cling to a wind-wrought sky.
Gulls' tight angles of attack,
trade lift against control.
All around is evidence
of last night's excess.
Long fronds of glistening wrack,
and mussels, wrenched from solid beds,
carpet the rugged walls.
Shoulder-to-shoulder in the harbour
a regiment of flailing masts
conducts a ghostly wail.
Keeping beat
the metronome clacks
of hawser upon hull.

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