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Gerard Rochford
Gerard Rochford was raised in Worcestershire, now lives in Aberdeen. His pleasures lie with family and friends. He has ten children, eleven grandchildren, and also makes pots.
Gerard's poetry publications include Three Way Street,(with Doug Gray and Eddie Gibbons) and The Holy Family and Other Poems, Koo Press. He is a founder member of Dead Good Poets, convenor of their poetry readings at Books and Beans, and a poetry editor for Pushing Out the Boat. He is included in Janice Galloway's selection of Best 20 Scottish poems of 2006, for the Scottish Poetry Library.
Poems
THE FROG PRINCE
for Xander
Through the front door you run,
and out the back,
with hardly a greeting.
You are dashing to see your frog,
which lingers with intent
in its damp estate.
Sometimes the marshy hunchback
is at home; a watchful green purse,
a cool wee bellows.
Sometimes it's away.
You search with torch,
with beating heart, with dread.
You are learning love and loss,
the emptiness of hands,
the dappled beam of hope.
You live between a scuffed sky
and the earth with its web of roots.
You are a prince of unkent purposes.
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THE ISLANDER (AGE 9)
Fintan draws boats,
always boats,
boat after boat after boat.
He breathes life
into the blank sails,
Zephyr of his mind's maps.
With clenched fist
he scribbles black looks
into the yawning stacks.
Today he is drawing another;
scowling he journeys
to the cutting edge.
Now he's back home,
a steady floor,
Mother, the smell of food.
He sleeps at anchor,
dreaming the swell of love and anger,
rising falling leaving returning.
He is in harbour,
till another moon
pulls at the tide of his searching.
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DEPUIS LE JOUR DE MARY GARDEN
(for Joyce Falconer)
Here in my room
your voice is calling,
timeless illusion
from Paris, New York, Chicago.
Even now you seduce me
with the full sounds of a woman;
your body presented
on a bed of song.
Angel, chanteuse,
and passionate quine,
embracing loons, presidents, wifies, tenors;
they heard a keening line
and a joie de vivre.
Shalom
ma diva;
I hear you,
Salome,
Salut!
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MEMENTO MORI
We use a priest
to lever us into and out of our lives.
He comes in black,
so our bright day is always touched with shadow.
He wears the cloth,
though we may be peacocked, showered with colour.
In his coat
he walks the festivalled terrace of our time.
We welcome him,
intruder with white comfort and the knowledge.
Throw open the door:
he is dressed in cloud and our jewels falter.
Standing on black-ice,
he is a shade, loitering in the darkness.
Bring out your gold:
let the priest sing as our mouths are choked with earth.
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GAELIC PSALMS
What draws their body to this surging love?
A barren moon, scarred with cloud, pulls at the tide of their singing.
Stone upon stone, they build a cairn of praise,
boulders of memory,
some thrown, some placed, some carried with their neighbours.
They are guided, stroked, beguiled
by their Precentor, onto the rocks of faith.
Blessed is he amongst the women.
They are full of desire.
The Lord is with them
His people are feeling for God
deep in the hull of the church.
They are the fruit of its womb.
And when their hour is come, the service over,
they spill upon the outcrop and the roads,
women flashing colour, men in mourning,
as the wrack gives up its children
to a land which takes and takes
from a people who give and give
expecting a hard answer
to a hurt beseeching.
Now and at the hour of their death
they clear the ground of stones and sin,
but always another lurking,
shadows in a dream of pasture.
Upon this church He has built His rock.
Their sins are both forgiven and retained,
while from the stacks of Hell the kelpies cry.
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SOLWAY FIRTH. VIEW FROM YOUR ROOM
(for Björn and Glennys)
This room is grateful.
Photos embrace the living,
remember the dead.
Outside your window,
your tree, the grass, a wall,
and then,
beyond the rabble of invasive fern,
where sky lays hands upon the earth,
a river pauses for final benediction.
In infancy
this river burst through the rock,
grew to shift boulders,
tear out trees,
seduce salmon,
promise gold,
nurture and murder cattle.
Now it seems peaceful,
spending a day by the sea.
But river is loosing its grip,
is seeped with sand,
is holding on
to shifty banks;
is tasting salt.
While your life flows
through banks of love,
river is drowning,
forever drowning,
river, river is drowning.
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