Silver Branch series:
Ronnie Smith
Ronnie Smith was born in Glasgow in 1958 and was then moved to the small west coast town of Largs to grow up in what seems like a galaxy far, far away.
Everything he learned about how to see and then express his world comes initially from that period, supplemented by a long time spent travelling on business in Africa, Asia, Europe and Russia. When asked as a child what he wanted to do when he grew up, Ronnie could only answer, “To see as much as possible of the world…”.
Ronnie has published articles on business, politics and culture in the UK, Romania (where he lived and worked for 7 happy years), France (where he now happily lives), Australia and even on one occasion, Slovakia. He also published a number of short stories in Scotland, in that previous galaxy.
These days Ronnie has difficulty writing more than 12 lines.
"Poetry is a limitless form that expresses a version of how the world can be understood. Humans transform that knowledge into words, fine art, sound, movement, perfume, thought and ideas (although too often they convert it into money). It is the natural world that creates the knowledge and converts it into the action of daily life for all creatures. It can come together for us when we understand that knowledge through the use of our senses, it is a choice.
That understanding is, of course, enhanced by the work of scientists and teachers but for all of us it becomes evident in moments of clarity. I’d like to share some of those moments of sense through this selection of poems, other writing and images."
Ronnie Smith - 2022
Preface
Waves of heat ripple
above youthful Spring grass.
A snow-white egret unfolds
to rise, in two slow flaps,
onto the spine
of an innocent black horse.
Becoming One
They run when you arrive
creating distance, safety.
They forget you, continue
eating, slowly across shiny
breeze-dancing grass.
Be still, mindful of the wind,
patiently disappear. They
return. The curious lambs,
staring parents. Wise
crows hopping on dry-stane.
Invisible chirrups, erect
hares’ ears in marsh. They
see movement, ignore
character. You on a bare
hill, a threat or nothing.
A Change in the Weather
Teased across the sky,
white waves stretch
in parallel to beach
on the horizon.
Rib cage of the Earth.
Beach
A rough grain falls
from my finger
as a glare
of gossamer sail
dives straight
into the line
between darkening sea
and the silk
of a troubled sky.
Turn of the Key
Now there is water
in the air. Polishing
leaves, gently dabbing
petals. Releasing us
from Nature’s stifling
confinement. To lose
us in morning mist,
shifter of mysterious
shapes on familiar land.
Fall
Wind will litter
the road with ageing
leaves. And the crows’
summer secrets
will be made public,
their dark politics
revealed, their schemes
and plots exposed
to the frost of our gaze.
History
A derelict tooth
of old home
remains of past
lives still rooted
in unturned soil.
Held tight
in the relentless
clutch of boa vine.
Aground
Stripped of its bark,
naked in a cold sun.
Stern stuck firm
in migration, roots
petrified by salt.
Left to candelabra
on a shingle table
by the mystery of tides.
The storm now a hush
of melting waves.
Bubble
Through an ancient
pock-carved window,
the same blackbird
solos Schubert
on a tree sparkling
in silver raindrops.
Hiding under covers,
fugitives from that cold
world. Our melted
morning bodies, our
whispered breathing,
the heat we need.
Insomnia
Only in the October silhouette
of a silver half-moon can wind
be seen, whispering through
the chattering tongues
of a careless mimosa.
A gossamer moon
rests briefly on my roof.
Watching the long sun
set, sheltering an evening
crow from the cold Autumn
stories of the East wind.
Waning
October vines ravaged,
their youth stolen, thickly
apply the rouge. Clinging
to a cold version of beauty.
A last photo-shoot before frost
Awkward
Four red kites, a family,
fill the space of the valley.
Laughing and boasting
in their talon-tig, rising
on the currents to dart,
roll and fall together.
I watch, on my balcony.
Smiling, laughing at their
jokes and antics. Desperate
for their invitation, I move
closer to the game. They turn
round a ridge and are gone.
Returned to Normal
They said the beach
was deserted, the
promenade abandoned,
the channel stripped
of its billowing sails and
phutting fishing skiffs?
Yet gulls still laugh
and slap their prints
on damp virgin sand.
Pure egrets tip-toe the
untrod tarmac by locked
restaurant doors.
And cormorants strafe
and dook the mirrored
Herault, passing out to sea.
Memorial
A rock juts
near the summit
of my home hills.
My blood stains it,
from an age ago.
My rock, reached
on still summer days
to sit, to fill my senses.
Thick air, shimmering
land and vague sea.
It cut me without
anger, to share
ourselves, to remember…
It has my stain and I
have its enduring scar.
Numbers
In a perched Pyrenean village,
a granite memorial. Names,
dates – 1914-1918, ‘Pour la Patrie’.
One young man,
baptised on silent slopes
by the purest Holy
mist; died 5 November 2018.
They could not stop
their guns for 6 days.
Our tears repeat, our
pain rumbles on. 23,
the age of marriage.
No Escape
A playground lit
by a fresh Ayrshire
morning. A tarmac
basketball court, derelict
hoops, only for football.
Shouting, accusations
and battle cries! Fingers
of blood smeared across
a school shirt. Counting
those long empty years.
Reckless
Running straight
down the ragged hill.
A Killiecrankie charge,
full pelt, warm evening
air slapping our faces.
The serrated ridge above,
the sparkling Clyde far
below. We leapt, split-second,
over razor grass and deadly
emblematic thistles.
Flies in our eyes,
Midges up our noses.
The pumping, thumping
joy of everything.
The ticking freedom.
Bus Stop
Jim was ready. The doctor, the nurse, his home visitor and his sister all said so with earnest meaningful eyes.
Now he sat in the worn felt chair, in his bare kitchenette thinking about it. Listening to the lonely hissing of the old gas fire, louder in the mid-morning silence where no clock ticked. Thinking about it and staring at the brown wall paper until the faded pattern started to dance around. Thinking about being ready. Thinking about today being the day. Thinking about that old safety of the harsh neon ward, disinfectant in his nostrils. The whispered conversations of doctors and nurses behind frosted glass, thinking and caressing the absence of responsibility.
Jim got up and walked over to the window to look down at the bus shelter. The sun made the tarmac steam while the sky threatened another shower. People moved behind the dull perspex, three of them, shuffling together, friends.
Today was the day but now was not the moment. Friends behind the Perspex, talking in casual tones, laughing. Displaying their friendship, excluding him, three floors up.
Jim would wait. There were many buses into town, they’d said so. He didn’t have to go the whole way, just far enough. To the old cinema perhaps. Then he could get off, cross the street and take another bus back. Maybe it would take an hour altogether. Then he could be back in his kitchenette. Safe.
A bus came, a forty seven. It could have been a forty two A, a fifty seven A or B or even a sixty three but it wasn’t. It was a forty seven. All the people got on it, shadows leaving the shelter as though sucked onto the bus. Nice for them, to go on the same bus, perhaps to the same place and carry on laughing and talking together. Nice.
Now the bus stop was empty. Steam still rising from the street. Jim shouldn’t worry about the rain that because he was ready and it was time. He rushed to the hall and took his jacket, heavy and new, from its hook. His sister bought it. She brought it because he wasn’t ready then, things had to be brought. He checked the pockets for keys and money, keys and money, keys and money. And hankies. And the phone.
He went back to the window, a final check to make sure no one was at the bus stop before he turned off the fire. Clear.
Jim locked the door and walked quickly to the stairs. After two steps he turned back. Did he lock the door properly? Yes but better to check.
Out onto the pavement, steam still rising and the sky darkening. He turned up his collar, buried his hands in his pockets and stared down at the tarmac.
He heard a voice behind the perspex. One voice, maybe making a phone call. Jim saw the dark shape, just one, one that hadn’t been there before, when he’d checked. Shuffling on its own and talking on the phone, laughing.
Jim stood still looking. Looking at the dark shape in the shelter, shuffling and talking.
Jim looked up and down the long empty street. Nothing was moving. Steam was still rising but no buses were coming. The shadow would not be leaving soon. He felt a wet hedge leaf between his fingers. This was no longer the right time.
The Romance of Battle
We didn’t know why a ten foot wall had been built between our ‘schemes’, it was older than us so it was always there. Glazed red brick, some sections with broken glass cemented along the top… I called our part of town Berlin but few understood the joke.
The wall defended the town’s dump, or ‘cowp’ in our local language, to keep us away from the furnaces and crushing machines inside the vast rubbish factory that our houses surrounded. Any wall makes enemies of the people on either side and we were no different.
Bored, Scottish, teenagers, we were easy, mutually defining enemies. So we fought across the wall and in the open wasteland on either side. Among the broken bottles, on the derelict football pitch with its boulders, dogshit and torn fishermen’s nets.
We set our dogs on each other but the dogs turned out to be more civilised than us. We threw anything we could pick up, lifting stones from the wasteland and returning them to the wasteland. The greatest egos challenged each other to single combat and stole the show for a while.. Until the police arrived and we scattered among the rubble, to be questioned in the streets; hands in pockets, looking at the ground, shameless.
In a bolt of lightning, an unknown blonde head appeared above the parapet. She threw a stone at me, threw it well. I faced it and it missed me by an inch. I threw one back and she didn’t flinch, the same inch. We smiled, held our eyes, challenged each other in the middle of the mayhem. I heard that she was someone’s cousin, down from Glasgow for the day. An unregistered combatant. I saw courage and beauty in the midst of the little horror that we had created for ourselves.
Later I thought of possibilities of another life but then, that was the life we had.
