A Third Helping of Ten Poems for You Lucky People.
[1] Early Morning Mist.
[2] Trees Chairs.
[3] “Can I Tell You That I Love You?”
[4] A Ballad to English PUDS.
[5] What Title?
[6] Colours.
[7] Delays.
[8] Moon-Sun.
[9] Summers.
[10] The Critic.
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Early Morning Mist
Mine is the Kentish countryside
Where the wispy strands
Of early morning mist
Open up the day
And provide the clue that yet again
The Sun is on its way.
There is no breeze this morning
The birds sing softly now.
The chicks have fledged.
They are about to leave their nests.
Each must now prepare for winter.
As you and I may go to seek
Our warm and woolly winter vests?
We all prepare for winter
Each in his or her own way.
Some don their winter coats and socks
Then with their boots on they are content
To face the long dark winter nights.
And the short, now colder, winter days.
While some of us just plan to go away.
Yes mine is the English Countryside,
even when the summer mists are past.
And birds are in their winter roosts
Or passing time in warmer climes.
When we all must dream to feel again
The early warmth of spring, no not in vain!
Together with the happy, hopeful, joyful sight
Of daffodils on English lawns.
TonyKreit 04-October-2018
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Trees/Chairs
A chair.
Four legs? A back?
Cross piece? Leather seat?
The grain runs up and down legs,
horizontal back.
Coat sits on chair. Expensive? Price?
More than four chairs.
The dark brown, living, gnarled tree
cut down.
It made a chair for me to sit,
to sit and dream.
I dream of trees in forest, Oh Tree!
A message in green and brown.
Grow for two hundred years, for me to sit,
to sit and dream.
Forest of trees provides the table.
Tree to make the chair.
Grain runs up and down legs.
Horizontal back.
Life’s sweet juices dried out,
now dust.
Coat sits on chair,
from cow now dead.
Brown eyes,
now dead, dead meat, eaten,
dead meat, eaten meat, wasted meat.
Flesh and many coats,
cost more than many chairs.
My shame,
I killed you both.
Cow of yesterday,
tree of two hundred years.
Clothing, food, chair and table,
creatures dead – I live.
Grain runs up and down legs,
horizontal back.
Tony Kreit………21-02-81
Trees Chairs.
I wrote this poem when the period of ‘every man for himself’ Thatcher Government was beginning to get under way.
Over the years I have become more and more despondent over the extremely wasteful activities of our society. It cannot go on forever, this waste. We will pay for it in the long run. Our activities have already deprived the world of much of its natural beauty and resources. Yet we continue to inflict criminal damage on this fragile lifeboat on which we travel through the universe.
The crime about which I feel most strongly is that of food waste. My children, and now my grandchildren, know my feelings well enough but even so they do not fully understand them! They have never ever been hungry! It is simply not good enough to respond by replying, smugly, “well send it to them then,” when chastised for wasting food on the grounds that people are starving in the third world. I have not myself known hunger to the extent of starvation. But I have known situations like when my Nan used the last piece of bread in the bread-bin to make a slice of toast for me for my supper. Nor was there anything else in the cupboards other than a couple of oxo cubes. Nothing until the next shop, hopefully tomorrow!
The fact is that our culinary excesses have direct impact on starving people. It can truly be argued that they starve as a direct result of our over indulgence. If anyone doubts that then I charge you to put your mind to the catastrophic impact of our cheap food policy on the food production of subsistence farmers and low level producers in the third world. Some of the bureaucratic protectionist policies of the E.U. have had devastating effects on poorer countries.
Please read the poem and try to understand.
Tony Kreit…….10-01-02
Can I tell you that I love you?
Can I tell you that I love you?
Why is it the hardest thing to do?
That which should be so easy
eludes me each time I try.
Can I tell you that I love you?
Why is it so hard to do?
Why does the time not come?
Why can’t I say it when I want?
Once upon a time it was so easy
In the beginning it wasn’t hard.
But we are born, we grow up
and we grow away.
So here and now I really have to tell you
That I Love You!
D.G.M. and J.
This inadequate poem was written in the months after the very difficult beginning to this year. I had not written any poems for some years as an examination of the dates of my poems will reveal. The very personal events of February and March, however, have made it clear that I am much closer to the end than the beginning and so I want to put some thoughts down on paper. If Gd. is willing I intend to put down more thoughts about my beautiful children and grandchildren in the near future.
Tony Kreit 08-06-09
For now,however……
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A Ballad to English Puds!
Spotted Dick is favourite;
Baked apple too
Baked apple on a plate
With treacle though the core.
Apple pie and custard
We ask for more and more!
Toffee apple on a stick;
Apple crumble too;
There’s more much more
When all is said and done
On the plate for me, as well as you.
Pears come sweetly from a tin.
Baked pears are not our favourite
But that don’t mean you cannot have them.
Pears and custard on that plate
With cream and ice cream too.
Pears though are the best for some,
You may well like them through and through.
But spotted Dick is favourite.
I’ll not tell you again!
There’s apple pie and custard, or treacle for a change.
Jam roly poly pudding, really is the pud for me.
The better puddings come with custard
That’s custard in a bowl.
Forget your dab of nothing
In the centre of your plate
there is that trail of chocolate syrup
it costs both an arm and leg
yet for all its flim and flam
it’s just a snail’s trail on the plate
and is impossible to eat!
A huge great mound of TREACLE PUD.
That’s the pud for me, with Eaton Mess to follow
Believe me there’s extra insulin in the fridge.
More than enough to cope!
If not I’ll get more mañana!
‘Cos that’s another day.
Today we’ll have more English Puds;
That’s if my memory holds sway!
We’re back to apple crumble
With custard on a plate,
cold rhubarb from the Frigidaire and custard in a bowl…
Hot Christmas pud with almonds…Banana custard too… strawberries…sticky chocolate toffee pudding…lemon meringue pie…. cheese cake…knickerbocker Glory!…Eton Mess once more…Oh God where are you… please save me from ENGLISH PUDS!… T.K. 17-06-18
I wrote this during our holiday in Oporto Portugal. 31-05-18 to 13-06-18.
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What Title?
Please order the sun not to shine
through the window.
Tell the sun not to shine today!
Forbid it to light up the dust
through my window.
But don’t let it go away!
Tony Kreit…………………..14-10-79
Whimsy pure Whimsy!
I was at Mid Kent College, Rochester,
one fine autumn afternoon. I was doing
an RSA course in Teaching Literacy
Skills to Adults. The late afternoon sun
shone brightly through untidy, dusty
windows. These words ambushed my thoughts
and I hurried to write them down.
Tony Kreit 09-01-02
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Colours
Reds, yellows, browns and greens
are all of England now.
The crops are in and dull birds wait
for the harsh days and long cold nights
that are to come, with winter’s grip.
Yesterday I saw a memory,
in a Hartlip lane.
Children in fields, piling hay.
Laughter was there, in the fields
plus smoke, from burning stubble.
The vision blurred
by smoke that drifted
slowly across the road.
A darting kestrel swooped
a flash of unseen red and unbecoming death
in the dust by the edge of the road.
Birds fly south
as I drive home for my tea
and dreams, there are
of next year’s holiday
and England in the Spring.
Tony Kreit……..Autumn 1984
I love England for those quiet days when the slowly drifting air seems soft and when the very birds sing contentedly, after the hatchlings have left their nests.
Most of all, however, I love the colours of England, in all seasons. It is not for small reason that English painters are famous the world over for their Water Colours. It is the range of colour that makes it so. It is the stippling light on water through trees or the power of the sea as it pounds upon the beach. One can almost hear the noises of the colours! Yes, this poem is a tribute to the way I feel about England and her colours.
Delays
The longest of delays,
the partingest of ways.
The idlest of hours in the sun.
The dreams of man,
women’s hopes and fears.
Preached at by the ones we love the most.
The things we never had,
we never missed,
and never had begun to know.
Tony Kreit……..April 1985.
Delays
Who the hell knows what this means? I sure as hell don’t. The lines just came into my head and I wrote them down. Just shows you who’s in charge doesn’t it? I have to say that I like the feeling it gives me in spite of the fact that it wrote itself. Tony Kreit….10-01-02
Moon-Sun
Go see the sea at night
in the late dark evening mist.
Wait to see the stars take flight.
Go seek them where they hide.
When the moon she shines so bright.
Go see the sea at noon.
See the waves fall on the shore.
The sand and rocks are hot so soon.
Go seek the kids and play some more.
The sun has killed the moon.
Tony Kreit…………..Summer 1988
Moon/Sun
Inspired by holidays with family. Sultry evenings warm nights, fresh early mornings and hot summer days on the beach with the family in the sun, nearly always in the sun. Tony Kreit……..10-01-02
Summers
We don’t have summers anymore.
We have smogginess
and fogginess
and sogginess galore.
But well, we just don’t have summers anymore!
Tony Kreit 03-07-12
Written on the beach at Broadstairs waiting for the sun to come out.
The Critic
There’s verses what curses.
There’s verses what nurses.
There’s verses what don’t even rhyme.
But for real beauty of verse’
I’d choose the ones what don’t curse,
and who’s lines come one at a time…boom!…boom!
Tony Kreit 14-10-79
I love whimsy.
I adore fun and humour.
I hope that this is all three.
I wrote it the same day that I wrote
another poem called ‘What Title’
I had been listening to what I
had thought of as a rather
pompous discussion of poetry
on the radio. ‘The Critic’ was
my antidote to that discussion.
Tony Kreit…….09-01-02