INTERMITTENT

FAULTS

poems from a journal

David Lightfoot
INTERMITTENT
FAULTS
poems from a journal

David Lightfoot

Sunk Island Publishing

 Intermittent Faults
© David Lightfoot, 2008
Sunk Island Publishing
c/o 7 Lee Avenue, Heighington, Lincoln, LN4 1RD

Cover design by Michael Blackburn

Other Works

[give me a list of what you want included]

09/01/08

Cold so piercing
I cannot feel
my own fingers
let alone the golf club.
Despite my three-week beard
the wind numbs my cheeks.

But four hours later,

the mushroom soup!
And the baked rolls
and melting butter!

It does not take much

to hint at heaven.
12/01/08

We've had gas-boiler failure,

electric power-cut.
Today it's rats -
seen in the front hedge
squirming like squirrels,
climbing like monkeys,
eating the seeds
put out for birds,
who swarm around them,
happily sharing,
while I scatter
the warfarin
down the rat-holes.
I am not as nice as a finch.
14/01/08

QUOCUMQUE IECERIS, STABO.

They trimmed the hedges

this morning. A special
machine mashed branches
down to a uniform six feet.
A neat job - from a distance.
Closer to, they'd sprayed
our garden with blackthorn
caltrops. Wherever our dog runs
there are vet's bills waiting.
Took me an hour to rake up,
still post-flu sweaty.
In the Spring the hedges
will sprout thicker,
greener, trimmer,
even more exclusive.
Right now they look
the mess I feel.
15/0l/08

This could be it.

At last to enter a house
and feel, at once, at home.
What clinched it was
the distant view
towards a hill
- an echo of my boyhood -
from the study window,
flat land suddenly rising,
a ridge enclosing,
excluding, hinting
at what lies over and beyond.
21/0l/08

Rain again, and more rain:

flood warnings, sirens,
the Lud brimming,
sand-bags around doors,
anxious faces, voices,
valuables carried upstairs.
"We can't go on
living like this,
watching the rain fall
worrying. It's no life!'

In Africa they watch

the sky for clouds
any hope of a shower.
29/01/08

So it's to be oblivion again.

This is the third surgeon
who won't do local
but prefers general
anaesthetic.
Why is this?
Ts he afraid of failure
to locate the nerve?
Being taken to court?
He does not consider
what I am afraid of.
06/02/08

Ash Wednesday:
turntable time;
sinking fire.
l1/02/08

Returning again to Hardings

for another viewing
and measuring,
inspection of garden fences,
it all began to fit
into the frame of likelihood.
This is going to be
where we will spend
the rest of our married life.
One of us will die here.
13/02/08

The day began bright

but cooled into mist.
After three holes
a tsunami
of cold grey fog
advanced towards us
down the fairway
Eventually a claxon
suspended play.

Dreadful, dreaded phrase:

play suspended.
27/02/08

A roaring like the Pentecostal wind,

a rattling of windows and a crash as if -
a lorry had bit the house?
the gas terminal had exploded?
someone was breaking in
to grab that box full of
one hundred and ninety-eight copies
of Rosary Sonnets?

A quick search in pyjamas,

bare feet in old shoes,
by torchlight, revealed nothing.

Turned out it was an earthquake,

epicentred down the road
near Osgodby, which finally
made the National TV News.

Later, in Louth, I saw

my former neighbour,
a Jehovah's Witness

pinning someone to a wall.

08/03/08

That back to normal feeling:

switch on, the engine fires,
you drive away, no sweat.
Despite the foul forecast,
the weather holds.
You start your round
early, finish even sooner.
For once, everything
is dangerously convenient.
10/03/08

A flock of woodpigeons
swarm on Boggle Hill
as if it were Trafalgar Square,
feeding shoulder to shoulder
on something invisible.
They rise up togther
from time to time
like starlings
in a swirling scarf
of grey, then settle
on the brown wold,
moving across the raked earth
like police searching
for a murder weapon.
17/03/08

Saint Patrick's Day

and a pint of Guinness
before we signed
the contract for the house.
The sense of things
falling into place
like boulders
on a scree slope.
18/03/08

Today came a gas bill

from the planet Eon
for The Occupier:
£2,649 only!
- the price of putting off
payment, an accumulation
of debt for someone,
the previous tenant,
who must have had
an attitude to tomorrow
worthy of Matthew chapter six.
 Sunk Island Titles

Eskeleth And Apples, Michael Blackburn

Let’s Build A City, Michael Blackburn
Trees On Bear Road, Brendan Cleary
Holograph, Pam Thompson

All at £3.50 each, cheques payable to Michael Blackburn, Sunk Island

Publishing, 7 Lee Avenue, Heighington, Lincoln, LN4 1RD, UK. Or
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sunkisland@hotmail.com
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David Lightfoot is a poet and novelist living in Lincolnshire.
Previous publications include collections of poetry - Down Green
Lanes and Wounds Heal, and a novel, Winterman's Company. He
was a also co-founder and editor of Seam magazine in the 1990s.

The poems in Intermittent Faults are selected from a journal.

£3.50
ISBN