After the great windstorm that blew in from the West –
sunshine and luminous skies disowning the gale’s treachery
of amputated branches, dust and dune-menacing surf –

he dreams in the calm of another day, glances out
from his book through ageing French windows
across the sundeck to a newly-crisp ocean, rich

as the skirling of pipes beyond silverleaf, milkwood,
strelitzia and palm: he knows this pulsing
creature, this loved world, as he knows his own breath.

As he stares, the open door groans, creaks back on itself,
subsides in a heap – a stricken glass geriatric
crutched and straining for support. Years of salt air

have rotted the old screws, and he hadn’t noticed.
Quick to grab the frame and hold it up,
they wedge it clumsily back into place,

locking it in. It will hold for a few more days, they hope.
But who will restore this fragile thing now
in such a time of keening collapse?

Suddenly the whole bright world is unhinged.
It needs fixing.

Harry Owen

(from The Cull, 2017)

If the boundary here above Bethlehem
is meant to keep out intruders,
it isn’t working.

Having wandered away from the fence line,
we scramble up next to a clicking stream
within a coarse stumble of boulders,
a dry mulch of grasses and brush.

Every few steps we must stop and listen.

The rustlers are here already, scraping
invisibly, shuffling about their own
avian, reptilian, insect business.

Under, through. Over, between. No problem.

This scribbling stream, too, is a rustler –
fluent, yes, but no respecter of fences.

The morning is soft, mild, almost English,
high clouds breaking fitfully
to admit the rustlers’ sun
while Old Rocky watches from afar.

Fences will never hold him, or them.
No theft here, no plundering. Only gift.

Harry Owen

(Shortlisted for the South African National Poetry Prize, 2023)

What is that word exactly?

A term thrown about like confetti
at service meetings, ministry school,
on the mags – a title, a handshake,
a rolled-up trouser leg. A nothing.

Cliquish, a cult, mindless acceptance
of the words of a book, a story
told to children, Janet and John,
Winnie the Pooh. Divinity.

Brother David Owen?

None of these, and all of them. His is
a stepping away from sharp dogma,
refusal to be conned by one Truth,
the courage to say openly, ‘No more’.

His is space on an office bookshelf
for the scripture we grew up on. Space
between Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Alice
in Wonderland. Integrity, respect.

Brother David.

He was somewhere for this shiftless one
at Deal Street to imagine a life,
a prospect richer than conformity
to God, society and boredom,

or, at his Reading University
of football, cybernetics, brussels sprouts –
an open door to e.e. cummings,
Fulbright and the top of the world.

Brother David.

He was, and is, a leader, a head,
a heart, a father’s son but ever
himself: teacher, learner, a man
of a better world than this. Here, now,

in the present tense, one to walk at
another’s side, to be there, to stand,
to know that questions are all we are,
and this is exactly as it should be.

David. My brother David.

He’s laughing across an Exmoor stream
as rain threatens, swinging by a rope
and showing the way to a future
worth living, a day, a year, a lifetime.

He’s up in the cockloft, turfing out
the nonsense of our youth, saluting
nonetheless true decency, the love
that underpinned it, and moving on.

David. Brother David.

So what is this thorny word?

More, much more than some tame epithet,
but substance, foothold, foundation, hub –
weight-bearer, fulcrum, buttress, plinth whose
imperfections only strengthen him:

kintsugi brushed with silvered lacquer,
philosopher of wabi-sabi
and all the beauty of wounded strength.
A brother, a real one. Say it loud.

David, Dave, now we provision you.

And you ain’t heavy – you’re our brother.

Harry Owen