a poem from the collection tomorrow is the tugboat of today.

 

Dream

 

 

When I realised she was made of ash

and all of the talking, talking, talking. Not

 

 

the ash that consolidates about a sapling

but what remains after a fierce conflagration.

A black and grey ash that disperses

eventually breaking to a dust, rather than

the rich blood ash that burnt peat becomes.

 

 

 

When I realised she was made of ash

and waiting, waiting, waiting for some

 

 

words to stop her from breaking, I was

afraid that a touch would dry the river

or raise a flood, and understood that her

words would be a wind to raise the good

earth from the charred bones of the land.

a poem from the collection tomorrow is the tugboat of today.

 

Like an anchor

 

 

holds close to the shore

it used to be a wise sailor

would tend a crow,

keeping it close

on a long journey, so

that lost he might throw it

up out of the nest

to soar high above

the clouds and see

a line they could follow

to safe land

 

 

and tomorrow.....

 

a poem from the collection tomorrow is the tugboat of today.

 

rail replacement bus service.

 

the green gleam of leaves turning

metal, fragile, brittle, is changing

 

as we traverse water that is still

across the road on the way in to Aspatria after

 

 

the flood, just a small flood this time

three hundred or so houses emptied out

 

Oh! but the light is breaking the sky

through a low cloud so forbidding

 

up high is a blue clear high, and the view

as we descend to the train station by

 

the Lake District Creamery with it's ageless

sign, a black and white cow and a milk churn -

 

is of a builders yard with a white van, and the usual

stacks of used wooden pallets

 

the bus reverses into to turn back

up the road at Johanna Terrace - but what

 

a light – all encompassing

everything bright as a button

 

a yellow wagon smiles into reverse letting us on

two horses in a field are waked by the sun

 

West Street Health Centre stands ablaze

across the street the Red Lion slumbers in shade

 

the black faced sheep have never looked so clean

electricity pylons are positively gleaming

 

and the tops of hedges - shocked into a last

thrust up in the air

 

are a child's hair under the influence

of a Van de Graaff Generator

 

 

A  poem from The Lost Box of Eyes:

 

 

a philosophical provocation

this tree is both an assertion and a dialogue

it is ambiguous and playfully sets out in branches

it is rooting too slowly to appreciate in inches

it is not just itself but also lichens and mosses

aggregate on its surfaces, and the spine of trunk

is a book of record in a way, and the flat leaf

a translator of light and air and water, a sheathe

of cares where a slaughter of aphids turn gunk

and tear into a million chews, or that tree frogs

may choose to hide beneath and snooze, or foxes

paw at when they parachute loose, and so this

is an interpretation, and that is all it is, a miss

heard call, a faint echo, an accumulation of

words sighing like leaves on a tree, or a stove

that is ready to cook the meal that's inside it.

This door is blind shut and we don't know it's lit.

 

 

This poem won a prize in The Arvon International Poetry Prize, and it was published in Poetry Review.

Poem from the anthology of Cumbria poetry This Place I Know

 There is an excellent exhibition of Sheila Fell landscapes and portraits at Tullie House until mid March 2025. It reminded me of this poem I wrote. 

 

unable to see the Sheila Fell landscapes.

 

 

Air dances the wings of Cherry leaves

so that green shakes about the white frowsy hair pinked in the midst

of upraised arms shaking like a child’s upbraided for walking

out onto a busy street

though it is restrained by an iron cage fitted about it and into the concrete

paving slabs diminishing what might be subtle yearnings

 

 

She has a patch, rather a coarse plaster, at her throat where

a piercing with a kind of stone is set in a wound

 

 

painfully healing. Her hair

that was wound up in a soft grey woollen towel is let down

so that what were flowers split apart and spill

about the slender bole out to the border-edges of the paving

 

 

where wall break stones tumble the corner of my eye

caught by the sleek grey of a wild cat turning away

 

Copywrite Alan John Stubbs

Published in THIS PLACE I KNOW, a new anthology of Cumbria Poetry, by Handstand Press,

and in the collection tomorrow is the tugboat of today by The Onslaught Press.

 

 

 

lost box of eyes collection available on Internet Archive

Free read lost box of eyes.

 

I have been told that anyone interested in my poetry can find my first collection the lost box of eyes in the 'internet archive' and borrow it to read free of charge.

I am delighted with this and have added a link to the archive copy below.

 

Lost Box of Eyes  

enjoy

New Magazine Publications (Since mid 2023)

 Just to say that i have recently begun to submit poems to magazines for publication again. 

In the November issue of Obsessed by Pipework are two of my poems, 'when she was belly', and 'beginners'. I have received the magazine and it is excellent. Well worth the cover price of £4.50.

The Dawntreader have also accepted 2 of my poems for an upcoming issue. 

I am waiting to hear back from other magazines and will let you know how things go.

 

Best,

 

Alan John Stubbs 

 

A poem from the collection sound about hot.

bats

overwinter the plums, all ignored
shrank to bat like husks
sleeping fixed to the branches
in the scraped light
dried out
they clacked dryly against each other
the wind tugging their umbilicals
disappeared wreathed in white early flowers
were found hiding in the profusion when
trees were reborn
these corpses of sweet ones
overlooked late summer’s swells are
changed utterly now
with skins
all of white spores and pin-head orange
eggs waiting
they are become both beginning and end
birth and death
 

 

 

Intent

 

 

 

In that tent was all I could need

and every morning a van came

delivering breakfast milk and eggs

not too early, I could lie in

recover from the night before, slowly

stretch my back into shape;

watch her condense air into fresh

shapes from the tip of nose and curl

 

 

of hair visible; consider the rucksacks

upright against the tent poles; listen

to the sounds outside this thin partition

of nylon, the grass swaying, the footsteps

of other campers cooking and swearing

as they waken stiff and unzip the day.

 

Alan John Stubbs - poet. Bio.

 About me:

I am a poet resident in Cumbria, UK. 

My poems have been published in various magazines including:

Poetry Review

Agenda

The Rialto

The Cannon's Mouth

The Dawn Treader

Carrillon

The Journal

I used to enter competitions and have been awarded prizes in the Arvon International Poetry Competition, Words on the Water, and was often  shortlisted in the Bridport Prize, and commended in many other competitions.

The Onslaught Press have published four collections of my poetry. These are:

 

the lost box of eyes

ident

tomorrow is the tugboat of today

sound about hot

 

You can find the Onslaught Press here The Onslaught Press

Hoping that you enjoy these poems, tell others, and seek out more.

Thank you for visiting this site.

Very Best

Alan John Stubbs

Poems from sound about hot

 this tree had flat shoes

'flatees' she would call them
broad not thin that tapered in
to the unbroken moss and liverwort covered earth
where crawling things make
something of themselves
apparently out of nothing     
                    just like
she had all of that thicken and rise
foliage and flowers     some-time
snatched from the air like a promise

as if thought could be solid drinking light

she would swallow streams making them
flow up her throat canals in defiance
of gravity itself        

transported by affinity alone

until as easy on the ear exhalations of joy they became
cloud-form
laden with chemical speech saying
all of those things one life might say to another

she moves tenderly seeking a way between obstructions
joining strut limb to limb        long toe to toe
                                knowing
something of the frisson of the little movements
                            inside her sleeve
outside her arms reach

she was always one for sensible shoes
                        small steps
                            gentle exercises
stretching out slowly as far as she could go and then coming
                                        to rest
by the smallest of increments        orienting
herself to the sun and easing through         outside of notice

where green and sappy thought lives
as the movement of air through leaves
its vellum moss folds of consideration
lichen flecked caught in the act of vanishing

 

 

 

 bats.


overwinter the plums, all ignored
shrank to bat like husks
sleeping fixed to the branches
in the scraped light

dried out
they clacked dryly against each other
the wind tugging their umbilicals

disappeared wreathed in white early flowers
were found hiding in the profusion when
trees were reborn

these corpses of sweet ones
overlooked late summer’s swells are
changed utterly now

with skins
all of white spores and pin-head orange
eggs waiting
    

they are become both beginning and end
birth and death

 

 

 

 

Poem from Tomorrow is the tugboat of today

 snow


her birth changed everything

to white, white covering
the patchwork of fields making a field of light
to be negotiated
with greater care than before

her letter came with the thaw
to tell of colour's returning -
the raw umber path sunk in on the way to the stile
across the new wall

the elegant lettering is all that remains of that years fall

she was so small his small hands were oversized
and fumbled
with her vests and dresses
buttons and fasteners, and the house
she built was a funnelled drift of her things that slowly settled

when she left it was to live in warmer climes
in an easy fluid form, and to dance through the night

as lightly as when she was first airborne

Poems selected from ident

                    Perfect (old shoes)

Each one is worn to a tear
At the same point creased
A shell of moulded skin
Comfortably thin through wear
And treading lightly, with care, each pebble
Grit or pearl stone
Can be felt along the way
And though no longer watertight
They can feel the tightrope
Of each day
So while every walk’s not perfect
Each one is

Poem - by Alan John Stubbs

 

            hard here and now.

solid as a railway sleeper, hard and thick

you can drive a knife right into it,

if you’re a physicist

go cut off a slither, or pull on a splinter

that has somehow lodged deep in a finger,

burrowed under skin

and gone to rest.

inviting as a new idea, lit and beckoning

lacking any sense on closer reckoning.

always just coming or having just gone

you can’t pin it down, it lacks all reason,

travelling with you like a second,

third, or fourth, skin, and the rest.

Another poem from The Lost Box of Eyes Published by the onslaught Press

From the lost box of eyes:

 

 

To Ithaca

we stepped out of the streets

where commerce was busy defeating the rain

to the stillness of silk

a Kesa in a glass cage

stitched together of precious remnants

elaborately embroidered with lotus flowers

the raw silk the colour of old bone

or gleaming on a body like the skin of a dried onion

smooth, reflecting the sun.

a reverenced cocoon.

the uniforms of Japan's firefighters

in the days before safety

were as colourful and fragile as their young lives.

the mulberry leaves transformed in nature

from one state to another and woven together

stronger, with all ceremony

and reverence and care, were treasures.

gifts of the past made new.

the idea of the warm sun held to a skin,

the hope of continuation, of something vital enduring.