{"id":1817,"date":"2017-11-01T18:47:07","date_gmt":"2017-11-01T18:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/?p=1817"},"modified":"2023-11-12T12:12:29","modified_gmt":"2023-11-12T12:12:29","slug":"blurred-fences-unpublished-poem-1995-gay-or-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/?p=1817","title":{"rendered":"Blurred Fences : Thames Valley Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Christmas Poem in November?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wrote this poem in 1995 and had omitted the key line about poets for fear of offending my father.<\/p>\n

Now he has been gone 13 years so probably safe to reveal what the poem about.<\/p>\n

After my father died in 2004 my mother confided to me that he had always ‘feared I was gay’ even when I spent seven years living with a Spanish woman…..such is the rural Oxfordshire psyche I suppose. Anyway here the finally rewritten (a couple of lines) poem about the trials of being a Berkshire Ruralist:-)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

BLURRED FENCES<\/strong><\/p>\n

Wrestling with a young fir’s stubborn trunk<\/p>\n

On an exposed north-facing hillside<\/p>\n

Two weeks before Christmas, sleet, wind biting,<\/p>\n

The spires of Oxford blurring in the storm<\/p>\n

My father’s hands, hard, chapped, red-raw<\/p>\n

Bend the tree over until the roots snap.<\/p>\n

The red-faced farmer stands, biding his time<\/p>\n

Then says ‘Poet is he.. they’re all gay or dead’<\/p>\n

Silent we trudge back through rows of young firs<\/p>\n

Past a tethered collie, collapsing tin sheds.<\/p>\n

At the end of a gravel road worn to clay<\/p>\n

We clamber inside my dad’s\u00a0 builder’s truck<\/p>\n

In the cab, steamy with opened flasks<\/p>\n

Radio Oxford blaring out the traffic report<\/p>\n

He carefully shakes ice off his jacket<\/p>\n

As I scrape frozen mud off my boots<\/p>\n

Visiting for the day, not dressed for fields<\/p>\n

My Levis are slaked with straw and muck.<\/p>\n

He sets the windscreen wipers beating<\/p>\n

And a ledge of ice builds up on the hood then melts.<\/p>\n

Distances open up and close through low cloud<\/p>\n

As cooling-tower steam collapses like a veil over our home-town<\/p>\n

The Down-land swims like a saucer of cat’s milk in the rain<\/p>\n

As I try and grip a hot mug of tea with cold hands.<\/p>\n

Still silent my father sips his tea and stares<\/p>\n

through the pine trees and away from the farm.<\/p>\n

I feel awkward, pick at the flakes of ice on my sleeve<\/p>\n

As the motor turns and we lurch down the track.<\/p>\n

He has ten years more hard labour to do.<\/p>\n

Excavating then replacing soil across this county.<\/p>\n

I have ten years of unfulfilled promises and high hopes to go.<\/p>\n

Before I crash back into these muddy fields and the land buries him.<\/p>\n

Dedicated to Ivo Belcher 1932-2004 and the un-named Fat Farmer with the conservative views \ud83d\ude42<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Christmas Poem in November? I wrote this poem in 1995 and had omitted the key line about poets for fear of offending my father. Now he has been gone 13 years so probably safe to reveal what the poem about. After my father died in 2004 my mother confided to me that he had…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[60,33,46,106,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-creative-writing","category-poetry","category-poets","category-new-poems","category-working-class-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6nhh-tj","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1817"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2913,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1817\/revisions\/2913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shaunbelcher.com\/writing\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}