Endgame by crowspark - WriteWords.org.uk

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Endgame

by crowspark

Posted: 24 August 2021
Word Count: 112
Summary: For Michael's challenge.

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I am twelve

Grandfather is in heaven,

Looking down to check

I am always good.

He was a policeman;

now still active

on God's force.

I am fourteen

watching tv

my first State Funeral.

Churchill is dead

dockland cranes dip

to mark the passage

of the boat chugging

his body up the Thames.

I am twenty

sprawled on the grass

of Blackheath

under the moon

and above the black death

plague victims doused in lime.

Ship horns at Greenwich forewarn,

another year.

I am seventy

the ice caps are melting

Earth chokes as forests burn.

Plastic poisons the oceans

and somehow, I have slipped

between realities

to an endgame

undreamt of.

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michwo at 21:54 on 24 August 2021 Report this post

Stanza 3 of this poem prompted me to do a Google search for 'blackheath plague victims', Bill. I gathered from this that you were in South London when you were twenty as Blackheath comes under Lewisham apparently where the local council insist that either the soil there is black when wet or it used to be referred to as bleak heath and 'bleak' became 'black', so no victims of the Black Death buried there then in the 1340s though I strongly suspect that this would certainly account for the unevenness of the ground in this locality. I once went to Greenwich Observatory and stood with a foot in the Western and Eastern hemispheres either side of Greenwich meridian. Perhaps I also saw the 'Cutty Sark'. Sorry. Rambling recollections on my part there and I certainly can't shake in my shoes at definite past or possible future events but that's because I rarely think about them even if prompted. I associate the word 'endgame' with the title of a Beckett play and the dénouement of a game of chess, both of which for me fall into the category of abstract and intellectual thought. I think for you it has a more emotive connotation. My own response to this poem is not emotional however. It's a defect in my makeup that I don't feel these things like you do. Am I abnormal? Perhaps I should. Is 'fore warn' better as one word: 'forewarn'? Nice touches here, of course. I liked the image of the dockland cranes that dip as a mark of respect for the passing of a great elder statesman and the boat chugging/ his body up the Thames. I know we're meant to plant trees rather than watch them burn, Bill, and not pollute the countryside and bodies of water with wanton waste, but what will be, will be, and perhaps I can only say that because, by and large, I dissociate myself from this scenario these days unfortunately. It literally doesn't affect me.

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crowspark at 10:35 on 25 August 2021 Report this post

Hi Michael, thank you for the nit and for commenting.
I lived in a small Kent village but my social life was in South London around Plumstead and Greenwich. Right about the derivation of Blackheath but it is extremely unlikely that there were no plague pits on Blackheath, but the local authority push that line to avoid awkward and costly demands from council tax payers in the area. In the 60s they rejected demands to exhume bodies as they claimed that the lime would have destroyed any evidence of corpses.
The dock workers were not greatly enamoured of Churchill and they had to be paid to operate the cranes at the weekend of the funeral. Within a few years all of those cranes disappeared and the docks cleared away for the new container docks, which reduced the need for so many dockers.
I remember being shocked to read in Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition (1947) that he saw evidence of rubbish in the ocean. Imagine how I feel now when our oceans are in their current state.
If you and I are lucky we will be gone before things get really bad but I worry for my sons and potential grand children. Not the end of the World but a very changed world if the Antarctic ice cap also melts and the Gulf Stream packs up.

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V`yonne at 13:46 on 04 September 2021 Report this post

Excellent work Bill. I was 12 when Churchill died and my grandfather died that year too -- he was the same age as Churchill. I would have maybe liked a linking stanza or two of different ages but of course that last one smashes it!

I am sorry I didn't join in. Been busy tearing my hair out!

Read the WriteWords interview with Oonah Joslin (V`yonne)

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crowspark at 14:04 on 05 September 2021 Report this post

Thanks Oonah. I was struggling for memories to be honest. Yes, I can tell you are busy ;)

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