And a couple of my own.
Blue Beauty.
Across the lake I saw a beautiful Blue Bird,
Rising from the water, taking to the sky.
And I saw the people crying, for she was not meant to fly.
And when the surface swallowed this man-made craft of speed,
The violence was total, her mighty spirit freed.
And history was written of a man who dared & lost,
His battle for the golden prize of speed at any cost.
A Royal honour granted for the risks he lived to take,
But still his bones lay resting at the bottom of the lake.
The lake had held its secret, many years the time had passed,
Till dawned the day the divers came, to find the truth at last.
Across the lake there rises a beautiful Blue Bird,
And the watchers on the hillside utter not a word.
The fell tops seem to whisper, the clouds are hanging low,
And the air is strangely silent, for we'll never really know.
The graceful craft now wreckage, but only to the eye,
An epitaph to courage.
May their legend never die.
---------++++---------
A poem in memory of Donald Campbell.
Did I meet you once by the lakeside,
On the shore one day; flat calm, mist rising.
Did I see you there on the jetty, by the boathouse.
Where you there.
I remember the roar in the hillside,
And the birdsong and the patter of the rain;
And then I remember the silence,
And I didn't see you again.
I saw you once by the slipway on the shingle,
And in the middle of the lake - I saw you there,
And in Coniston - I saw you everywhere.
I will meet you at the jetty by the boathouse;
At the lakeside on the shore,
Where the water laps the shingle
I will greet you there once more.
May 2001. Alan Gilbert-Voss.
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