Poems: Paul Bavister

The Beast

As we lay awake in the pub campsite,
there was no howling in the woods,
no thick fur brushing the tent,
no shadow leaping onto the gatepost.

Whining sheep kept us awake
until tractors rumbled across stony fields –
time to take the fidgeting kids
for their morning wash in the toilet block.

We spent the day walking on the moor
until we were dizzy with heat.
In a pub, we ate plates of chips
and pretended to be the beast.

The landlady showed us a photo
of pawprints in the mud,
then battered us with stories
of all those dead sheep.

The kids gulped. We felt our way to the tent.
Halfway through the night, the sheep,
trapped in their fields, fell silent –
the kids had rolled so close

I could hear them blinking.

 

Eric

I walked into the brightly lit pub
to celebrate an uncle’s eightieth
and as I loaded my paper plate
I got stared at like I was a ghost

then one of the old boys called out
the name of the granddad I never met:
Eric. Everyone was quick to tell me
he'd died before I was born.

They told me he was a right clown
and once kicked through
the town square in his size thirteens
and accidentally flipped a pigeon

dead. To me he’d only been the phrase
he died before you were born –
but at the party I found out how
they missed his weird jokes

then they huddled together
and whispered how one of their dads
found him writhing in the street
clutching the ulcer that killed him

but when they saw I was listening
they moved on to how
he’d dress up at parties like a ghost
and from beneath the sheet

would flap those size thirteen feet.

Garden Party

I resented not being invited to the garden party.
I'd done all the work: planted borders,
rolled lawns, hammered up hanging baskets.

I felt I deserved to go, so I did.
I swilled down a glass of fizz
and a drowning wasp

stung until my throat began to close.
I had a vision of myself on the terrace,
shouting orders at a younger me

to get a different job, stop
struggling, engage my brain.
I woke in hospital,

embarrassed at crashing the party.
Was the lawn flat enough for the marquee?
Had I watered the borders?

The poison burned in my chest.
The nurse wired me up,
then I was sick, and in the sick

was a tangle of legs and wings,
a sting. As I recovered, I looked deep
into my phone and found

the invite I'd missed to the garden party.

Paul Bavister has published three collections of poetry with Two Rivers Press. His work has recently appeared in Dark Winter, Soup Can and Rusty Truck.