[John Whitworth]

HARD LANDING
The Oldie Competition by Tessa Castro

IN COMPETITION NO 137 you were asked for a poem called 'The Fall', and the fallers ran from Adam to apples, from Satan to a trapeze artist. Gillian Ewing's study of windfalls ended: 'Time sadly will not sweeten/the fallen pippin's end:/to rot and then be eaten/by worms- like us, my friend.' Several of you touched on the strangely deep effect of even a trivial fall. Adrian Fry told of the suspicious inquest of Humpty Dumpty at which the King's men could scarcely avoid egg on their faces. Shirley Curran told the true story of the mountaineer Arthur Dolphin's fatal fall in 1953: 'Belaying, climbing free, rising and creeping/Up cracks and chimneys with talent, will./Technique, charisma and athletic skill.' Congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of a Taylor's of Harrogate tea and cake set going to Bill Webster.

Not hurrying, just pressing on -
The pavement level, dry and sound –
When quick as click the sky had gone A
nd I was facing cold, hard ground.
A doubtful voice: 'Are you all right?'
Kind thought, but no: 'Fine, thanks.' A fib
But any injuries were slight -
A clattered head, a tender rib
So why, then, did this slapstick tumble
Cut far more deeply in my mind?
A fall from grace? A Freudian stumble?
The loss of something undefined?
Let's say it made most starkly dear
A thing that's always dimly known:
Just one mis-step can bring us near
That grave conjunction - head and stone.
Bill Webster

Suspension in a lucid interval,
The space between the stirrup and the ground,
The slack noose waiting for the final pull,
The panorama of the semi-drowned

No to those slots for memory and prayer,
For fumbling with old words to make them fit,
Just let oblivion seize me unaware,
I want no moment to make terms with it

Tell, if you must, the measure of my days:
Long-term appointments carry little force
Yet give the living scope to mend their ways
Or follow, if they will, their chosen course,

But those last flashes, which illuminate
The just-about-to-die, for me recall
Tracks which have shown their obstacles too late
To save the terror of a certain fall.
Mary Holtby

I’ll fall like apples for a woman's face,
above all shadowed or, as Emily wrote,
'imperfectly beheld' - obscured by lace –
the veil of darkness making it remote
and therefore tantalising, dimness glossed
into iconic meanings by desire,
a view from Plato's cave. And then I'm lost
as surely as thy matchwood in a fire.
I'd make some saner choices but I can't.
he fantasy's my drug, my walking frame.
I have the will power of a clinging plant.
She owns my mind and I don't know her name.
My fall, like Mulciber’s is absolute.
Is it the folly of climacteric
or is a primal handshake at its root,
the pact between Old Adam and Old Nick?
Basil Ransome-Davies

She didn't see it coming when the ground
Came up to meet her, must have shut her eyes.
The path was very rough, and so she found
Herself prostrate, stones digging in her thighs

As baked bean tins and oranges escaped
Her trolley bag onto the nearby road,
And her winter coat was twisted so it draped
Across a puddle. Like a puffed up toad

She got onto her knees, as if to pray,
As embarrassment took over from the pain.
When someone stopped to ask 'Are you OK?'
She snapped 'Yes, fine' and clambered up again.

She gathered up her goods, and walked away,
Not looking back, determined to be free
From feeling silly. Now I have to say,
I'm sorry, and that stupid fool was me.
Katie Mallett