As well as being a producer of wildlife and adventure programmes Dominic also writes prize-winning poetry that has been published in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies
incluidng Magma Poetry, The North, Agenda, Under the Radar and Black Bough Poetry.
A SELECTION OF PUBLISHED POETRY
All text and recordings © Dominic Weston
FRESHWATER SWIMMING FOR SERENITY
out…
palm onto palm
slide into absorbing gloom
here and only here
I extend I reach I glide
no end to touch no edge to grasp
only the rhythm is the guide
into the absorbing gloom
palm onto palm
…in
Published by Black Bough Poetry in 2021 in their anthology ‘Freedom-Rapture’ to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death.
https://www.blackboughpoetry.com https://www.amazon.co.uk/Freedom-Rapture-Black-Poetry-Barddoniateh-Gangen/dp/B098GJD92C/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Freedom-Rapture&qid=1630334941&sr=8-1
THE DAEDALUS I KNEW
The father of Icarus is on his knees,
left hand deftly lacing a leather cuff
around his son’s bicep while the right carries
the weight of the wings
It was not my father but my mother
who knelt before her own boy wonder
to tie the laces on my new school shoes and
launch me into the world
Daedalus’s rapt attention to his son
as unimaginable to me as flight itself,
a pantomime played out on a mythical isle,
nothing I could know
My mother sprang my father from the
loveless island his parents confined him to
determined that her own children would never
see its brittle shores
My father’s skills earned the salary that
paid for tan sandals in the summer and
black lace-ups in winter, that put the food on
the table year round
So, no, he never did kneel before me
to tie my laces or straighten my wings
but he lent me his place in my mother’s heart
and that selfless act let me fly
Inspired by the bronze statue ‘Daedalus Equipping Icarus’ by Francis Derwent Wood in the City of Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
Published by Fragmented Voices in 2020 in their anthology ‘The Language of Salt - poems on love and loss’
https://fragmentedvoices.com/
BLIZZARD IN THE AMAZON
Puttering into the riverboat’s beam
white noise engulfs our keen tender
an urgent squall of mating moths
Faces carpeted with emerging flyers
we cocoon ourselves in hammocks
storms soon drown out the static
Dawn rolls out a sodden massacre
papier-mâché plastering every deck
a failed generation now waits for us
to sweep it clean
First published in Black Bough Poetry, issue 3, ‘Yolk’ 2019
https://www.blackboughpoetry.com
https://ab383967-0580-4a42-9850-61bcae6657e9.filesusr.com/ugd/065db4_08ea0090f6eb43bbbc381b4a055e8b30.pdf
LYNGBAKR
An Icelander, eight centuries past, wrote of a sea beast so vast
that heather, perhaps even trees, took root across its back -
looming above the Arctic waters it could be perilously
mistaken for an island
In northern Botswana the stark rise and fall of Sable Hill breaks
like a whale’s back above the eternally flat and wide Kalahari
the bone-dry spring denudes its pelt of Appleleaf and Acacia,
giving it a moth-eaten air
Sable lies in wait, at the shallow edge of a landlocked fossil sea
whose waves, now long gone, once scoured its craggy flanks
and rolled the rocky parings smooth, then buried them
as huge shoals of pebbles
Every century slides onwards slowly for the immense Lyngbakr,
with its salt-rimed, barnacle-blind eyes below the surface
it is unaware that the sun has stolen the water, and the wind
has replaced it with sand
But, on a night when the sheet metal moon shudders up high
and turns the flatlands to steel, Sable is slick and sleek again
and it recalls the endless mineral cold of the Greenland Sea
and why it had to leave
First published in Skylight 47 issue 12 2019:
https://skylight47poetry.wordpress.com/
Republished by Writing at the Beach Hut:
https://writingatthebeachhut.org/2020/01/09/lyngbakr-a-poem-by-dominic-weston/
BOUND AND GAGGED
Never let it be said that we begrudge
the gudgeon its gills
or the pike its thunderous strike
the gristle and glisten of its muscular tail
Never let it be said that the minnow’s
darting flight mirrors our own
reluctant fight
to sit still long enough to see
that beneath the surface
we could be free to weave
through algae-coated reeds
with rudd, tench and grayling
Let it not be said that we could halt
our tread and like the barbel
imbibe soothing silts
while the eel’s slick belly thuds
in sync with the sun’s fingers
poking beneath pads
waiting for its next meal to reel by
on complicit currents
Never let it be said that this murky
and particular stream also flows
and slows in our own veins
draws us to the damp nettled bank
calls us down into its dark company
where its own sky glimmers and gleams
yet beneath that slender surface
we never dare open our mouths to breathe
Created as part of 'Adventures in Poetry Film' an Elephants Footprint initiative with Arts Council England support.
https://elephantsfootprint.com/
First published as a poetry film in Tentacular issue 3:
https://www.tentacularmag.com/issue3b/dominic-weston
ANCESTRY.COM
My family tree sits in a pot behind the greenhouse
barely more than a ‘whip’ it is the same age as me
in winter it looks dead because it is deciduous
in summer it looks dead because it is pot bound
it moves from house to house with me because
I’m too scared to plant it out in case I move again
I like to think that it is an oak that will one day flourish
likely it is a self-sown sycamore that will one day flourish
its angry tap root has split the pot’s drainage hole
fighting to escape into the hard-packed dirt below
I can always tear it up or take the secateurs to it
trim it back to the base like an old parent’s toenail
too often I carry it carelessly, snag its growing point
now it has two leaders competing for my attention
lopsided and with a split personality
I look after it as best I can
First published in The Iron Book of Tree Poetry,
by Iron Press, March 2020
https://www.ironpress.co.uk/books/treepoetry.html
ISBN: 978-1-9997636-4-0 Price £9.00
NONE OF US SAW THIS COMING
Daddy’s got six legs now
he keeps patrolling the edge of the blisterpack of multivitamins
for the over 50s
on the breakfast table
It’s not cold but he’s doddering about the place
like he’s forgotten how to walk, reluctant to fly, even
when we try to waft him off
he keeps coming back to the same corner starting his patrol again
I could kill him
he’s stuck in some kind of loop
like when you ask him to get something
from the other room
and he comes back empty handed again and again
I was on the upper deck
of the Ben-my-Chree
creeping into Douglas harbour
past the Tower of Refuge
there he was on the deck below alighting on the handrail
following it round as far as he could go
then starting again
“I just want to know my exact national debt”
all he’d say, I could kill him
I don’t want to kill him of course but I could, easily
instead I watch him alight again on the corner
of the half pressed out sheet
of multivitamins
for the over 50s
none of us saw this coming
‘None of us saw this coming’ won 4th prize in the 2019 York Literature Festival / YorkMix Poetry Prize.
GHOST OF A FLEA
Once I made a vow I did only once
to develop my psychic ability until I die
there are several reasons I won’t go into why
likely it was a purple-covered paperback
at the time I really thought I meant it I did
but that vow is long broken now it is
for that reason these words are empty
I think of the wings I grew for the vow
I do the protective shields for my psyche
of the two angels who were there for me too
to protect me and who only answered to two
different names said at the same time like
RobPhil but it sounded better in my psyche
probably they’re still waiting for my call
I’m lucky I’ve seen lots of the world I have
like tigers sharks and whales and whale sharks
it’s the small ones that make me like me though
oblivious little lifers doing time unawares
a free-floating salp jelly scooped up in my palm
waiting for the rest of its ocean-going chain
a Peruvian firefly looking like a ‘Locket’’
Their chaotic flights amuse the jungle they do
hitting on our glow sticks - any port in a storm
I should be the guardian for the unknowing ones
even if they will never say my once-said names
even though I know none of them will devote
themselves to psychic abilities until they die
I probably am then but then I’ve broken
my vow now I have
‘Ghost of a Flea’ won the 2019 Hastings LitFest Poetry Prize, judged by John McCulklough
It was published in ‘Scintilla’, the journal of the Vaughan Association, in 2020
http://www.vaughanassociation.org/
DARTMOOR PONY BONES
Who laid the pony bones in this place?
weighty white clubs
set in a pelt of deepest moor moss
feigning forgiveness
weapons waiting to be considered
a femur fits the fist well
Something placed the pony bones
on granite beside the river
giant knuckles, fortune stones
cast ready for the reading
beneath oak and alder rows
they are not an accident
this is no resting place
remnants harness purpose
Published in Black Bough Poetry’s anthology ‘Deep Time - Volume II’ in October 2020
https://www.blackboughpoetry.com/post/deep-time
It also appears on Places of Poetry https://www.placesofpoetry.org.uk/