Markings 72
Rolf Boldrewood Literary Awards 2017
Second Prize
‘The Man with the Donkey’
after Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick 1892-1915
i.
Casting a small pale shadow
on South Shields’ sands
he pulled the donkeys
into ordinary
forgotten afternoons
a penny a ride
investing only him
and his charges
with strange fortune
striding with whistled courage
and a packet of Woodbines
into history.
ii.
An emigrant at seventeen
signs on as second steward
aboard SS Koringa
locked in the stokehole furnace
chained to the image
of a drowned sailor
a conflagration that can’t go out
connecting one coal shovel
with the next
pulls the stubborn belching boat
around an old coastline
with nothing at its centre.
iii.
A new recruit
at Blackboy Hill Camp
learns how to pull his boots
left-right-left-right
30 miles a day
drill after drill
all the way to dusty Cairo
only his censored thoughts
will go home to Tyneside now
England shifts its pawns
without planning the Turkish move
across to Anzac Cove by moonlight.
iv.
Surviving a dawn drenched beach
of blood and bodies
senses satiated with horror
the man and his donkey
plod from trench to trench
bearing wounded from Shrapnel Gully
Jack and ‘Duffy’-
Monash said
‘were worth a hundred men to me’
a charmed life almost full circle
coaxing a mule off Dead Man’s Ridge
all down his long thrown shadow.
v.
By the end of April - stalemate
and a letter from sister Annie he won’t read
while his mother waits in vain for the post
in twenty-four days
three hundred rescued wounded
to the crescent-shaped
battlefield of a beach
May 19th - a last Woodbine - whistling
then a bullet through the back
that would send him home cast in bronze
without a medal
to give the country back its heart.
Jeff Guess
©Jeff Guess 2017
