A selection of my poetry
‘twixt valley
And hills,
The halfway lock,
Sitting closely to
A long abandoned mill,
Contemplates
Long ago working boats
Metamorphing
Into brightly painted leisure boats.
Pike House Lock
Has seen it all
In its two centuries,
And will continue to,
Until its story ends.
©Alan McKean
Photos ©Joe Kershaw
Another year
Of growing old
Gen Z want us dead,
Or so I’ve been told.
Another tick
As the calendar leers
Another addition
To increasing years.
But what pisses me off
As the calendar unlocks
Is that now on age surveys
I tick the last box.
Bugger!
©Alan McKean
Cold this morning
The traces of frost on the car seem at odds
With the gentle golds of fallen leaves.
With the cold, the leaves become eager
To leave the comfort of their branches
As though the frost is saying
“That’s it, clear off now”.
The early morning chorus of car engines,
Running while their owners clear the frost from windscreens
“Summer’s finished now” is the common rejoinder
As if it will never return.
In the park, sharp green lawns
Rapidly become a multicoloured shimmering layer of browns and golds
As the leaves left on the trees
Seek the comfort of their earthbound brothers.
First frost, first cold rain, first gentle snowflakes
All drive us to the year’s turnaround
As we already eagerly look for next summer
Wishing our lives away, season by season.
© Alan McKean
Tide’s out,
Sand’s wet,
Footprints
Have a brief life,
Then vanish.
Birds a-plenty
Around my head,
Noisily screeching,
Noisily reading
The menu.
But me,
And my dog,
Don’t care,
As we slowly
Cross the beach
From here
To there.
©Alan McKean
(End of season)
Shadows of games gone by
Shades of the final “Last over”
Empty wicket
Empty benches
Empty pavilion
Lonely scoreboard
Kit washed (maybe)
Kit bag stored
Seasonal matters
All subject to Winter’s ravages.
Ghosts of the cricket season
Hover
Around the boundaries,
The bar,
And the memories
Of a summer now gone.
©Alan McKean, August 2026
Gentle susurration.
Green leaves
Still outnumber
The red
And the gold.
Green leaves
Hide
The invisible trains
As they rattle
‘twixt the twin Bridges
Of Hebden and Sowerby.
The final meeting
Of bat and ball
Rapidly approaches
At season’s end,
Leaving the wicket
To its winter recovery.
Boundary ropes
Will be coiled.
The benches
Will age.
The green
Will return.
Scout Rock
Hides
The approaching Autumn.
My poems
May not scan,
Or rhyme
They may not
Conform to the Purists’ rules
On poetry
They may not
Be as good as
Vogon poems
But they all
Have one thing
In common
I like them,
And
I
Wrote
Every
Single
Word
©Alan McKean
Here is a series of photographs recently taken at Orford in Suffolk. Orford Quay, on the River Ore, was awash (sorry!) with boats – a mixture of leisure and working boats, but what caught my eye was a small number of dead and abandoned boats on the river bank. These boats gave rise to the poem below the pictures.
Sailed my last tide
Caught my last catch
Ferried my last bird watchers.
The Ore’s ebb and flow
Are no longer mine.
My North Sea adventures
Now go to others.
Other craft
Follow in my footsteps,
But I remain in the banks of The Ore,
A reminder
To my successors
Of their future
©Alan McKean, July 2026
Lazy water
In lazy July.
Slowly
The North Sea
Becomes
The Alde
Ere
The Alde
Becomes The North Sea.
Orford Ness
Watches both
With indifference
©Alan McKean, July 2026
Aided
By the winds
And waves,
The cold sea
Slowly shapes
The shoreline,
And its inhabitants lives,
As its
Headlands
Cliffs
Inlets
Bays
Rocks
Stones
Pebbles
Are eventually
Returned
To the sand.
©Alan McKean
