Nicholas Coleman

Who am I?
I have always lived in this beautiful small valley under the South Downs of Sussex, Southern England., UK . Born 48 years ago, I grew up in the tiny isolated village where Lewis Carroll wrote Alice. Eight of us children plus an orphan cousin running wild in a large country house. My parents brought us up in a strange Victorian society that no longer existed, cut-off from the modern world. We had no television or wireless but a huge library of old books which I read non-stop. We did however get an expensive "education" in a Jesuit boarding school cum concentration camp. It is hardly surprising that we turned out rather strange and unorthodox once exposed to the 20th Century. On leaving home I bought a 5 acre pig farm, living in a wooden shed. I married June and have two children, a boy of 16 and a girl of 20. Choosing to live as a peasant, for 10 years I did not travel further than 5 miles away, or open a single book. May have seemed idyllic at first, sharing work and produce with neighbouring smallholders, scorning money. But those of you who feel imprisoned by modern society, I can assure you that living the so- called "good life" becomes like being shut in a six by four cell. Not just your body, your mind. Ten years ago, the struggle to make a living farming becoming too much, I started my own business laying water mains and have now built a small house on the farm. In my spare time I like writing and reading poetry, sailboarding and swimming, horse riding and helping neighbouring farmers. I stumbled across the aol Writers Club a year ago now, and was amazed when I found that others were interested in what I wrote. I will always be grateful for the encouragement and advice I received.
Nicholas Coleman

Neanderthal Man, a separate ape-like branch of the human race, lived alongside our ancestors for 200,000 years, disappearing 30,000 years ago. Thought to have had no language or art, but recently a flute of his fashioned from the thigh bone of a bear was found in a cave in Slovenia. It plays the same scale of seven notes that is the basis of modern Western music.

The Thigh Bone of the Bear

What silver scene set under a youthful moon
woke that dull aching to compose.
From where in that scowling skull did come
the urge to set your world to tune.
And in your quiet thoughts did you suppose
your flute would be oertaken by the drum,
that for you the Earth was but a barren womb
with no child of yours to tend your tomb

And were you all enslaved by our forebears
kept caged like larks to lilt and chaunt.
so gentle that you lost the instinct to survive
and played your tunes to chide away your cares.
What haunting hymns flowed from out that flute,
raised your spirit, kept your hope alive,
as Philomel played on the hollow bones of bears
did the flow of music replace your flowing tears.

Your race was not raised to the beat of the drum
but softly lilting sounds of blown bones.
A harmony of two hundred thousand year
ended when you had nowheres left to run.
Did homo sapiens drive you from your homes
as humble happiness was replaced by fear
of the devil's descant that was to come
as the dark side of the Moon displaced the Sun.

And so one day, millenias from now,
will apes be playing instruments of grace,
debating if we had the soul to sing
and wonder, finding clarinet and strings, just how
that dull dumb breed, the extinct human race,
did have what lets the heart take wing
inside that primal head, that domed brow,
to sing with songbirds on the blossomed bough.

I want to know, I have to understand:
Were you the Adam, do we come from Cain
and was the apple the thigh bone of a bear.
What killed your song, were you the final band.
And as the flute played the interlude to pain
did the serpent hear your melody of fear
that flowed out faint across a sterile land
as Eden sank slowly under grains of sand.

nickcoleman
12th April 97

Shadows

I am the rat
crouched in the talons of the hawk high overhead.
I see far off the sunlight on the hillside and am happy.
and the multitudes of grasses wave.... they drink my blood,
as from the snouts of swine I've taken flight.
And as my life is leaving time I can see
scenes from my past through bloodied haze...
and the shadow of a hawk sits on my shoulder.
It's then I know..my raptor has the image of myself.
And I am all that was before and all about me.
Now I graze with wild horses, needing no one,
nor do I question the grass why it grows.
Flesh is torn and visions blur...but blind eyes saw
and all about me is the swish of many wings.

Nickcoleman
march97

The Woodlouse

Heading from the red light in the heat
tens of feet tramp unseeing onwards.
No time to read the book or wonder
why it's open at one page or the next.
Mindless of games played by human gods
indifferent as to how the light shines
or how the darkness is switched on.
Must march on, blind to boundaries,
till touched by something not understood
he turns in on himself, an introverted Atlas,
to carry the weight of his world alone
inside his armoured sphere. Black Dog
flicks a tail, his world rolls into flames.
Somewhere in a different universe
a supernova flares, then fades to ash.

Nickcoleman
28 November 96

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