Ian Griffiths

Ian Griffiths
 was born and brought up in Swansea and the Gower, South Wales. He started writing poetry at school and had two poems published in an anthology of Poets of Tomorrow. His current collection of poems Conversations With Birds is intended for publication later this year.


An admirer of the work of Dylan Thomas his own work is also intended to be heard and has some of the same lyrical qualities.  He is often also to be found in his hometown Swansea as part of the current poetry scene performing such popular pieces as Hanover Street, a universal documentation of an art student’s life in the Seventies.



He has performed both at home and abroad notably Los Angeles, Carmel, San Francisco, Baltimore, Woodstock, Oslo, and the Cavan festival in Ireland. As well as his own poetry he specializes in performance of Dylan Thomas, the poetry of John Donne, Milton and Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

Drawing much of his inspiration from childhood and schooldays his poems which are often infused with nature and bird-life also address wider issues of humanity.


Hide and Seek
 
Excitement grew
As night drew near
For this would be the night
Of hide and seek
And I had found
The perfect place to hide
A place so secret
None would find me there.

There was no
Out of bounds that day
Across the playing field
And through the rusting rails
Long since by Desperate Dan’s
On country runs
Bent wide enough
To let a small boy through.

Up the lane then
The ivy festooned walls
Where known to none but I
A Wren had made its nest.
Safe within her moss cocoon
With pounding heart
She hears my step approach
Feels my shadow pass

Through the gate now
Where as choristers
We stood in line
Ruffed and cassocked
Shoes shone hair brushed
Faces wax like candles
Before processing down
Cathedral steps
The faithful polished stone.

And there my hiding place
A tomb whose partly fallen lid
Gave space enough beneath
For one small boy to crawl

Far away over wickets
beyond cricket nets
and gooseberry bushes
where we stole the fruit
The hounds were baying now
Coming, Coming They cried
Coming ready or not
But I was ready
so come
Come and find me if you can

A child crouched in a tomb
The smell of moss and earth
whilst Time rung out by bells
Began to pass

Rapidly at first
hot from the chase
the world was full of sound
cacophony of rooks
above the wheeling  trees
of pounding heart
of running feet
the distant yelp of boys

But no boys came
and soon the ground beneath grew cold
eight bells turned to nine
a blackbird rummaging for worms
brief hope of being found
but the rooks had settled
In the graveyard trees
and from their vantage
Black against the sky
all below was calm

A mist came down
and hung  fine droplets
from the leaf bare trees
Auroras ringed the street lights
in the chantry lane
and nothing stirred
The April air
except the silent flight of owls

I crept out of my den
And as I wandered home
the scout hut closed
I learnt then
as I know now
That what we wish
of hide and seek
Is not to vanish
But by others
to be found.

Copyright © 2018 Ian Griffiths