THIS DAY DAWNING
Poems by Maurice Rutherford

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Maurice Rutherford was born and educated in Hull. He spent his working life, with the interruption of some five years’ wartime military service, as a technical writer in the ship-repairing industry on both banks of the Humber. A past editor of the workshop magazine Proof, he served for a number of years as literature consultant and management adviser to Lincolnshire and Humberside Arts. He has read his poems on national and local radio and on television.

From reviews of Maurice Rutherford’s previous collection, Slipping The Tugs (1982):

“Rutherford has performed the unusual and praiseworthy feat of creating intelligent, subtle and moving poems which are also accessible.”
Ian McMillan / Iron

“A native of Hull now resident in Grimsby, Rutherford writes movingly of this area with its dying fish ports.”
National Book League Booknews

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This Day Dawning

This day dawning is the black fruitgum,
the sixpence in the pudding; the day
dad first let go the bicycle’s saddle.
It is my mother’s knee, the ease
when the toothache had gone.

It is the day I was appointed -
and the day I was released.
It is every bill in the house paid off.
This day is cyclamen and holly
dancing to a daffodil band.

It is the day when Olive said yes.
Bubbles in a baby’s bath, balloons
and his first bouncing words.
It is the day my son returned home;
my daughter singing in the choir.

It is the Christmas stockings filled;
the tightly rolled-up fiver
in the Salvation Army tin.
Top hat and tails and taxis
and that first successful waltz.

It is Pickering Park and Costello;
one magnificent minnow
in a jam jar bright with rainbows.
It is the uncashed chque for one guinea
for a first ever poem in print.

This day dawning is the taste returning
after a bout of heavy cold.
It is the irresistible invitation
of a vast untrodden snow
and only I can put my foot in it.

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THIS DAY DAWNING
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Cover illustration: J.M.W. Turner, ‘Norham Castle, sunrise’. (The Tate Gallery, London).
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