AFTERWARDS

Quiet now, no peal or clink left of the day,

all dancing, singing, thanking done,

now speed the pulse through night.

A new morning will wake us soon

and wash all that away.

Plans for this and plans for that may knock on doors

of minds still blinking, blinded by

the flash of records made.

So lock and bolt secure those gates

and let your hearts restore.

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RAILWAY EXPERIENCE

I’d found a quiet corner of a café in the station,

an unclaimed quiet corner where I could watch,

think and watch some more, not thinking the word

“voyeur” might be mouthed; that would cloud

the issue, that’s for sure. I had it in mind just to

sit and muse on how many me’s I might get to see

should they turn their heads or decide there was time

for a...

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WAKING UP TO SNOW                                                                       

Woke up to snow today and was

glad I had to be up and out,

to be about before the silence broke.

I like the idea of white all round,

emerging as the night draws back,

revealing random perambulations, say,

of a fox that senses scents are dulled

beneath the snowy overlay.

My ...

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BLACKDOWN RIDGE

I thanked Maggie McIver, deceased, today –

she’d left a bench, with an envied view,

to walkers on top of Blackdown ridge

who sometimes stop to train their eyes,

to stretch a bridge to the northern side

of the gentle Downs that sit so pretty

some ten straight, clear, bright miles away.

Her bench was placed just off the track,

its back to the scores of...

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MOONWATCH                                                                                             

The moon, so gentle quite unlike the sun,

no harm to eyes intent on fixing on

its holes and craters, its pock-marked face

that sometimes smiles and sometimes frowns

and out the ground rises in the East

just like the sun might well have done

some hours before if cloud allowed.

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QUIETER                                                                               

Quieter these days

save for the scratch of sole against

pavement as he fights to lift his feet.

That’s his goal now: to keep moving

as well as at any time he’d taken

quite for granted the stride he’d had,

now a harsh memory cutting him

deep in his dark emptiness.

He’d always ...

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THE CLOCK                                                                                                  

Staying with friends in the North-West, the Lakes,

a morning garden date with peckish feathered guests

drawn by delicacies half hidden by spring’s fresh leaves

which sway a little in the breeze and so appeal as

easy meals to songbirds darting here and there

which I watch, e...

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PERFECT PINK                                                                                             

Last night across the sky, a perfect pink, a

cloth, I think, grasped at two corners and

pulled gently off the deep redwood table; to

drop out of sight, following the sun that’s

fallen and will now be gone – indeed, begone

some time in light of next day’s sober solstice.

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BODIES                                              

She asks which part of her body

I like the most and I say it’s

the softness, the smoothness of her

inner thigh, so as to remind her of

the start of it all, that time she wore

striped stockings that rose a mile high

in that direction. I think it was a fancy-dress,

she must have gone as a pair of legs.

I ask her whi...

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THOUGHTS OF AUTUMN

Late summer sun, slow change in hues of

leaves whose days are nearly done, dues paid

for the year, so they may either linger on,

through autumn’s shifts, or drop tomorrow, an

early gift to the earth below, and all the things about to

grow in gardens, fields and water meadows.

There is simple beauty in the lives of leaves

arriving with the skywar...

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THOUGHTS OF AUTUMN

Late summer sun, slow change in hues of

leaves whose days are nearly done, dues paid

for the year, so they may either linger on,

through autumn’s shifts, or drop tomorrow, an

early gift to the earth below, and all the things about to

grow in gardens, fields and water meadows.

There is simple beauty in the lives of leaves

arriving with the skyward ris...

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LEAVING A WAKE

No sign of anyone who might know

enough about this boat to take full control,

to comfort many a mere passive mariner

when the sounds of the sea batter salted steel –

like the boom just now as an ocean’s drop

slapped the keel to resonate in emulation of

a thousand lusty thunderclaps –

such din might cause this sailor (an atheist too)

to pray to gods that mi...

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CATCH-UP                                                                                                   

Four post-war years my senior,

my sister a minor enigma until

four years no longer made a difference

for either one of us; there just came a day

when ordinary discourse was now, we thought,

a real, an actual option: I must have been

about nineteen, knew it was the right ...

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STEPPING OUT                                                                                            

I stand on the edge and lean right out

towards the light, the face of one, of

so much more than someone, just met;

won’t forget the tingling of my skin, the

smell of hers, won’t let this slip, this chance to

be unequivocal, say what must be said,

do what must be done – as t...

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THE HEATHER ON THE HEATH                                                                        

The feather in my cap I found

in the heather on the heath

my feet they barely touched the ground

not the heather nor the heath

for I was the bird that flew all round

the heather and the heath.

The heather on the heath she blooms

a carpet purple blue

the bird will rest aw...

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A CHURCHYARD VISIT

It’s more of a garden than a yard,

dotted with red, yellow, lilac, a dozen

dark yews, views out to chalky downs.

Errant gulls squawk above the

softer sounds of Spring stealing inside

dry flint walls to see the season through;

the new one welcome – but something missing,

listening to the quiet conversation of

two churchyard spotters who tip-toe potter

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AND IF                                                                                   

If there are moments when doubt spreads wide inside

and ploughs deep furrows across her brow,

take the hand of your lover and brush her fingers

through your hair and yours through hers

and watch summer colours reclaim her face,

chase away the pale of days once cold.

And if there is o...

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WALKING IN THE MORNING SUN

I’ve walked the past few mornings

with my own indentured dusky shadow,

dependable as the sun, which recently has

banished dull, grey cloud and rain, both

vanished from the catalogues of skies

as even worshippers call up showers,

some sweet relief for wilting flowers.

Where I walk, though, the owner of the view,

the heavens’ store of heathe...

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RAINDROPS ON A SKYLIGHT                                                        

Wet wintry day, a feel of February,

I am listening to the flow of the wind,

a lull, a blow, a lull, the patter of

rain on a window above my head

a lullaby by the thousands of drops

just above my head, looking up,

hoping that an adoration will be

payment enough for the privilege,

the privacy o...

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MEMORIES OF THE CAMINO                                                         

Saw nothing down below on the way to Vancouver –

a more or less straight line for nine hours or so.

Sat above a wing, beside a door, paying more

for the privilege, my legs need to stretch for these

longer hauls – all part of the call on me by

Mister P, some while ago, some day that was.

I watc...

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JUST BEFORE SLEEP                                                                                                                 

I close my eyes and, most times, feel

the watching dark lean over us, breathe

deeply in, blow long, slow rings of

sleep across each grateful brow, then

wrap our limbs around with silken sheets,

two cocooned souls prepared for night.

So soft th...

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WHY?

Why do we do it, you and I, this poetry thing?

I guess that one explanation these days is that

someone, somewhere, will react, maybe make a

low cost pact with me to read a few lines, then

take up (or decline) the offer of more in return for

a Comment (or a Like). I’d say that’s a deal worth

due consideration; meanwhile, the nation waits,

patiently, for little to change...

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SILHOUETTE                                                                        

Her matt black satin silhouette

the trace of her he can’t forget

bold outline he once drew himself

the shape of she he never met.

Yet nearly did: some day, some time,

now gone, now dust – he cannot find

the where, the when, the start, the end,

ill lit inside his darkened mind.

Sa...

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THE TIME BETWEEN                                                           

Photograph in fading monochrome,

pleasant flat the home of a twenties child

used to living alone, her

wedding on the sideboard, same

glass and easel frame (is that the name?)

since the time between began.

That photograph has special place

among the scattered this, that, the other

face of iss...

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TWO LEAVES                                                                                   

We will bud green together,

a fresh, bright green,

and we will be washed together

by the same water cleaned.

We will be fed together

by the same moist earth, the light

and a deeper green we’ll turn together

as the days deny the nights.

Yes we will turn our backs togeth...

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GRACE                                                                                                                                                                             

We share a long unpublished past

a few events punctuating – hardly staccato –

quiet homage paid, neither knowing

the other yearned for more.

As it was, platonic ever-absence

fought to feed that need for ...

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THAT SPACE IN MY HEART                                                                                   

Am I to leave this life unloved

heart half-empty where others’ love for me should lie;

that part that offers love is a well-oiled working engine –

healthy, I’d go as far to say and, fair to say, efficient.

the quality of my given love is sufficient;

I freely dispense it in co...

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POST-SCRIPT                                                                       

I have not, until now, tried to write about him –

our father who ought to be in Heaven –

save for a brief description of a man’s face

shortly after death. It could have been anyone’s face,

a man of any faith, no clear trace of religion,

no “about to go somewhere” face – just a

cold, grey hue, th...

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KISS-CROSSING                                                                                         

End of term celebration, a friend’s house;

a few drinks and cigarettes to show things change –

we thought so anyway, even as time passed.

Walked back – or perhaps just walked – with her,

woman for some time.

Thought we didn’t know each other but I’d listened.

Funny – wel...

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SOON AFTER (an epilogue for A Streetcar Named Desire)                                                                   

Soon after, there will be quiet –                                                         

either dreamy sleep or just a moment

by a window, looking out for a change in the sky,

all because there was, nearby, in a random place,

a face worn by a few friends w...

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FUNERAL FRIENDS                                                 

It feels right to share at funerals: we walk

Slowly to our seats and breath the peace of a

quiet togetherness of friends and lovers, of

blood and others who, sometime, were touched,

perhaps just gently brushed, by the warmth of

that body now cold, neutralised by a

careful arrangement of face and limbs

folded f...

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SHE SLEEPS                                                                         

I wake up early most morning times

to fret about this and that inside my head,

accumulating tiredness, while she lies,

serene, a dream playing with her eyelids

and now and then a corner of her mouth.

In moments of doubt, I shake her wrist

or touch her lips and she wakes,

in a riot of eyelash...

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ESTUARY WALK                                                                  

Low, eye-filling tide where we walked yesterday,

shallow shores uncovered, stretched out to

the end of programmed retreat: tangles of

narrow rivulets trickling into slipping sea,

ready to flood, before long, just as naturally,

an irresistible surge, estuary spreading until

each hunchback hedge, each...

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CORDOBAN FLAMENCO                                       

Willowy’s the word, correct, cold for their shape –

at first sight, that is; now I recall lightning in miniature,

in the charge of two dancers, on a stage in a bar.

It all started serenely enough: a clean, clear guitar,

left hand fingers caressing a well-worn fretboard,

right hand stroking, coaxing, firm and physical.

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