Train journey – August 2021
Concrete buildings like monoliths
a row of dark green mop-headed trees
whisked away as the train rumbles
on its rock and roll track to the coast.
A shed made of cut out poles;
thin lights their heads turned down
like sullen children passing by.
The sky parades monster-morphing clouds,
like a set for a surreal movie,
as if we have stepped out of time,
gone off script; improvised a new one.
The film is about us:
the monsters being overturned,
outrun at their source.
However it ends, extinction beckons.
The Unmadeup Path
I would prefer to be at the edge of it all.
Not on the path strewn with tidiness
Where opinions lay their slabs of concrete
Burying our fears beneath
To make them go away.
Nature looks for nothing but itself.
I no longer crave the salve of nicety.
Sitting on the grass by the lonesome oak,
The ground beneath me alive with earth’s secrets,
I am part of that savage paradigm.
Not the other. Sanitised. Dead.
Reseda Lutea* Returns to the City
Nature sows, earth grows
wind carries, seeds tarry
ground accepts, water wets
time roots, plants shoot
earth powers wild flowers
green stems, yellow hems
clump together, summer weather
bees alight, butterflies white
mignonette – dry steppes
meadow grass, stony paths
wasteland, clay, sand
train tracks, between cracks.
In the city, what a pity
law sours wild flowers
man weeds, roots cede,
stone stark, nature dark
flowerless, years pass
man sees man’s needs
very pretty, in the city
man sows, nature owns
time roots, plants shoot
hand in land, land in hand
nature sows, earth grows
*Wild Mignonette
This poem was a commissioned poem for Where the Wild Flowers Are, a project devised by Clare Whistler for The City of London Festival, 2012, celebrating all the wild flowers that used to grow in the City’s churchyards. I was designated this flower: Wild Mignonette. Each poem was either set to music or performed and danced to in different City of London churches. A Wildflower Anthology of all poems was published for the event.
Line by Line
Line by line you erase the years;
lose your way wandering down
corridors between wards,
with hopeful names like
Churchill, Nightingale, Alexandra:
Names that make you think –
in clearer moments –
what you could have done had you not
hung your coat on safer doors,
doors that now gape open
to unrelenting night.
You could have done more,
taken different turns:
Changed. Influenced. Inspired.
You could have done, you could…
You turn another corner:
Devonshire. Albert. Adelaide:
Line by line you erase the years,
as you edge towards the light.
Hastings – January 2021
Looking down on this pier
I see a battleship
nosing its way out to sea.
Navigator of dreams
I catch glimpses of wars
and sleeping evil stirs.
Ghosts past and to come;
not here; not now.
Just the empty deck of a pier
struck silent by an invisible foe,
sea silver as steel,
sun not out, not yet.
Snapshot
From that to this,
suddenly it is all new:
windscreen wipers on windows;
shush of water under wheels;
engine moaning as the bus
rattles over potholes.
A siren like a blackbird
darts through the lights.
Cars carve up water
whooshing past;
a handful of humans
quiet in the early morn,
sleep clinging like cobwebs
not yet dusted down by life.
August rain steams the air
humid as a jungle.
From this to that.
Window
As I wrote this poem I caught myself being somewhat intense and, although I originally alluded to climate change in the last lines, I personally prefer the humorous version that jumped into my mind as I wrote! However the serious lines do have a ring about them.
Beyond double-glazing
Seagulls swoop silently,
a fast boat rumples the sea.
A poem stirs…
But the defrosting fridge
calls louder.
or…
But the sound of ice caps melting
in my fridge draws me down to earth.
I love Poetry
I love poetry,
the craft or sullen art *
the Welsh bard wrote about.
That thing you do
because you must
even though it doesn’t pay the rent.
When the muse enters
without a by your leave
and beckons you: “Come”,
you gladly go with her,
tripping through this gap in time
to other worlds where
colour, sound, shape, scent –
whip your heart to a rhythm of words.
You dance a reel, feel, heal,
and a keel, peel, teal, until
the muse shuts you out,
and the slow time work begins.
Is it too prosaic, too full, too soon?
Have I rhymed enough, too much?
And your worst fear:
Is it trite, tight, a pasty shadow
of what you saw in that other place?
Some will say this and some will say that,
How it came down to earth
with a bump on the page so flat.
but you, who know the craft , the art,
Ah, you hold the truth of it in your heart!
*”In my Craft and Sullen Art “- Dylan Thomas
Flight
This the space where we live,
our life moving through it
as a fish in the ocean,
unaware of the weight –
the feather-light pressure of Love
that leads you to learn of it
through other bodies
passing through, as you do.
Passing, meeting, coming, going.
So you pack your bag,
put your life in the hold
traverse the passage of stars
he took months ago.
You’ll step through the sliding doors
with nothing to declare but your love.
And you will love.
Le Temps Perdu
You cough and sneeze along the promenade
in tandem with the weather.
The sea you swam in just two weeks ago,
rumples her waves like a fractious child
She would swallow you up now in a gulp.
The sky, like your eyes, like your mood,
like the people nursing hot tea
on the front, drawn tight,
on the downward turn
in denial of warmth and the end of light.
No autumn leaves fall here,
just you sinking with another season.
Decades gone, too few to come,
the weather’s moods so well-known
you could recite them all by heart.
The sun throws a sudden party,
lighting the sea a lucid green.
Your mood lifts. Time passes
too soon, too fast for this sad vent.
You watch a teenage gull ride the wind.
Strands of hair stick to your smile.
Just Now
Just now…
Putting the rubbish out,
slam of the bin lid,
thoughts on myriad things,
the sky met me like a lover;
put his arms around me,
amethyst cool, and said, “hello”.
I looked up at his vast open face
and kissed him for taking me
oh so gently in his arms.
He whispered in my ear,
“Everything is just fine!”
I gave him my best crescent smile,
and went back inside,
soft and light as a star.
Now
Not a series of nows, but a now
Beyond the now of time.
A poem on now in the now:
The future and past as one.
There is nothing in now to be done.
These words written now
to the gentle flow of the train
streaming past trees and houses
holding myriad nows of their own.
There is nothing now cannot know
There is no strain in the now.
It is the place where love grows roots,
the eternal flourishing now;
Tao of life without pain.
There is nothing now has to gain.
Soughing
In this quiet space
My heart opens.
Wind rocks the house;
Tap tapping branches
feel their way to the white of day.
I am relieved of thought;
hear nothing but this wind,
soughing like a restless child in sleep.
The sentinel radiator creaks into life.
I open the morning with my eyes;
turn on everything;
Turn my thoughts with the muscle of past.
Turn on me…
Nothing I think is true:
Second hand solutions
to life lived in the dark.
Yet I am guided by a light unseen
The Etymology of Love
We are all trying to express
in our imperfection
the perfection of love
that changes its shape as the wind
bends trees solid in root,
flexible in space.
The nature of love is true.
Yet we make stories in the wind
give love names, meaning.
Like the leaves on the trees
that change colour
from vibrant green
to orange, yellow, brown,
our stories wax and wane.
And yet the root, the etymology
of love remains the same.