19/09/2023

Pentre Ifan


I have laid you out upon the cromlech
Here in the space between earth and sky
Your body ready to return
A circle drawn
Above, the raptor’s cry
Shrieks the tears I cannot shed

 

The menhir carry you shoulder high
Hauling the boat from this slate beach
Shingle slipping away
Upturned boat
Below, the hollow ocean throws up
My grief, wave after wave

 

I will let you go
While angels sing upon the hill
In the space between earth and sky
A circle drawn
Ready to return
A pebble thrown at high tide






16/07/2023

Water-Maps

 



Starting a new set of poems/songs here under the title water-maps. The photo is from a walk along the beach at Weymouth Bay last week. 


Water-Maps

In those shapes rushing back to the sea
I see the reflected bodies stretched and distorted

Swimmers pushing against the tide

The passing echoes of wading feet
Sand rill rip-tides of a child’s beach

Pebble constellations mimic the sky
Plucked by the wave and placed
As random as the stars in space

A good pebble to skim with

The seventh wave crests over our stumbling feet
Dragging back the cold shock, balance lost, wet socks

And the sea whispers a story to me
In water-maps drawn, wave-torn from the deep




18/10/2022

The Uncommon Chance


I wade through swirling streams of mistyped data
Kick at piles of dead-end code
Excavate the odds and ends outside of parameters
Exploring a new kind of binary
Parsed from the noise, full of uncertainty
Replacing if this, then that
With what if, what if
That infinite redirection
Shaping our lives

 Grasp the uncommon chance
Though others call it error

14/11/2021

Sisters of the Riverbank

 

I see them in winter
Now the light is lowering the sky
To a glow of late days

Their fingertips: bony, leaves lost
Entwined in solidarity
Holding hands at the river’s edge
Waiting out the rising winter floods

 

I see them in spring
Now the light is lifting the sky
Above the silver frosts

Singing a green song; dancing
Along the racing riverbank
Filling the air with pollen and bees
Waltzing with the breeze

 

I see them in the summer
Now the light is a vast blue echo
Of blazing sunshine

Their limbs laden: green shawls
Draped over slow summer waters
A picnic of sheep and swallows
And soft summer talk

 

I see them in autumn
Now the light is burnishing
Fruit and grain to gold

Sisters of the riverbank
Counting their leaves as they fall
These memories they’ve grown
They share a rich harvest now

 

 

 

08/11/2021

Apples for Tythes


 Step by step

The early light

Full of winter dreams

Is tangible in the air

Like swimming

Through those

Bare branches of

Lone coral trees

Where morning crows

Cough and call

The tides

 

These favourite lanes

Winding through winter

Paths steeped in water light

With apple trees for tythes

 

Paradise

Wellhouse

Pockets full of old rhynes

Views of the hill

Windmill

Wick

And above town

Where pavement heights

Change with

A will

 

Step by step in the early light

Walking the miles

Pockets full of old rhynes

And apples for tythes

 


18/10/2020

Into the hot Friday of a London June (2011)

 

The train slows outside the station
Long enough to let me notice
Towering over the platforms' sleek arteries
A shard of glass and steel
Holding the sky in its nettle grasp
All around new tower blocks jostle
To London Bridge
The frantic pace of change
Echoed in the insistent alarm
And slow hiss of pneumatic doors
I alight into the hot Friday of a London June

First point of call is Southwark Cathedral
A quiet stay in the fabric of passing traffic
All welcome here, even the cat
And I marvel at the wooden bosses
The icon and the poet's tomb
I rub Will's knee for luck
And pause at the door
Visibly moved by the Marchioness Memorial
But the river runs on regardless

I walk with the quick pace of a city dweller
Not the slow doodle across the pavement
Of the day tripper who stops and stares
At every blue plaque and brass doorknocker
No, I sweep pass the Golden Hinde
And into Clink Street
A detour over Southwark Road
And Bankside finds me by the Globe
Neatly thatched and insular
To the passing street theatre
Clowns and mimes and Latin Americana

Now I am here
Outside the Tate Modern
Industrial cathedral
With its hallowed spaces
Of art and culture held within
A red brick certainty

A guest coffee and biscuit on the members' terrace
As people wander over the Millennium Bridge
And sailing dinghies ply the stretch upriver
With a breeze as sharp as Cleopatra's needle

Downstairs and through doors
To find the Miro exhibition
In the theatre of his war
Every canvas his stage
Every print a soliloquy
To art
To freedom
Perhaps to dream
An infinite blue silence
Against the outrage
Of bloody oppression
No voice more eloquent
In these thronging rooms

On South Bank there's a beach
With sand and huts
And a large straw fox
It makes me laugh
The juxtaposition of this day
From surrealism to surreal
Sushi for
Lunch is such a treat

Across the footbridge at Charing Cross
And on to Trafalgar Square
Where the sweet spray from the fountains
Cools the heat from my face
As light as summer rain
On the people's plinth sails a ship in a bottle
By the National Gallery a green wall grows
And here, the Olympic Clock, still ticking
Counting down my passing feet

Piccadilly and the Royal Academy
Sipping Pimm's from room to room
As canvas after canvas adorn the walls
In ever greater scale and price
My eyes alight on beetled buttons
And a fat kingfisher
A dog rooting in a bin
A swirling red galaxy inexorably pulling me in
All punctuated by a circle and a square
The tide of fluorescent red dots
Rising, up the wall
To remind me
The river runs on regardless

Now London in high afternoon heat
Heaps sweat and dust and noise on my brow
Rush hour soon as pavements swell
Under the bridge the neat rows of coloured lights
The final shattered bones of buildings
Being shored up with comedy clubs and beer cellars
And all around the commuters press ahead
To London Bridge

Against this human tide
I catch a glimpse
A face
A moment's recognition soon lost
They were heading in the other direction anyway
And my train is due

 

 

 

 

05/10/2020

Water Lands


We’ve made it to the water lands

The year’s high tide

Where the river sings in silver ribbons

Across the meadow side

 

And all the rain, crying out a summer

Of loss & uncertainty

Now races down drains and roads

Returning to the sea

 

We’ve made it to the water lands

Most of the year undone

The dusty soil turned to quicksilver

Under an apple harvest sun

 

And all the rain, crying out a summer

Of loss & uncertainty

Now races down drains and roads

Returning to the sea