Gladiator Girl

This is an old poem (circa 2007) I was thinking about for no particular reason today. I was never sure about the title but nothing else seems to fit. 

And the battle we fight

Is the battle we choose

You can’t win

And I can’t lose

So where do we go from here

I don’t know but baby

It’s more of the same

The games I’ve played

Only conclude

Love never learns

Ballad on the moors

Purple heather

Growing by the door

Sweeping winds

Across the stones

Of monuments and

The ruins are written

In the bones

Of those long past

Battles I’ve worn

And I’m sorry for the scars

When I turned it into a fight

But baby, it’s my right.

And the battle we fight

Is the battle we choose

You can’t win

And I can’t lose

So where do we go from here

I don’t know but baby

It’s more of the same

The games I’ve played

Only conclude

Love never learns

Stretch the ropes

To sail

And swing the hopes

Of sweeping winds

Across the skies

Oars to the shore

I’ll be washed up at your door

Bearing fruits from other lands

Salt water stains on my hands

And I know the name

Given to me by right

So why do we fight?

Love never learns

Can only make it rhyme

The keyboard

Is the place and time

And the words are still

True today

Story unfolding like a fight

Drawing up my battle lines

Darling, it’s my right

And the battle we fight

Is the battle we choose

You can’t win

And I can’t lose

So where do we go from here

I don’t know but baby

It’s more of the same

The games I’ve played

Only conclude

Love never learns

A couple of old poems for a summery weekend...

Where Lady Summer Dwells

(A Dorset walk)

Where the ragged robin grows
And cow parsley sows
A garland of wild garlic
In the hedgerow
Down the green lane
Runs a silver stream
And in the clear wide sky
Ride dragonflies

Here’s a place I know well
It’s where lady summer dwells

Life is for living
And hearts are for giving
It’s a sweet song she sings
While she walks
Down the green lane

Old Bumble

I remember
The days
When you could fly
From wood to lea
Hedgerow
All the way

No fencing
No block paving
No endless acreage
Ploughed edge to edge
But room to dawdle
Among the foxgloves
And sunny honeysuckle...

Ah, by my furry knees
Times long gone
Lunch was at the Dog Rose
With warm lavender till tea
Then home
While long shadows overtook
The neat lawns
Cut too short for clover now

Home to snooze
A honeyed dream
Of summer days
With hedgerow
All the way

I would walk again a Dorset year

I would walk again those spring tides

The unsettling shift of shingle slides

And all the spray in rainbows spun

Against the high tide harbour flung

Dried seaweed crackles underfoot

A cuttlefish, a long lost boot

A razorshell, and old, tarred rope

The beached turtle of an upturned boat

My steps are swamped by the shifting stones

The air pungent with bleached fish bones

And the sea is wild and free and rare

Shaking horses from his hair

I would walk again those summer lanes

With leafy boughs and murmuring streams

And overhead in the whistling sky

A lark song lost to cloudless eyes

White campion, ragged robin, cow parsley and wild garlic

All choke the low brook and wreathe a hedgerow garland

And underfoot the warm, worn tread of stile and chalkstone

Climbing up across the harvested flank of the hillside

To find the view all lost in a late haze

Sweet slumbering landscape on which to gaze

I would walk again those cold autumn cliffs

Towering above the wind drowned waves

Their buttress trees all torn into shapes

While scattered crows shout down the droves

As blackberry pocked and flinty scree

The valleys clamber to the sea

A sheeps wool twist caught on the wire

The seagulls loud lamenting choir

The whip crack cold cutting through my coat

And sea salt burning in my throat

I would walk again those winter fields

The frost cracked branches bare of leaves

And slide across the frozen bow

To where the river slowly flows

Hugged by mist-hung willow trees

Catching dew-strung cobwebs about my knees

Across the bank a rook coughs twice

And beats a path home for the night

And under early stars and greenish sky

The first snowflakes fall and fly

And I am certain standing here

I would walk again a Dorset year