In a nightgown of mist the garden sleeps
While Dawn yawns quietly and cold birds creep
Revealed now are the webs and well-spun plans
Of spiders profiting where they can
Silken traps woven out of view
Now hang heavy with the dew
A world held ransom by their threads
As we lay sleeping in our beds
The alarm clock rings, a blackbird's call
And soon the mist will fret and fall
Day will chase these thoughts away
But spiders sit and spin and prey
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
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
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
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
Though others call it error
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
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
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
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
A westerly wind
Throws its arms around my shoulders
A warm hug
While all the leaves
Laugh loudly
On this midsummer noon
A day flying bat over the pond
Mirrored by a dragonfly
Above the rust and ragged robin
Dances in time to distant drums
Young apples and old carp
The perfect balance
A snapshot
Of this midpoint on the solstice
On the hill they wait
Old stones counting songs
Till sunset
But here, in this warm breeze
Now the storm has past
I count my blessings
As the year moves on
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