Fragments

Net curtains

Diffused sodium light

Open windows

Rumble by road-noise

Four shadowed walls

Unlocked doors

Knocked on 

By night-time security

The eleven-fifteen

To Kings Cross

Rattles its accompaniment

To bright eyes

With uninterruptible

Index fingers 

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Daily News

Half-lights and shadows

Messages from home

Soundbites

Economic TV blaggers

Come the day

They didn't build Rome

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Chapel Poem

Two chairs, side by side

By the fire extinguisher

Shadows of calm foreboding

Footsteps all outside

Breath of breath my only music

Percolates the present’s presence

He stands in the doorway

With cigarette and mobile phone

She is further away

He remonstrates

It is a one way conversation

We don't do that confession stuff

Otherwise I would happily

Share a chair with you

Sit and talk, you know

Side by side

Welcome my brother

Please share my stillness

This is one cool place

On one warm day

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Other Lights

Trees of bronze, fields of gold

Skies of blue, but turning cold

In my heart and in my voice

Seeking out the other choice

For my love and I we are caught

Life of work with families fraught

All the pains past teenage angst

Lets cut our losses & sail to France

Buy the gite and start to dance

Yet in truth we know we're tied

Fanciful times of love we cried

So smell the coffee & tie the lace

It’s off to work, we're on the case

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Adversarial

Trouble says to turn away

Trouble turns another day

Half a life lived in your head

Halfway there and almost dead

Seems your troubles here to stay

All you know you know it well

Know it all but naught to tell

Count to ten and pause your lip

Take the time, kiss fingertips

Find the path where freedom fell

Listen, to the words you don’t

Want to hear; hear, the painful

Words and hear them clear

Formed by love, powered with care

Your life alone they dare to share

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Ticking Clock

It is six years gone by

Since I determined to do

Something with my writing

Last night Kate said  

If you want your poetry

To be so personal

If you want to make it

So difficult to understand

Why do you continue

To put it out there

My swift retort

Was that Hilary Mantel

Said not to underestimate

The ability of your readers

The true response

Of course would

Have caused much self-hurt

Led to more hours than years

Of pitiful, introspective

Selfish investigation

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Fizz

He was in the woods

I searched for solace

His words did good

I found a palace

I sort of understood

Perhaps I settled

In his mood, his light

I slowed the peddles

The easel set up

Vermillion threatened

A zillion words later

I always mention you

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Heritage

Such is the sun

That falls on Stirling Castle

You took too much time to run

You crazy loving rascal

There is no touch

No air abreast to gather

The love that crushed

As love no longer mattered

Portcullis in your reach

With palette of pastel

You overstretched the breach

Love creature of Stirling Castle

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Rite

In the back place

A slightly quieter place

Respite from the chapel

With leaves strewn 

Where bodies swooned

For the love of Kingdom

To royal tomb

By paupers womb

Love is the good thing done

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Bosh

With an impersonators skill

Complete with arm movements

& pointed finger

We are given another chapter

In the latest saga

Of the destructive monologues

Through fizzling gritted teeth

& pursed lips

We hear the detritus

Of dad’s worldly thoughts

& guidance for youths to follow

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Port

Island waters: seas, lochs

Streams, waterfalls

The poet’s father’s daughter

Plays the pipes and all

All to have a calling from

The birth date to the wake

Words that stall, fall short

Of deep within rhythms

Of the oceans & of

Those seven deadly sins

Sunlight on the ferry

As for the boys in France

Back to making merry

Lead the nearly men a dance

Tall ships and seaborne warriors

Divers for the crab and the clam

Hear the anthems of the Highlands

Fire the fear and then be damned

Dream of wide open moorland

Sleep on thoughts of mountain tan

Lay down old preoccupations

As you would in far away Japan

With the author and the hari-kari

Turn the pages on the love that ran

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Transmission

Past Benbecula airstrip

My mind trips into the past

Your lasting impressions

Stress the importance of

The concordance of memory

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Volbeda

He paints from memory

He walks across the machair

Out to the still or raging seas

On to the living sands

Back in his studio he lets

The canvas carry his load

He works from memory

The depths of his distant

Unconscious are ravaged

Whilst his present mood

Reflects in the surface

Tension of the painting

These will be original

Works from memory

For as Jac says ‘he is

A professional artist

He is a painter

Not a printmaker’

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Young Man

Restless soul

Rips at his cigarette

His thin artist legs

Carried quick in red plimsolls

As he skips

Across the decking

On to the seaweed-strewn rocks

By the loch side

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Reclamation Yards

Past the broken down tractors

Past the randomly discarded farm implements

Over the heather moor and the peat bog

Past the rebuilt black houses

Past the new self-build houses

With abandoned caravans

The islanders you would think

Are not fond on aesthetic beauty. 

Perhaps this is what a hard life brings

Years of cutting peat or catching fish

Years of toil before this current time

Of holiday housing the leisured classes

Perhaps these years of hardship

Coupled with the regular visits

Of mist and rain combine

To build an island consciousness

Where survival and shelter comes first

A, bloody well, long way first

This is not a place for you seekers

Of the peak
Of the self realisation pyramid

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Rain

There is a song at the waters edge

There are pebbles on vacant sands

There are swirls

Where the water heads towards the sea

There are people, why wouldn't there be

The beauty of this beach idyll

Is then all but beaten out of me

By Kate's insistence

That we carry on walking in the rain

Towards a small dwelling

With four windows and a door.

I go along with the daftness for a while

But finally insist on returning to the hotel

Kate takes shelter

She walks to my left side away from the slanting rain

My right side becomes soddened.

At the cross roads we turn right

Now we walk directly into the wind, and rain

Kate takes shelter

She walks just short of a rainfalls depth behind me

My front becomes entirely soddened

A calm emerges, clear light ahead

There are songs in my heart

There are stones for my feet to kick

There are puddles for children to skip and splash in

There are people, why wouldn't there be

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Willie’s Campaign

A warmer wind

Nine seagulls on sentry duty

On top of the ferryboat docking posts

Out in the sound

Past the buoys and the markers

Beyond the Shiants and the planned fish-farms

A warmer water

More suited to dolphins and whales

Soaked in the dreams of human pastimes

Framed for the canvas

Stilled by the paintbrush, or camera

Settled by the slower words, with irregular verse

Eighteen months later Willie emailed me to say the campaign had been successful and that planning permission for the fish farm had been refused

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Framed

Endless shimmer

Wave after wave of nostalgia

Patterns thought never to be repeated

Still to bring their own sense of before

Here & now for all the while

Onto afterwards, ever so slowly

Photographers flip out

Their flip-up cameras

Form into rows and rows

To capture the ferry's berth

We are number two

In the orderly queue

Later we will look back

With a self satisfied smile

On our fellow travellers

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Itinerant

A hive and a beanstalk
A tin hut on the bog
Heaven on a peat moor
Slow down you dancing frog

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Solitude No More

You think I want to be here alone

I want to tell you that plainly isn't true

The reason that I'm here at all

Is because I want to be here with you

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Queen of the Clearance

She owned a million acres

I did not own a single one

She owned a million acres

Yet it is her lands beauty

That my eyes ache upon

She was a lady of the lowlands

With edicts oft emerging from

She was a lady of the lowlands

Though it is her natures beauty

That has me rising strong

The mourn of loch and lay line

Helps us to carry on

The scorn of loss and lost time

Gives the faith to carry it strong

Shares the faith, let us live it long

Live it long by stones and steeples

Live it long by folk and lore

Live it long in every moment

Live it long through the length

Of every last-time rousing song

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Seedlings in Flight

The water and the wind

The water and the wind

The water, and the wind

The water, the wind &

The grasses blown home to you

The grasses blown 

Blown on

To thoughts of home

On the water and the wind

Thoughts blown home to you

Here among your

Highland grounds

Here among your

Standing stones

Here among your land

Of endless lochs

Here among

The water and the wind

Here among the thoughts

I blow on home to you

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Rain & Sun & Rain & Sun & Rain &...

Blue sky to the heavens

Grey mist to the sea

Black, white-crested waves

Rothko through and through

With some imaginary spirit

Sat unseen, set behind it all

Today we have the rain

Yet hardly a hint of breeze

And a silver grey

Seemingly cloudless sky

But it is true

We do have the rain

Free falling to splash on tin & tile

Calling us to stay indoors

Snuggle with a book

Listen to our favourite music

Watch the seals play

Make best of having a telescope

Feel the cool air on bare bodies

In preparation for a warm shower

He seeks out light

The light, that we only see

On the painter’s canvas

Or in the  photographer’s print

I seek out the sound

That we all might hear

Of raindrops on tin cans

And aeroplanes taking to the sky

In this way sight and sound are given back

The trickle of streams

The breaks in clouds

Our earthly atmospherics reflected

Grain of sand

Lap of wave

Pop of bladderwrack

Under the soles of feet

Watch the brackish water

Taint the sea with it's purples and browns

Pause, on a hill, under the cover of a fit tree

A half-covered shelter, from the diagonal rain

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The Overpowering Energy of Lost Love

Back into the warmth

Or did the warmth come from the book

Early on, an easy understanding

Of the many levels of consciousness

Given to me through Jung's interpretation

Of his early 1930's dream

My arm is warm

The thin pullover clings ever so lightly

These are the paths my mind now wanders along

The slightest of touches, the merest of movements

Invoking memories of such a gentle love

A love even more gently imagined

A memory so easily painted

With soft lights and warm colours

A time past, that lives fleetingly as a time present

An energy that reminds me

That the warmth did not come from the book

The warmth came from within, within me

A within that has loved and lost, and loved again

A warmth that reminds me that the loss of love

Is not love lost, but a love that floats

A love that waits to be rediscovered

Whenever the warmth calls by

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Scarlet Draughts

On this forearm 

Merino wool is teased

Up and over the golden hair

Strands of hair that feel the breeze

Feel to be here, as easy as feel to be

Anywhere else I would wish to be

Ribbed sleeve ends

Bring a structure to proceedings

A firmer bond to the softer pull-over 

Here now pull yourself together

What sort of a friend

Would a lover make anyway

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Views & Desires

I am impatient

I have no time for this poetry dressed up as art

Yet I know for sure it is just a time thing

That with a clearer head I would absorb it fully

I would even turn to talk of love

Though I have never yet been able to talk of love

As finely as that fair old Mr Robin Robertson

I am impatient

I have no time for sitting and waiting

Yet I know for sure that once on board

The ferry time will pass even more slowly

That only then will I be able to look back

On that idyllic cottage by the stream

Somewhere on the way to Ullapool

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight

Findhorn Forest

In the shade of the pine

With pebbles and sand at my feet 

I sit on the log barrier to have my photograph taken

Kate somehow manages, just after noon

To bring the flash into action

It was clever she says later

To the accompaniment of beating drums

The pine brush carries it's own random patterns

Rings of the sawn log gives its age, the time of life

Before it became a new human support venture

Times, and places run their course

Where once there was unfettered imagination

Coupled with a freedom of will there is now ageing

Rituals with repetition which in turn lead to decay

We are all  in need of the search for a new beginning

A new motivation; but it is no longer sufficient, only

To paint the words of grace and patience

Onto machine made porcelain mugs

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Findhorn

The dust of previous occupancy

Smothers any possibility

Of individual reckoning

Like a swathe of blankets

Thick in felt and embroidery

The weight of others is overbearing

Yet this place

Names itself

The centre for community

I wonder

Why do I feel so estranged

I determine to retreat to the pebble beach

Take solace with the solitary fisherman

Cast my cares to the clouds

Throw my woes on the rolling sea

The talk turns

To Finnish-lodges

In the heart of the forest

A place to sauna

& swim

Au natural

That sounds

More like

An engagement with life to me

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Truly Lost

He was in a city outskirts shop doorway
Head in his hands he sat befuddled
The drink had hold of him
He clutched his navy blue carrier bag

No amount of explanation
Could he take in, on this night
This night
That was only yet in late afternoon

I won't ever see him again
Neither wonder at his whereabouts
Except through these few sparse words
Adios amigo

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Van Mildert’s Portrait

At first I thought of it as a week of my life

Without a single memory 

I sat in the cathedral and pondered

Did I not go on to the rooftop

Was it not possible to look down on the prison

Are these simply, a nowadays, imagination

I am more certain

Of a formidable figure hung high

In the university dining halls

He was overlooking

Indeed overpowering the diners

As they sat in the refectory

As they stumbled through their lunch

As they remained, strangers one and all

Who left my life, without a single memory

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Rain And Sun And Rain And Sun And: Love Of Seedlings In Flight