White On White

Starbursts

Meteor showers

Invisible depths

Of humankind

Making marks

For soul, heart, and mind

Satisfying body, and spirit

By going back years

Into the sub-conscious

When play, and exploration

Came way more naturally

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Hats Off, To Love And Ice Cream

Always sunshine, but sometimes also rain

Always expectations, but sometimes just waiting

Yes, that sense of being somewhere, sometime

Soft sands, boats on the river; the three-cornered basket of love

Always drifting, but sometimes also daydreaming

Always encouraged, but sometimes just held back

Yes, that sense of well maybe, or maybe not

Warm air, cobbled streets; the three-cornered cornets of vanilla ice cream

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Reason

Would I have been as fervent a believer

In my grandmother’s day

As I am a non-believer

In my own day

What occurred, in those two generations

To make belief in religion such a non-sequitur

Do I now question this widespread lack of faith

To confirm my faith in myself; I am I, and no superstitions

Science, mathematics and the humanities help my understanding

I can work it out, or I can find others

Who have worked it out before me

And who are happy for me to take their words of wisdom on board

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Being Here

I have the strong morning shadows

And the bright morning sunlight

I have no need to strike out for anywhere

Even the sight of the salmon fishing

North of the border does not entice me

I would not look good in waders now would I

Instead my mind dances amongst the greens

And the yellows and the pink champagnes

Of the blossom trees enjoying the stillness

The garden is a reflection of the calamitous

Yet calm times which we find ourselves in

But it is the form and presence of the leaded lights

Which remind me that prayers may need to be said

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Letter

I could not write but to tell you, in this correspondence

About the blossom which now surrounds our neighbourhood

I know that the April showers and disturbing winds cannot be far away

Which will leave the soft pink and white petals saddened and scattered

Down the pot-holed driveway, and also across the newly-mown lawn

Everything is impermanence I am reminded, as I feel the sleep and the pain

Enter and depart from my body; side by side, part by part

The secrets are not in there, they are not even everywhere

However deep you trawl the deeper waters they are steady

It is the only tale which remains to tell, or to hear told

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Ready Steady Go

Sunlight falls in great abundance on the blossom tree

This is an Easter Sunday unlike any other, ever

Yet this peace, this calm, this beauty

It is the very thing which so so many in the past have prayed for

But now it appears that there is also a growing desire

To return to what we used to think of as ‘normal society’

There seems to be a substantial groundswell of longing

To be able to be in touch, to be able to be close beside one's fellow man

With our brothers, our sisters, our friends, our lovers and our colleagues

We are getting ready, for what will undoubtably be one heck of a party

We will party on the parklands, we will party on the beaches

We will party in the gardens, the streets, and the cities of our great nation

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Place Setting

Sat, at the kitchen table

A breakfast of bacon and eggs

Complimented with HP brown sauce

On the side a plate of sourdough bread

Spread with Irish salted butter

I look out of the French windows

And in that moment I am transported

To our holiday cottage in the Orkneys

Looking out over the well-tended garden

(As covered by Gardening magazine)

Then onto the Bay of Houton

Before peering across Scapa Flow

Where the ferries

Chug from morning till night

On route to and from the oil island of Flotta

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Place Persists

The first donation lands today, a spark of joy

And for everyone, everywhere, the gifts

Which bring connection, purpose, and love

Prospect Cottage is saved, thankfully

We all played a part, including David Hockney

In gifting a memory to the many memories

Once again we will venture to the shingle

Take our little group the length of the country

To share a creative day out

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Place Exists

Without time, to hold you back

Stride out creatively

Among and towards the seasons

Use this place as never before

Walk around the garden

Do some work there, if so you wish

Day by day make a new place

For you are in isolation

And didn’t someone once say

It is for the best

To make the best

Of the best of all possible worlds

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Space Exists

I have a table as big as four tables

I have two velux sunlight roof windows

My stereo plays the iPhone playlist

It is a playroom

Where I don’t play half often enough

Yet I do believe

In this spring and summer

Of Coronavirus Lockdown

It could become my fragrant shelter

Especially if I am able to buy

A few big bunches of lilacs

Or several small vases of freesias

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Basis

Is it the tiredness which seeks me out
When I sit in the sunshine

The concentration which I need for reading lapses
As my head wobbles

I don’t write of solitude, not nearly so much
As I read of solitude

I am the driver, at the railway level crossing
Who waits in abeyance

And I quite care for that sunlit location
Halfway to nowhere

Yet in snatches I am fully cognisant of my place
In this floating fading world

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Unbelievable Facts

I was sat on a bar-stool, in Long Beach, California

It was October 17th, 1989

I ordered a beer, and asked the bartender

What’s this on the television

Oh he said, that’s an earthquake

We have them around these parts

I suppose not so so often in England

He served me the beer 

And moved on to his next customer

My colleague came to the bar

Look Ray, I said

The highway is bending and quivering

Ray ordered a beer

And asked did I want to eat

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Harder Facts

What is the point of continuing the struggle

Would it not be more comforting to be alone

And do I have to write it to even think it

Do I have to pour out the angst to get over the angst

What is it that inspires such opposition

What am I not being told

What must I discover for myself

Yes, there is heat and light and space

But wouldn't there be that anywhere

Because with such disregard for my ways

What is the purpose, where am I heading

I want to be in society, but I am not, not there

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Facts

Just on halfway, see the white line

Made with a roller and a bucket of lime

A groundsman, with a steady eye and gait

And perhaps a bowl of rolled out twine

Remember the school playing fields

Running tracks and cricket squares

Where precision, and circumference

Both came into play

Running in at a heck of a pace

Then stopping, precisely, as the ball was released

Or taking a leg-and-middle guard

Before tapping the willow, behind the crease

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Because

Slowly, yet surely, the dark side fades

A new joy approaches, given the opportunity

We all have spaces open for recovery

Thankful to see the daffodils

Beside the driveway at Blackladies

I was cared for there, I was loved there

A small sadness enters

For my hosts will have passed away by now

Gone off to their promised land

For they did, together and separately

Share a faith

Which served them ever so well

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So

We met on a London street

Three, late middle-age men

I was just a bit apart at first, with my notebook

But then I joined Patrick and Gerard

Patrick, pristine in neat Irish plus-four tweed and brogues

Gerard in a well-cut, navy barathea blazer, as befits a Bretagne man

They were old friends, socialites from the Sorbonne

Patrick had bought a place in St Johns Wood

And thought I was just the man to help him renovate it

I told them a story which I had heard on the radio

During my train journey to the capital from the North

Apparently each time a golfer putts a golf ball

His putter is layered with psychic memory

Eventually the energy levels of the layers combine

And now the putter will not putt, however much the golfer tries

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Develop

The longer sleep

Increases the stiffness of the body

Yet offers energy to flex the supple mind

Always one thing or another

Always a price to pay

However much at ease one sits

Remember then this light of March

Think back to the breeze over the garden

Transfer the here and now to way back when

Soon we will have the blossom with us

Then the showers, which will so so quickly take it away

Yet one foot may still step in front of one other

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Importance

The chair is quiet

An electronic device, one of them, sounds out

Perhaps a reminder, or an alarm, or a message

I will sit awhile in the quiet chair

And who knows, forgetfulness

May fail to remind me of the earlier interruption

Just as I was settling

To write a few pleasant words

To put myself and the word in context

One step before the next sort of thing

As the sunlight strengthens the shadows

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Risen

Am I obsessed, or am I tired

Can I talk of nothing more

Than what I see, or imagine

The dust motes do not seem

To share this confusion

Seemingly happy

To float

Wherever the light

And the thermals take them

Neither any problems, apparently

For the rainbow-like reflections

On the ceiling

Which emanate

From the crystals

Hanging in the window

Outside

The early morning grass

Is frozen; yet the sun

Which is now rising

May soften the crunch

Of those later footsteps

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Shades of Day

I had no need

Other than to walk

Or to write

To reinvigorate

My mind, my body

Even might I say my soul

Yet, in that moment

A cloud covered the sun

The light wavered

I waited, not for too too long

For soon, joy upon joy

The brightness returned

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Existential

I saw my own joy

I heard my own laughter

I was with friends

They helped to make me

I was my self

I was my awareness

In a mind

Which was relieved and thankful

I may be there again

Another time, another place

A not dissimilar mind

Necessary to function

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Stay Safe

I have the two lives

Three if I count my own

For sure I will survive

Over the years

Have I not been robust

Even when at the limits

I have pushed on

Regrouped

As we all have

No special praise is sought

Yet still I remain firm

There is no great creator

Although it is hard to imagine

The amazing intricacies

Which make me the man I am

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Happy Birthday

It was a gift

And for sure

The givers knew

That it would bring me pleasure

What they didn’t know

And neither did I realise

That by close reading

Then using for inspiration

That I would be released

Freed to write in a new way

Making many past and present connections

Both from near home, and also from, yes, from so so far away

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Alphabetical

All around are artefacts

Bought, brought, befriended

Corners checked, crossovers crossed

Down deep, deeper down, deep depths

Except elongations, elongated exceptionally easily

For flowers, for floods, for Flodigarry

Goes, go, great garrulous Gorbals

High, higher, heavy, heavier, hiatus

Inside, in, inward, indescribable indeed

Joy, joy, joy jumps, jeeps, Jasmine, Jerome K Jerome

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Weathered

I felt good

One footstep after another

Up the stairs to the landing

I felt light

It was light

Though I had climbed these stairs earlier

In the dark of night

Then I was caught, woken from sleep, in pain

But now I could go anywhere

And I found a book

Which might once have fallen in the bath

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Of This Place I Know

Three miles to the city

Six songs for the heartbreak

Follow the instincts

Of Saturday nights and Sunday mornings

And if you don’t reach

That place where you were going

Do not be surprised

That the absences come calling

Six pounds sterling to and from the city

Six foot-stompers for the stomping

Follow the emotions

Of Saturday nights and Sunday mornings

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Royalty, Almost

The silence is broken by the cry of a child

That the lack of light

Is used to evoke the mystery

Of the night of the daring raid

The glass is left

As cut out by the robbers

A rectangular opening

Just large enough

To lift the tiara through

Whispered voices add to the atmosphere

Of loss, and magisterial bindings

And thieves or vagabonds

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Projected Observations

The knurled foot of the sofa is leaning

It does rather need straightening up

The teacup is also at an angle

Yet sits reasonably content on the radiator

Today the socks are red and yellow, green and purple

How could they not lift your spirits

The music is by Gorecki

From his Symphony of Sorrowful Songs

I hope you might pause to listen

I will

During which time nostalgia may be abroad

Concert halls, cathedrals, monastic abbeys

With streetlights, spotlights, and cool water flowing

Also smiling eyes, smiling through vales of tears

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