6:23

Grey skies

Don’t stop the birdsong

Windblown hedges

Don’t dampen their spirits

I have risen early

For no real purpose

It is too soon

To make my love her tea

Poetry doesn’t begin this way

Even for Mr Bukowski

Why, by now there ought to be

Profanity, or words more profound

But, as the too slow camper-van

Crossing the New York Bridge

I also am moving too slowly

I need reminding how to flow

Perhaps a meditation

To contemplate the light

Say thanks to all creation

& the wonders of the night

Maybe an invitation

To a debutante’s ball

Or another Gatsby glorification

To sound his lost lover’s call

Besieged by past temptation

I stride out towards the fall

There is no simplification

When love to know is all

The love of one another

The brook beside the brawl

The sister and the brothers

The familiar tone to stall

As richness becomes discovered

& spitefulness turns around

The day moves on and upwards

Old sad thoughts they fall to ground

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Rationale

I had no reason to write

Yet I did write

I enjoyed the process

I was pleased with the outcome

A door, that I had closed

Was ever so slightly reopened

A thin shaft of light, streamed

Through the airborne dust

There in that movement

I imagined gaiety, the energies

Of love, carried on in twirling

Multicoloured specks of life

I have no reason to write

Yet I hope to write again soon

To engage in the belief, that 

I might then give back the light

To a door I am able to re-open

A little more each day

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

Sea View

The remembrance of loss

Caught me

In the empty hallway

I trawled through

The back catalogues

For a clue to the half light

That drifted over the bannister

Beside the bedroom

Where we first made love

Comforting

In its layers of bedding

It is where we go

When no one can see us

The memories crossed

It wasn’t you, it isn’t me

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

A Flickering

Shadows dance, made

By sunlight, through net

Curtains, at the window

Birds talk of chance

I surmise a certain circumstance

Where all beneath the dress

Was unveiled, & we set sail

As the light faded

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop

In Awe of Neruda

I write to no one now that I have lost her
Yet still I write
Of the ocean’s moonlight reflections
Of my own dances with the shadows

I am as no one without my writing
So I go to illusory pasts
With mountains & meadows
& I cast myself

To the vague details of the mind
There to find nothing
That might give the consolation
Of her skins sensitive sensations

With no one & being no one
You might expect a desperate tone
Yet alone, as you now find me
Is a new found treasure

The pleasure of meditation
That well chosen gifts evoked
Fresh thoughts provoked
Of those hours we talked

Before the melancholy set in
The follies of that life;
Where we meet, where we part
Were we start, and where

Where do we finish

I write to no one now that I have lost her
Yet still I write
Of sunlight in the marketplace
Of hot coffee in the Paris pavement café

I am as someone with my writing
I roam around the sculpture parks
Visit historic European gardens
& I fast, fast upon myself

From the incidental revisions
There to rediscover precision
Among the gifts of creation
A purpose, with an inclination

With one and being someone
You might expect an elated tone
Yet alone, as you now find me
Makes me variable as the weather

To untether the indignation
My present pretence revoked
Old ideologies rattled & stoked
Scented flowers smoked

Before the reverie begins
The very stuff of strife
Where we laugh, where we cry
Where we hope and where

Where did she die

This is a poem from Vagaries:

Love of The Key to Room 149

Available as ebook from Kindle
or as a homemade print book and audio cd from  poetryshop