Protective of You

Only once ever before did I touch the outside of a bubble, a surface that glistened profusely, but one that I assumed was entirely fragile

& yet, today, you guessed it

I am lighter now, than the me that I have known almost forever, so light that my density is less than that of the bubble

& so, today, you guessed it

With the lightness there is a clarity; a clarity so pure that the rainbows of the bubble diffuse entirely

& where, today, you guessed it

The lightness, the clarity and the fragility take me to the essence of love; it is of love in this bubble; love here & now

& today, you guessed it

At once you joined 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

Fete

Leaning gravestones

Strong sun, cream teas

Babies crying, dogs barking

Demonstrations of twisting wool

& the reupholstery of antique chairs

No rush to their conversations

No doubts in their belief of faith

You enquired about the moneymaker

The boy gazed out into the further distance

His eyes entirely free of unqualified expectations

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

Dying to Travel

The hearse followed me north, past the Nottingham & Grantham turnoff; they overtook me on Gonerby Moor (He was escorted by a flashy Peugeot Convertible with a private number plate).Earlier in the journey, after listening to Paul Heaton’s Acid Country I had said to myself that I would like that song played at my funeral, though I worried that the crematorium would clip it, cut it short, and you need to hear the whole thing to really get the sentiment. 

I thought that I had lost them by the M18, but then, just thirty miles shy of Leeds I spotted the casket, with its impressively close suitor still heading north. The sunshine boy of Billericay returning to the clouds of Durham City

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

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