Partial Eclipse

The light is fading

The flying birds

Skittle across the half-way sky

In search of quiet

The leaves flicker

As though a breeze

Rushes down the alley-way by

In search of light

I am taken back

To the Rock on Dartmoor

The disappointment of 1999

In search of love

Today there is more peace

Sometimes I am

That peaceful poet

In search of name

There are shadows

Of chairs and flowers

Parted together

In search of time

I take the photograph

Also one or two

Taken outside

In search of memory

It appears

To be coming brighter

A redefined dawn chorus

In search of life

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Broken Sleep

There is no police car noise
There are no sirens wailing
There is no factory vibration
Every fifteen minutes

There is a clearer darkness
Out there in the nearer silence
At this more peaceful altitude
There is an attitude of calm

Yet still I'm here and still I'm writing
At four o'clock on this morning
Yes it's true I am away from home
Where all the guns are somehow blazing

There is no whistle blowing
To the tune of traffic passing
There is no street fracas
To the sound of nightclubs closing

There are sheep in the field
Songbirds in the hedgerow
Soon time for the dawn chorus
And maybe snowdrops pretending

Because I'm still here and I'm writing
At four o'clock on this moody morning
Yes it's true I am away from home
Where the flames one hopes are waiting

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Blades & Leaves

Where the solicitors and farmers come together to drink
Where the Irishman paid the Welshman to sculpt his landscape
Where the lochs and the mountains gave life to the sea
And there was music; the fiddle players, the Morris dancers
And the flags and the bunting and the maypole and the girls
Where the night stars and the moons shone on the peacock
Where the sound system and the echoes echoed at one
Where the party people became the party people
And the clothes were bright and the clothes were torn
And the flowers were thrown on into tomorrow
Where the silence would wonder will it all happen again

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Blade Cuts

He enjoyed the pub on Friday tea times. All those fine young blades ready for the chancing and the dancing; he was cool, he new he could cut it; he didn't know though, that she could cut it too.

The frost was keen on the fields as steam poured out of the cooling towers; the river cut as a blade through the landscape, going across country from the Humber to the Severn.

He went for the interview in Fairford, with the Jewish gentleman whose father had invented a safety mechanism for helicopter rotor blades. Blades that cut through the air so viscous, so loud. He drank their brandy and smoked their cigars but he couldn't cut it when it counted. He didn't take the job.

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Feelings

The bed was freshly made

Clean white sheets and duvet

He climbs into bed

She finishes her preparations then joins him

They lay apart for a while

He senses something is not quite right

Come close my love

Cuddle up to me

Are you ok

What's the matter

Please tell me

He feels her tears, as her head lays on his chest

What are you thinking about he asks

She sobs

I was thinking about my boy

She sobs

That's ok, you need to keep on loving him he says

You need to let him keep on loving you

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