Right There On The Pavement

Today it was a bicycle

Parked there

Right at the shore

Your head was excluded

But I knew

That this image

Posted by dreamcamera

Was sent only to remind me

And all those other shots

Of hotels in Chicago &

Paved streets in Dubrovnik

Were simply to cloud the trail

Anyhow's

I cut through the mystery

Named it: 

The Island Shoreline

Right then I stopped in my tracks

What is this I'm writing

Another Saturday morning

Before the washing goes in the dryer

Do you remember

Clean white shirts and blouses

Soft denims

Bookstores and bagels

Bicycles, lavender, and purple

Satin negligees, or whatever

Is the word for ladies underwear

Of the sensually enticing variety

The images just keep on coming

Bric-a-brac, photographs with

Memories deeply embedded;

As if to say - nostalgia, or

Whatever is the word for division

In a world where revision brings

Sobriety to its cornerstone, with

Peace and quiet scrolling in its wake

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Self Portrait

I don't have the physical beauty anymore

I don't know that I ever did have it

But once or twice I thought I might

I have moments of pure happiness now

I don't know if that was true before

But I suppose it may have been

I don't doubt

That there are swings

And there are roundabouts

I have a peace at this time

With sunlight streaming through the windows

I enjoyed contemplation in the past although I was no master

I should be doing something else right now, which vexes me

That I could stray from this enduring love

To find a more laborious occupation

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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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