On Watching The Nine Muses (Part One)

Reach out for the shores
Reach out for the beating heart
Clear your eyes, have them sparkle
Wash away the tired halfway
Wash away the line walk
Let the tears well up
Let the tears break down
Touch what is untouchable
Settle for the hidden inner silence
For the first time be alone, be, alone
Alone that you are free to breathe
Alone that you are free to rejoice
Alone that you love the love around you
You are not tied, you never have been tied
Your tiredness is of too much making
Your tiredness is of too little looking
Work for the right to go on walking
Work for the slight self-assurance
Be reassured by the rambling
Lured by the everlasting lust of longing
Cured by the love that cares
Wayfarer dismount from this the final saddle


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Look Around

You hang a leaf on the candlestick holder
You post post-it notes on our front door
The lights are on all year round
Including Christmas

Your friend rings
From France
I say yes, yes
We would love to go to Plum Village

You have been gone quite some time
The weather it is scorchio
I have come across limestone
In the trench that I am digging

You told me the painting was yours
Then you tell someone else it isn't
You said you liked the trench
But filled with Cotswold Stone

Not water
Your friend
The one who rang
Before the last one

Said we
Could go stay with her in Jersey
I ought to say I once constructed
A different kind of garden there


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Distance

Vast landscape
Small room
(Not too small)
Lost detail
In the longer view
Lost pathways
In the smaller space
Eyes flicker
Eyes smile
Eyes light up
With the joy of life
Mountains and lakes
And dancing
Music and love
And chancing your arm
Mirrors of water
Lightness of sky
Hope in the water
Hope as we try


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Ways of Lives

Sitting in the old croft house
With the Japanese girl
And her North-American friend

The peat fire is smoking
Maureen, or is it Morag
And Archie, or is it Angus
Sit in the chairs by the irons
By the kettles; by the teapots
The fiddle, the squeeze box
Are all ready for the playing

The peat fire is smoking
Wolfgang, or is it Hermann
And Desiderata, or is it Paris
Prayers pass through my mind
As the modern couple argue
Pontificating on the relative
Improvements to Black House housing

It isn't warm now, it wasn't warm then
It is raining in the month of June, and
We talk about a winter residency, indeed


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Travellers

Innis & Gunn, Edinburgh, Scotland 

Patent leather shoes

Black is the seasons colour

Could I have another beer please

It was always going to be this way

Always that turn to self indulgence

Landscapes, seascapes, rock

Formations, rivers in full flow

Sparkling sunshine in the afternoon

Ok their dog chased the sheep

And they looked a rough sort

But hey, we are the visitors

His bald head, and long beard

Could be what attracted the spiky

Haired girl with tongue piercings; she

Wanted the hound, he had no control

It was always going to be this way

Always her need for complete devotion

Either that or not to care at all

For bright lights and fireworks

Jazz bands and ragamuffins

Candelabra and silver set earrings

Here and now he studies the hotel menu

Before speaking, speaking in a foreign accent

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