No Place

Be wary my lonesome lad, those days of solitude creep indivisibly into lost pasts. Even here in the country park, where all that sounds is gunshot and birdsong. Even here the bird watcher, the gamekeeper, the poacher, they are all alone

Earlier today I had occasion to revisit a place where I once spent a week in solitary refinement; seven days in the library; sometime in the late 80’s. Not a jot could I recollect, not a book or a passage, unlike the other summer schools; with midnight parties, walks around the lakes, the bonfires of profanity and the actuaries lark

The engine purrs, the four wheeled enclosure pulls me away, will there be a memory of this lunchtime passed, under the cover of the grey skies and the rainbows

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Stillness from Turbulent Waters

There is no doubt within
There is no sign of darkness
Blue skies sing out loud
Thankful for the lark

Eighteen years come May
I walked the moorland water
Sky above my minded shroud
Lost in some evasion

Settlement carries many guises
Trees in bud, rain to sun
Companionship to love
Love, thankful for surprises

There is no doubt within
There are signs of lightness
Clear skies with silver clouds
Thankful for the key

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Modernity

Roll into the right hander, not a soul in the rear view mirror
Only wires and crows in the foreground, field and sky in the distance

It needs to be edgy; no sunflowers or bowls of roses
Switchback on the dirt-track, cheroots chew out of the smoke stack
Attacked by the knife pack who look you straight between the eyes
Don’t you give a damn; the whole damned can of worms is what we want
Leave him in the hedgerow, with the roadkill and the garbage
He never should have been there, stoned right out his mind
Hang on; we’re not after trouble; no one should have spoke of death

Lay back into the left hander, not a soul in the rear view
Only music and strong cigarettes, & the screams of passers by

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Strung Along

I am not, how would you say it, a Lute man
I care not a jot for things Elizabethan
A day at court is a chase more so of boredom
Minstrels and Jesters are to me antiquity

Yet I read that the man Shakespeare
Thought lute music capable of taking
One to a kind of ecstasy; a somewhat
Refreshing Happy Monday’s cover

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Rigour

The square sheep-pen
Made with straight slats of wood
The regular shape, a symbol for good

Into which no one fits comfortably
From where my pencil sets off uncomfortably
To see the turns around the bends

Up and down the Wolds
Freedom spurns the message sent
& still the curvature unfolds

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