Summer Shade Summer Sun

The sun is up the breeze is breathlessly calm
The sky is blue the birdsong it does no harm
Where the trees will grow there are single sticks
Pegs in the ground to line up the view of 2026

Next doors wisteria is hanging rather grand
Half in shade and half well I'll be damned
It looks just like the one we planted back-along
Crawling through the bower we threaded it on

The pampas grass suffered in a winter so rough
Yet its fresh shoots show how it is quite tough
You said to thin out or cut back the apple tree
I said only with you there for it's dangerous you see

The roses and the peonies they're both in bloom that one
From the garden centre on my way from my students room
The washing line contraption like your friends it's so bloody
Difficult to open how on earth might I ever make amends

There's fences there's hedges there's a clay tiled roof
There's a poet in the garden he often sits somewhat aloof
Watching the butterflies and their moving shadows of truth
A northern boy he's happy to rhyme shadder with gladder

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Ironing

We are going on vacation soon
I have to pack my bags on Sunday
I've been busy washing
Now there's stuff to iron
There's ironing all around the room

Blue denim jeans to go with white cotton shirts
Stiff single collars
With Charles Tyrwhitt's stamped metal inserts
The Levi's hems are fraying
Also on the pocket and up by the crotch

Wear is clearly on display
A dark blue top to go with the indigo corduroys
Soft merino wool for a would-be compassionate boy
The cords are from M&S their very best line
I should look good hopefully I will feel refined

Thick and thin socks and underwear of various kinds
Boxers and trunks from silks towards the sublime
Also the ones you wear when you stand in line
There's checks and there's plains and those without taste
Presents and purchases gifts perhaps chosen in haste

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Shedding

You do not need to worry if indeed worry you might I am not going to forget about you rather I am intending to shed light on all what you have gifted me into a new work

Indeed I hope to shed all that life has gifted me thus far into a search for soul a search to enrich in a non-religious way my thoughts on spirituality

I feel to be commencing this work from a good place I am in good health I am of sound mind I have a job which does not tire me unduly and which leaves me with sufficient time to contemplate to think and even on occasions to write

I am certain that I am sufficiently unaffected by religion for religion to affect me yet I am equally sure that I do not carry the bias of a zealot which might similarly taint what I would hope will be a balanced though still hopefully inspirational story

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Thoroughfare

I was driving home from my work it was mid-afternoon on a grey sky day in late May I was listening to Willie Nelson's fine album Spirit

I began to have great empathy with this singer-songwriters songs of failed and ended relationships also of relationships broken and restated

I felt a need to write some words myself so I turned off the main road down a country lane named Thoroughfare after about a mile or so I pulled onto the grass verge this was farming country fields and fields and yet more fields

I wrote of misunderstandings serious misunderstandings with  disinfected understatements I wrote from often mistaken memories I wrote of love of joy of deep ache and undoubtedly I wrote pulled back from the grip of pain

I wrote because I felt I needed to as though Willie Nelson's songs which I know you cared for had opened up my long closed heart

I worked up four verses with a deal of repetition a great deal of repetition based on the workings of yet more repetition before I moved on to reputation our reputation and our love

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Light

There is a place I think Leonhard Cohen sang about it
There is a place where the light gets in

The watch says that it is between 5:30 and 6:00AM I should still be sleeping I had closed all the doors I had drawn all the curtains I had turned off all the electrical illumination I had done all that I could to create a blackout

It's hard to say what first woke me I had been dreaming that I was a compère in a small club introducing a group of young musicians who had gone off into the bar next door while their mums and dads shuffled well late first through the iron gates and then on into the clubroom

The dream had lots going on including my microphone not working which maybe broke my sleep that and the pinhead of light entering through the keyhole that and the daylight which worked its way into and through the muslin and the cotton hung up at the windows

That and the light-stream which travelled from the Velux in the bathroom ceiling through the door opened due to a call of nature that and the light in my mind the light the light which always does in that place get in

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