Dancers Wisdom

Caution is the watchword
Listen to the Diaghileff dancing star
Beware that exposure to new experience
Can filter out the magic of past memories

Each day your new favourite photograph
Puts a shade or a tint on yesterdays numero uno
Each day your new life places a formaldehyde cover
Over those bodies that one night pressed effortlessly together

Your stance
Should it have surprised me
To see no more dance; should it have
Stopped me dead in my tracks

That day, for what the image is worth
I framed your words, became your number one fan
Once home I pulled back the dust cloths; recovered
I lay down again on the receptive bed where we had lain together

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A500/M6 Junction

Cars and lorries stream past

Their noise disrupts my enjoyment

Of the concert on the classical radio station

This is not a salubrious lay-by

Old scaffolding poles hold up the canvas canopy

At the hot & cold roadside greasy spoon

There is though no shortage of clientele

Compounding my belief in that old saying

That to be a success in catering, it is: location, location, location

Whether it be the black suited businessman

Or the more down to earth steel toe-cap construction chap

It is the bacon sandwich which today is the wealth creator

But it is not, I guess, bacon from the local Staffordshire pot-bellied pig

More likely it is bought in bulk, from the purveyors who travel

In and among the all-day-passing black marketeers

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Last Look (Without Words)

Silhouette in the shadows

All those stymied

Doubt filled bones of distrust

Home for the dust motes in the cobwebs

Easily led to those disaffected

And unattested thoughts on the bedstead

The shadow, and the silhouette

Are mere motor-memories now

It is that time of clearer light

Becoming necessary to write the final chapter

The attempt for capture is over

The exodus finally delivered the sun

The rest of us must go on

Transcending the transference

Into the silence

The silent silhouette

The silent shadow

The silence which echoes

To the loss of those disaffected

To the cost of those unattested

And to that imposter, of the one neglected

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Taken (Without Receipt)

My usual pew

On the back row

Is reserved

Also

The bench, ahead of that one

Is similarly stamped

I determine to move

Nearer to the front

But decide against recording the proceedings

My initial quest then

For a suggestion and response audio recording

Of the Buckfast Benedictine Monks is scuppered

Instead I am here for Compline

The final-minute bells are sounding

This is my new purpose

To feel the stillness

To immerse myself in the quiet

Before the misunderstood rituals begin

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Doppelgänger (Without Trace)

Why shouldn't I imagine that I see you

Sat out, in the corner of the Lavender Garden

In conversation, on your mobile-phone

How much hope can be destroyed

By those twin forces 

Of human nature, and human nurture

Why wouldn't you, choose to sit there

In the most obviously noticeable area

Of this somewhat, considerably discreet, location

And if I could listen in, to your words that is

Would I smile, with warm interest, as I identified

Your libidinous turns of phrase

Or would I

Through clearer speech recognition

Realise how foolish I had been

To have thought of you, either as my lover

Or as you wished, my friend

For all of those intervening years

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