Storm Subsidy

Wind noise
Amplified by the valley
Enriched as it writhes
Among the farm buildings

Rain is in the offing
And the farmers want it
But it may be a day or two
Before the downpour

There is a crystal ‘lace’
Just in front of my face
An optical functionality warning
It happened once before

I am thus reminded of my own frailty
Of the vast vulnerability of humankind
I listen harder to next door's voices
Best hang on to all I can

Spots of rain replace yesterdays frost
On the automobile windscreen
It is time to roll off the dust track
And slide onto the mud slick highway

In the same mysterious way
That the three quarters halo
Appeared before my eyes
It now disappears

Only to leave heaviness
A memory of lost treasures
Which I thrust onto the howls
Of the Katabatic flow

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Art Makes The Man

On the wall
Two prints, limited editions
By Sally Anderson
A local artist perhaps

Both scenes are of Teignmouth
One is of four beach huts
Much as we photographed at Whitby
Or nearer home, in Mablethorpe

The other, a small, numbered, fishing boat
Of the sort suited to a singular oarsman
Similar to the picture captured in St. Ives
Across the deserted harbour beach in June

There is a lightness to Sally's touch
A care, that my son Joseph, captures on film
All around this place, called my life
There are many guides to humanity, and beauty

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Away From Or Towards Contrition

I, I urge to write
As some might urge to draw
As some might urge to paint
As some might even urge to act

It is as if light itself
Is caught up in these words
That all the visions, and reflections
Contain certainty, of a kind

Whereas, in my other world
What some would call the real world
Clarity only flickers, arrives in fits & starts
Each new voice adds a further disparate viewpoint

The chagrin somehow must settle
Though the forces are many and able
And along the way there is to be upset
That is, or so it seems, the nature of change

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Sketched As A Slow Tide

Morning mist
Layered over
Morning sunlight
Beneath the opening morning sky

The first thing I see
Is a single tree
A sentry post
At the head of the distant field

Would that this vision was home
Also to wake here in summer
With leaf and corn up high
And my lady, laying here by my side

The madness of it all
Circulates incessantly
A mind so instantly awake
Contemplating the day ahead's confusion

Toes tingle
Above me I hear footsteps
The lamp shade is scarlet
But the pictures, they are Prussian blue

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Pandora

Old words, middle aged voices
Youthful inspiration
For a catalogue of all those past disasters

In love with salt water
Water that turned to stone
In love with climbing trees
Trees that forgot I had been there
In love with a whole load of care
Care that cares and cares and cares

Elsewhere, the noise of work
Destroys the artist's train of thought
Although to pick carrots
From the monastic garden
Would be as though stealing
The thoughts of love itself

Middling muddled words
As old age creeps up on youth
To inspire the entrance of ever more disasters

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