Counties, Country Sets

This is a Yorkshire wind
Not a Lincolnshire breeze
These are dry stone walls
Not places to seize

The obelisk and the windmills
Some are straight
Some do turn

The five-bar gate you could expect
But not the parking ticket
On the barbed wire fence

Ahead of me
Behind of me
Yes, sideways of me too

Beneath of me
Above of me
Yes, this me; with my lateral thinking here anew

I was of a similar place
Not though on the flatlands lease
I had laid by those dry stone walls
As if for someone to please

Happenstance in Heptonstall

Poems Started at Lumb Bank

Arvon 2018

Available from Amazon

Step, Sit, Sideways Does It

On my way to the Post Office
But first I must stop off
(Although I have hardly started)
To sit on this magnificent seat

With a view, straight down
Between the house and the old barn
Across the steep side valley
To the woodland bank and horizon

All that hang across the buildings
Are power cables
Telephone lines
Wires for the crawling clematis

Inside the house
Lunch is nearing completion
I was in the first group of poets
We finished early, our tutor was hungry

Blue skies have returned
Yet it is almost September
Soon the classes will be over
Until the following, until the coming years

Happenstance in Heptonstall

Poems Started at Lumb Bank

Arvon 2018

Available from Amazon

Aloof Alone

I hear the laughter
I watch the cobwebs
Wave mysteriously about
In this nighttime’s breeze

I know there are people
Happy in conversation
I watch the one mad moth
Captivated by the light

My life wasn’t always so small
But no, I was never
What you might call gregarious
But I did have some human contact

Pray do not rob me of that again
As also says
The mad moth
To the minuscule flea

There are other stories
I hold one such tale
One such tome of confiscation
Held here, in my hands

It escaped from a poem
To be turned
Into
I know not what

Happenstance in Heptonstall

Poems Started at Lumb Bank

Arvon 2018

Available from Amazon

Rooms And Homes

Out there, as seen through the reflection
The pearlescent shirt buttons
The frameless spectacles
The mop of permed auburn hair
The clothes hung on the back of the door
The moth

Also out there, further than
The reflection
The darkness
The emptiness
The void
The distance

I cannot welcome you in
Neither you
Nor your friend
It isn’t that sort of bedroom
It isn’t that kind of night
Even if once it might have been

Also I cannot welcome you in
Because now there are more of you
Because now you are many
It isn’t that sort of night
It isn’t that kind of party
Also the police have asked us to tone it down

Happenstance in Heptonstall

Poems Started at Lumb Bank

Arvon 2018

Available from Amazon

Me, You, And Moth

At the pitch black window
Black that is, except for the reflection
The depth of field
Which is a good study bedroom deep

Be witness to what you witness
Opened up at midnight
On that day of the Tennyson walk
When moths were bedazzled by the car's headlights

Now, tonight, one particular moth
Clings to the crawling vegetation
On the outside of the third-floor sash-window
He, or she, attracted by my desk lamp lit

The mobile telephone signal is good
Although to share my own engaged excitement
At this late late hour
May somehow be somewhat disrespectful

Happenstance in Heptonstall

Poems Started at Lumb Bank

Arvon 2018

Available from Amazon