Yorkshire

Sat on the real stone steps
Sheltered by the Hawthorne and by the Oak
From the prevailing wind

Or should it be
Sheltered by the Bougainvilleas
From the fragrant breeze

Either way the sun shone
The gardener mowed the grass
With his rather noisy eight-bladed machine

The children
Now, as then, then, as now
Engage with the sculptures

Perhaps see something of themselves
Reflected in the works of art
See something of the future, see something of the past

The visitors, from nearby, from far away
They jostle with a vacation's excitement
Hold hands as they walk down the pathways home

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Excess

As one way to counterbalance your self-congratulation
You had a day of extreme over-indulgence

Beating head
Sweating skin
Severe indigestion
Counteracted by more, yes many more ablutions

Then by chance to find recovery
In the many-fold dreamscapes

Old friends
Old lovers
Obtuse fanciful situations
Exaggerated by more, yes many more awakenings

Yet almost without a pause
A few moments of nostalgic reconstruction

Unsteady in mind
Unsteady in body
More than a touch of anxiety
Differentiated by more, yes much more, absenteeism

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Elsewhere

Elsewhere is where I might have been
Or where I might have been thought to have been
Even where I might have hoped to have been

Yet I was only there for a moment
Before the vanishing trickster
Performed his vanishing trick

Moving me on to elsewhere
To where the good drummers drummed
To where the good vibrations vibrated

In doing so I seemingly caused the dogs to bark
The lawnmower engines to start
The roll-along refuse wheelie bins to be collected

I want to be elsewhere I silently chanted
To be where I might have been
Or to be where I might have been thought to have been

Even to be where I might to have hoped to have been
Where I would have hoped to stay longer
Where I would no longer have searched to be elsewhere

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Amplification

Much of my poetry is an attempt
To amplify those experiential moments
The ones which I share with myself

Those slight glimpses, of the past, or of the future
Which enter unannounced, silent
As a firm thought or indefinite as a vague fleeting image

Which require the crystal set amplifier
Of amplification to be turned up to the very top
Such as if Roger Bacon's magnifying lens

Might be used to inspect the cell
Or the Jodrell Bank telescope might be used
To interrogate the stars or the cosmos

Imagine now, if you will, that deep meditation
Which realises itself as a visualisation
However, with no Polaroid or such at hand

It would surely fade as easily as it arose
Becoming obscured
By the mere transience of life

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The Years

New folders old poems
New boxes old letters
New beginnings old old endings

The tables, all three tables actually
Are covered in the past-times stuff
Sorted into piles year by year

There will of course be
Some misplaced works
Some misconstrued emotions

I will read your poem again
Where you fear for your future
As you drink your red red wine

I will see, as if I didn't already know
How prolific I became
From the year we parted
In Two-thousand-and-five

To the year before I met my new love
In Two-thousand-and-six
The tray of crystal goblets with glasses for the water
Finish the scene off a real treat

They give it a sobriety
Worth it then to take a photograph of The Years
Rather though for posterity than for nostalgia's sake

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