Taken (Without Receipt)

My usual pew
On the back row
Has been 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 suggest 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-telephone

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 once wished it, as my friend
For all of those intervening years

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Cart Track (Without Refrain)

I kick the leaves

Not knowing
Whether to laugh
Or to cry
Not knowing
Whether to be happy
Or to be sad
And so I look back on my life
For signs
Of some achievement
Not knowing
If, to feel
Is not itself sufficient

I watch the leaves
Which fall onto the cart track
The cart track
Which climbs up the hill
To the five-bar gate
The five-bar gate
Which I feel
To have always, yes always
Simply to have straddled
Not determining
For one side
Nor neither, for the other

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Gate (Without Chains)

I
I did not cross the bridge
For I remembered last year
When your mood overpowered me
You
You have not been with me so so often this time
Though when you do arrive
You do so with no less a force of magnitude

I had no choice
There were several hours
To be disturbed, distracted
Overcome, and somehow defeated
So I did cross that bridge
I walked up the cart track
To the five-bar gate
Where, last year

I had, on three occasions
Left my camera case behind
But today I keep my eyes
Firmly focussed
On the leaf
And nutshell-strewn ground
Only at the top of the hill do I wheeze
Wishing to share another cigarette with you

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Sat In The Sensory Garden (Without You)

Early afternoon
On the second day
Of this short personal retreat
Although I have retreated
From anything but my senses

Right now I hear the gulls
And the loud raucous laughter
Of the studious young Americans
Though to be honest
I am unsure what drew them here

Only one or two
Made it into the Abbey
Only one really, on a regular basis
But I did see a vacant-looking girl
Walking by the river

And in the cafeteria
I overheard two young men
Discussing the purpose of their lives
I tell you, they had a great deal
Of street-wise verbose

Even if occasionally
They stumbled
As I also, so so often stumble
To find the right words
To make the sense of which I am after

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