Did Henry Moore find his shelter?

Did Henry Moore find his shelter?
Much Hadham is now a resting place
For Moore’s sculpture and drawings
Also for artists sketch books and pencils
To be bought in the gift shop by the entrance

I don’t know what was here before
Who planted the trees
Which reach for the sky
I don’t know who set out the lawns
For children to run free and safe

I do know that already
It is a victim of its own success
No spaces left in the car park
And the best outdoor seating
For the cafe is already occupied

I do know that I have not yet settled
Unlike at Kettle’s Yard or Orchard Cafe
To that extent then this isn’t my shelter
Although I do absolutely recognise
That it may be a shelter for many many others

I might know or understand the significance
Of the figures in the underground scenes
Families sleeping side by side
Beneath the streets of London
Finding their shelters from the war

You might also know or understand
That in my lifetime I have not known war
Nor am I likely to know war
When even leaves on the trees hang limp
I too am limp, unfit to be a combatant

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I came to Kettle’s Yard

I came to Kettle’s Yard
Looking for a shelter
A shelter for dreaming

I found a basket of pebbles
Which was a pretty good start

Then a long tabletop of oak
Supposedly from a slave ship
Or so the story goes

But it is nature
Which truly does it
Such is the seeing of the vase of flowers
On the window ledge by the bathroom

Followed by the shelves
Of collected potted plants
Named as the Land’s Shadows
Or Drifting Trawl Ring Seine

I kick the pebbles
Which sit on the floor
Beside a big slice of tree trunk

I don’t mean to cause a disturbance
But I am excited by the Gaudier-Brzeska

My eye then settles on the fish fossil
In a piece of stone, atop the long shelf
Which divides the large open space

It could be stone
From my childhood river bed
For it appears to be
Not unlike Yorkshire Stone

This then is the dream
In this peaceful place
In this exceptional
Shelter for dreaming

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I want to try and find a shelter

I want to try and find a shelter
In the ways of letting go
For I have been hanging on for way too long
Now to explore the minds and hearts to let go

It began with banging my fists on the floor
Alone in my office I cried out to ask why
In need of a shaman I found a guitarist
Who introduced me

To the music of Stevie Ray Vaughan
Then took me
From his mansion like living quarters
To a bar beside Newquay’s Fistral Beach

I was pulled back from that particular precipice
Though I could not prevent a reoccurrence
Following some esoteric guidance on closure
I tore up and burnt letters one by one

Taking the embers, and the ashes outside
To be blown carefree on the wind
Today I want to decorate my shelter
As a place for endlessly letting go

I have, it is true, hung about way too long
Now I wish to settle on the ambience
To create a mood
For the pleasures of letting go

I chanced upon Poetry Otherwise course
At Emerson College in  Forest Row, Sussex
Where a young woman
Who was about to join a closed order

She told me that I must be creative
And so I wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote
And I cried
Then my one door room was my shelter

To be alone and lonely, lonely and alone
Yet daybreak brought the classes
Which created the need for further classes
Classes for shelter, closure for shelter

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Today my shelter will be of the past

Today my shelter will be of the past
That one euphoric period of my being
Which today’s memoir tells me
Did not go on forever

It was a time with an inauspicious beginning
Or at least a past emerging from a darker past
To kick things, at least so I was thinking
As I struggled to find my way in

Instead I break off, go outside
To tear myself away from despondency
With no expectations, or baggage
And there I see a fresh morning in its glory

After what seems like weeks of rain
There is an absolute brightness
To the day, to the outlook
Such that my spirits are all immediately lifted

My belief in myself that I can survive
Indeed prosper in this thing we call life
Yet it is a view which I see almost every day
Yes so so very often I open that particular door

To step outside into our own little world
An old refurbished structure, once a stables
Now a sort of adults playroom
For writers, meditators, painters and musicians

A place where in a couple of hours
There will be bacon sandwiches and coffee
A time for writers to chat, to write, to chat
As if the world needs someone to sort it out

But, leading up to all of that cacophony
Which to some may be a symphony
I have the cool air to breathe
I have the new day to see in

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Today my shelter is the future

Today my shelter is the future
For tomorrow I go to Buckfast Abbey
To sleep monastic side
In the monk’s guest-bedrooms

All there will be silence
Silence as a shelter
Silence as a virtue
Silence as a way of carrying on

Yet nature will not gift me silence
Indeed quite the opposite
As I walk beside the gushing river
Listening to the undoubted mass of birdsong

My shelter will also be in the routine
The daily prescriptions of
Matins, Lauds, Conventual Mass
Before evenings of Vespers and Compline

For certain I will have the shelter of books
Books for reading, books for writing
I will often find my own word shelter
In the stained-glass Chapel also in the Abbey

And, because this is a trip to Devon
I will see my youngest son
There will be a smile
Along with amusing conversation

So not all of this shelter will be silence
Although in Dartington’s meditation garden
I hope to find peace, I hope to find calm
I hope to enjoy my own contemplations

My future shelter is also in my automobile
Six hours driving, in each direction
With lots of good music on the stereo
And maybe a shopping retreat along the way

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