Spates

Should it be

An autumn Friday afternoon

With the river surging over

The waterfall, bypassing the fish-pass

Could it be

Thirty years, or more, before

That spring Monday morning

A walk on Dartmoor, to the Watercombe intake

Aqua oh aqua

Would it be

A winter weekend

At the moorland reservoir

Making a snowman on the perimeter wall

Should it, could it, would that it be

A full week in the summer

Climbing into waves

Washing toes along the seashore

Singing aqua oh aqua

The Outlook is Mixed

That first raindrop

On the cobbled road

That first ice-cream

By the harbour wall

And so begins, or so began

The dripping-tap approach

To persuade someone

To let you share their bed

The sunshine arriving

As with a certainty of triumph

Or should it be

The beginning of the loss

No amount of French Cafés

Or London streets would suffice

Once the black dog was on its heels

The time has come to rethink or retreat

In between the in between

The unexpected drops of rain

Spots of sunlight though still flashing

A life to grasp, and how, yet how

Quiet now, quieter than before

Quietness which envelopes

The envelopes that I bought

To post my noteworthy letters

Inside Out

The goodness of men and women

The gentleness of men and women

The varied lives of men and women

My words, sincere and heartfelt

Straight out of endoscopy; one probe

From the top, one from down below

Professor Anwar set the scene

Although the nurse before him

Put me at ease with her cheerful manner

But it was the Prof. (I heard others say this)

Who talked the talk before he walked the walk

All the while keeping me informed

And now I look at Jung’s book

And wonder if I might start

My one on one meditations again

For I have a certainty

That my peace and calm

Throughout the procedure also came from within

From my breathing

From my loving kindness

From all the years that my contemplations taught

Such that I might make a trip

To the Abbey in November or December

Investigative results permitting, that is

Boxed In

The first one-third of a litre

Is in the body

Another third is to follow

In thirty minutes or so

I am reading Refusing Heavens

Poems by Jack Gilbert

How can we not

Compare our own lives

Think of good and bad times

Though most are melancholic nostalgia

For what, in all probability

We never truly shared in the first place

The hospital process is new to me

Though hardly an adventure

Although my brother told me

He thought afterwards he could climb Everest

He was a mechanic

Then he taught accountancy

Yet he has offered a medical certainty

In a way which no one else quite achieved

Jack, in his poem Kunstkammer

Says: but the heart is different

It never forgets

You may feel, my body’s definitive reaction

Socially Distanced

The new playlist

Is one-hundred songs

Based on King Crimson’s

I talk to the wind

Bought for a birthday party

Not long after

Losing my virginity

In the most well-known sense

The wind does not hear

The wind cannot hear

The wind cares not a jot

About my virginity

Being more intent

On whipping up storms

Or crashing waves on beaches

Or blowing flags purposefully inside out

All of which

Is pretty much how I felt

When I talked to the wind

When I lost my virginity