Wet, Wet, Dry

It is the sound of the rain

On the window panes

Which gifts me comfort

I feel settled, knowing

That the world moves on

Yet I have found shelter

I was think about

Becoming the I

Who lives my life

That the ways

In which I box things up

Are of my own choosing

That I have an open life

And a secret life

May bring complications

Yet also a sense of order

Is imposed, simply by

Having classifications

Sunshine and rain

You could say

For the rains have died down

The showers have cleared up

The return of the birdsong

Is what brings me contentment

Drive, Walk, Drive

Wind blistered sand

A desert of a walk

At the end of the day

Two bells in the sea

A shelter of driftwood

With a fire-grate

One man

Up to his knees in the sea

Carries a sound recorder

In soft blown fields tall grasses sway

With their seed-heads

Catching the last of the sunset

Parked up, on Bluestone Heath Road

Under the shade

Of the whispering hawthorn tree

I take off my driving sunglasses

Listen to Cypress Avenue

Write one more penultimate stanza

One man

Up to his soul in the countryside

With all of that which this life offers

One White House

For all the world

Within a butterfly

For all of the shadows

Along the long five-mile road

For all of the escapees

To be standing by

For all of the known and the knowing

To be in the ‘two paths ode’

For all of the views

Which came unto my eye

For all of those whose undulations choose

It is my heartbeat, and my rallying cry

For all of determinations

To be sought out before we go

For all of the wartime sedimentations

To be bold beneath a blood-red sky

For all of peace

To take away the hovering buzz

For all of the love to increase

Making it easier, to try, and to try

For all of my eternity

And yours too, I hear you sigh

For all of the joy, and the doubtless infinity

It is for your beauty that I write

Interiority

I am nothing

When with nothing at all to write

I am nowhere

When with nowhere at all to go

I am no one

When with no one there to remind me

I do hear

The birdsong in the garden

I do see

The leaves settled on the tree

I did taste

That meal which I cooked earlier

Whose smell

Was the best bit by far

With such a collapse to repetition

Do I deserve any more, or any less

With such a fall to clumsiness

Do I really have any hope of finesse

With such a grope for desire

Do I forget times of non-delayed gratification

With such a cumulation of urges

Do I lose the path to sincere compassion

I am, I do

Hearing

Such repetition

I am desirous, I am urging

Unwelcome Guests

Out in the country

On my bicycle

I stopped, for a drink

From my flask of orange

I sat, on a bench

Beside the old canal

Which still does go, if somewhat half-heartedly

All the way to the coast

Young, urban youths

Tease the cows in the field

While their parents watch on

Sat in the car smoking cigarettes

I came here simply to be a quiet observer

To watch the grasses

Bend, and blow, in the breeze

Steadily, peacefully serene

Instead the continuous chitter-chatter

Even one might say the racket

Of the city-dwelling, uninvited intruders

To this rural, might I say, ‘countryside idyll’

They have gone now

All that are left

Are a few walkers, in isolation

And those colourful cyclists, in stretch lycra