Frame, Shoot, Blend

I thought to crop the photograph

Take out the land, the wall

Leave only sky, sky and sea

Leave only light, light and imagination

You thought that too many photographs

Held little or no meaning

That criticism weighed heavily

On top of my own denigration

I asked myself how, or why

Where might I learn

Is to slow down the answer

Or should I be more fleet of foot

You asked yourself when, or which

Should be a memory

Is categorisation the answer

Or would random-display better the effect

 

Community

Your email asks plenty questions

Of the registers of the voice

Of the chest resonator

Of the arch of the palette

Of course I do remember

Walking towards Rena

On the grass

Outside of our studio

Yes our studio, ours for the week

At the tip-top of my kingdom

Though for you, for many of you

It was a different country entirely

And for me a different life

Well outside my comfort zone

Among actors and theatre directors

Shouting out for the whole world to hear

 

Land & Imagination

Often I am alone

On the two-sided

Two-seater churchyard bench

But not today, no

For today it is a Sunday in June

When sons walk out with their mothers

And farm shops close, so no half-way

Provisions for this cyclist

I have flown across skies

Of this hue before

I have landed

In equally beautiful places

Where the tastes of youth

Attracted the flight

Where the lust of expectation 

Garnered the urgency

 

Country Roads

And in that one moment

Watching

The Larkin documentary

I too was swept off to Beverley

Also to Ampleforth Abbey

In that one moment

I had risen from the sofa

To feel the sunshine

Thinking about being

Among writing friends

Of course, as with love

I would find an element

Of argument and discontent 

Fury and absence

In the Basildon Bond

En route to Rosedale

I witnessed 

A small village funeral

Carried out with some style

Later, on a private drive

With calypso-coloured

Rhododendrons

I surreptitiously drove towards

A restored country house

And in that one moment

I had entered

A new world order

Built from the success

Of wistful, wishful, absent-minded

Sunday afternoon thinking

Bread & Cheese

Still-life is still life isn’t it

Around the eggshell egg the air still moves

Inside the egg equilibrium tries to settle

On the reflective tray the tomatoes wait

If we also waited, if we waited long enough

The reflections change, change and decay

With a backdrop of nothingness

And a foreground, edged-off, much the same

What we see is in pure suspension

One artist did the decent thing

His objects hung (quince et al) on lengths of twine

Or string as we might say in the western world

The western world of the playboy

Who could well have featured in a still-life

That is, still life as a portrait

The playboy (the object) being hungover to dry

By the grip of his dominant father

Who may well have eaten the ploughman’s lunch

Which is the image, homed in on

In today’s exhibition