Buckets & Spades

I walk to the top of Fore Street; it is half-day closing

In this South Hams estuary town

Yet a few holiday shops are still open

I buy myself an ice-cream

Which I saviour, sat on a churchyard seat

Before I enter my temporary accommodation

I have moved from the North of England

To be here in the South-West

I am alone in this, my transition town

Yet to see my smile

My posture, my demeanour

You might think otherwise; I couldn’t possibly say

I spot a red telephone box by the police station

I will make a call from there later I say to myself

But first to change out of the work clothes

Hypnotherapy Meditation

You did say I might have dreams

You

Who told me to be strong

You

Who asked me, in your nauseating voice

To remember my childhood angst

You

Who went on and on

About how others had damaged me

You

Did you expect it to be my father

And my elder brother

You

Do you know what ideas

You have placed in my sub-conscious

You

Do you know

What damage you have done to my dreams

Your Water

Salt water

Fresh water

Fresh salt water

Landing on sand

With bladderwrack

With finer seaweed

Seaweed as fine as cotton

Seaweed as fine as wool 

As fine as that line you wrote

Out by the loch

As fine as that line you wrote

In the cottage garden

As fine as that line you wrote

Aboard the rowing boat

All of your life in touch with water

Your hands in the streams

Catching sticklebacks, building dams

Your bare body afloat in the ocean

Feeling life, spreading salt

Your eyes cast out over the bay

Thinking of, yes, mostly thinking of

My Water

He wrote about water

So I shall write about water

More specifically

I will write about the water

Of The Orkney’s Scapa Flow

Though I will especially try

Not to mention the German navy

Scuppering (sinking) their own boats

Or Churchill having barriers built

By the workers of the Italian Chapel

Constructed to pen in the opposition

Rather I will write about the light

Light seen from Houton

The late-night light

Scattered as flashlights by the waves

Weaved as satin beneath the clouds

The early morning light

Flushed by the disturbance of the first ferry

Reflected by the shoreline on the coastal lane

Also the sun light, and the mist light

Which both gave, which both took away

My reference frame of meaning

My valuable source of reassurance

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