Burnside

I didn’t know you as a non-believer

I don’t really know you as a poet

Yet of late I have empathised

With your words, and their layout

Indeed I took your Desserts

To our Friday Morning Poet’s Salon

Where the craquelure

Was inquisitively peeled back

Pointers

I take tea

With lemon drizzle cake

In the stables cafe

The crockery is exemplary

White and blue

Always a favoured pairing

Fresh flowers on the table

A nice touch

Why not do it more at home

I will buy a vase

For sure there will be a gift shop

Though alas, there were no vases

Frame

Place and time

Time and place

Shade and light

Light and shade

Remember the experience

Store away the details

Give sufficient weight

To the ambiances

Of your surroundings

Of your heart

Of your mind

Of your temple in the sky

Be taken by the muse

Be offered up

To the lines of freedom

To the limitations of lovers

Tell them, that you have been there

Say that you were not alone

Yet you cannot say who you met there

For truly, they will never, ever know

Place And Time

Thankfully it is not a long walk

To Richard Long’s A Line in Norfolk

Indeed it is right outside the front door

I stride out the eighty or so metres

Of Norfolk Carrstone, whose orange clay

Contrasts markedly with Mr Cholmondeley’s

Sparkling green, well-manicured lawn

I wonder if the turf might in fact be laid

On a foundation of such well-weighted stone

Eventually I call this sculpture Number One

And think this is how a drone camera

Might picture it from the sky

After striding its length I meander

To all four corners, to gain some distance

To see another light, to gather another perspective

I remember Richard’s grey slate stones

Laid out onto the top floor of a city centre gallery

And cannot help but think; this is a much better place

Further along I see Full Moon Circle

It is made of a similar material to the one I saw in Leeds

Which I now think rather suited its cosmopolitan surroundings

Cast In

Stephen Cox’s Interior Space

Does not do it for me

Which is odd, for he has

That ability, that experience

To transport me around the world

But, at this moment in time

Egypt is not where

I would choose to be

Of course, to peer into the darkness

To find myself within the solid mass

In the perusal of nothingness

Well, yes that does enchant

And calms, and if I stayed long enough

I may feel more

I may grow into the recognition

I may even come on board