Observatories

From Scorpio to Aquarius

Among the planets, among the stars

Talk of the multifarious

To banish the witness, to spare the scars

The PGS physics class

Never did go to Jodrell Bank

And on that one visit to Kelly College

The giant telescope was out of bounds

This then is almost to the limit

Of my knowledge of astronomy, or astrology

Except for Bridget Riley’s poem The Planets

Which I recorded live at Emerson College

I have looked out at the moon

I even sang along with The Waterboys song

I saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the moon

Long before our meeting of the signs

Did I though not begin with the zodiac

An altogether more debatable subject matter

Where you can always find the good, or bad stuff

If your thought processes are sufficiently flexible

Begin

In the first hours

Of rising

Words for no one

But myself

In those first moments of the day

With tea to drink, on my own

In the beginning of the new day

Sat solitary, in my morning meditation

After which

To prepare for the community of writers

To take tea upstairs to my lover

To bathe in a bath, prepared by one and the same

Then to hold onto the goodness

To find faith in those faithful friendships

To become that uniquely alive persona

Who is grateful for the love of love

Support

This is my prayer

A simple silent gift

Both for myself

As also to share, with those who wish to share

It is a non-religious prayer

Because, whilst I am a man of faith

I am not a man of religion

I have no touchstone to god, except my god within

The sky is of many greys

Rolled into clouds, calmly overlapping

The trees are of many, many greens

From the foreground, to the backdrop merging

I pray that these various colours can be seen

That with the differentiation

We can engage, admire, love

Love the complexity of all our visions

The complication of prayer

Comes with the easements, with the corners

Of the wooden barns, of Walt Whitman’s way

Places, where I have never felt truly able to go

Directions

I will not go to where I have already been

Neither to where I know I am not going

I will find a different place in which to breathe

A screen of washing lines, flapping, blowing

Where unbuttoned blouses catch the breeze

Their scents gifted to the atmosphere

I will undo, down on my knees

Those zips to where we all do disappear

I will not wait for those who have not waited

Swing open the four-leaf clover cottage gate

Walk out past all those types who hesitate

In search of that, once romantic, vanquished state

No roads, or tracks, or country lanes

No turning back towards the evergreens

Take firmer steps to see the whooping cranes

Believe in life which, as if forever, unsteadily leans

Setting Up, Setting Out

The audition is passed

As the breeze turns into a wind

This summer is not yet to its last

All sinned thoughts are to be rescinded

To sit among tree and varnished wood

With cobwebs and drainpipe looking on

I thought to buy, thought yes I should

Here to write, to put right all that’s gone wrong

Saturday morning

Yes, freedom is here once more

Sat, at this delightful diminutive desk

Views over Trinity

Then on to those faraway

Imagined sand-strip shores

Angels will be seen riding

Along the big skies next

A new pencil will be procured

To satisfy the writer’s perceived significance

Though truly the need for that is next to naught

Other than anything smoother, will aid the dance