Landing on last years
Dried-out beech leaves
Johnny Cash sings
On your mind
From a playlist, set to repeat
TS Eliot
Looks in my direction
From a Wyndham Lewis portrait
This book
Is drawing to a close
But there is another
Holding on
To the coat-tails
As one might say
And then the rain came
Though not gushing down
Rather, in the delicate form
Of a light, and fine, drizzle
So not sufficient
To prevent making a booking
For the Minack Theatre
In mid-September
This during a sortie
To a Penzance of many memories
Also to the Isles of Scilly
The pen
The ink
The time to think
With a lover’s abandon
The month
The day
The hope to play
With love at random
The book
The collection
The space to build
Next come the perforated pages
This then at the end
Of the certainties so to speak
On a blue sky day
Yet without the bands of joy
Instead the notes
Fall, one by one
From Vienna or Havana
With summer coats
For the one by one
From Sienna or Copacabana
Next come the perforated pages
Pasted down through the ages
With the sure-fire certainty
Of a blue sky day
As you have been there
To have tasted the fruits
Of lascivious love
To have dwelled
As you have dwelled
On the mound
Of stupefied love
To have lain there
As you have lain there
In the sensual silence
Of the submission to love
To have smoked there
As you have smoked there
In the wondrous aftermath
Of the engagement of love