Still, Life

Oh yellow bird

On river leaf

For that moment

You make me so so happy

Oh soft, pink rose

On green foliage

In that glimpse

You gift me bliss

Oh simple calm thought

In rested mind

With this peace

You and I are at one

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Decorum Est

Such is the force of recovery

That I have walked into town

On three or four occasions

The green leaves on black

Suggests the same bitter experience

With the American coffee deliveries

Outside, or across from

The Consortium, I sit in a room

Called the library

Where the other customers apologise

For being too too noisy

With their knives and forks

Which reminds me

Of Mucknell Abbey, where

We were told to be quiet

With our cutlery, especially

Not to scrape too too loudly

Across the crockery

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In Payment For Ice-Cream

To the top of the hill

First a jog

Slowing down

To a walk

As the incline steepens

Then, step by step

Sideways and forwards

Thinking of Keats’ Negative Capability

Before long

It is a crawl

Though not in the swimming sense

More a case of using all four extremities

For leverage

Of course the real problem

Is vertigo, that

And the thin air

Which decidedly interrupts the breathing

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In-Flight

This is a place of swifts

Or swallows, which appear

To embrace each other

In mid-air

Which gives an altogether

New meaning to the phrase

I don’t give a flying fuck

Though I have to say

That I only caught a glimpse

And it was over in a moment

Which of course brings back

Oh so many memories

Indeed, nowadays

I only manage the foreplay

Which perhaps is what

All of their swooping

And swirling is for

Or is it, after all

Just my senior imagination

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Meet The Lad

Blue skies

Green trees

Yes, really

The very crux of Dartmoor

Two Bridges

To be precise

With black coffee, and

An occasional fierce wind

Yet, directly above

Pure blue

As blue as blue can be

For the moment

My straggling hair

Has shadows

Which bounce on the page

Presumably also on my head

No need then today

Or any other day for that matter

To show off too too much

Of your undefined wisdom

Though a song begins in my head

In an American country style

From Yelverton to Princetown

To the Devon County jail

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