Listen

I see today’s lost soul

Just as I was that lost soul

Some time before them

I see the scattered feathers

Just as the fox attack

Has left them

I see the water of the lake

Just as that other water

Which my sorrowful soul gazed into

I see grandparents, parents, children

Just as we might have been

But not as we are

I see the light in the deer shelter roof

Just as it was

The last time, and the times previous

I see (feel) that the silence is not here today

Just as I didn’t actually know it was

All of those times in the past

available on amazon

Embedded

The ice-cream cabin as was

Is now a car park pay-station

Yet, at just on eleven

The cafe is crowded

The terrace is full

So someone, somewhere

Knows something about business

Though the wet chairs

From overnight rain

Catch a few punters out

Did we spend long here

Did we go to the water

I remember a photoshop picture I made

Of your face

Among a tree with a Gormley statue

The sort of thing

Which a child might have been taught

Although for me

The motivation was somewhat different

It was about hanging on

It was about not letting go

It is about hanging on

It is about not letting go

available on amazon

Overheads

I sit on Alfred’s, the old head gardener’s seat

I wonder what he might have made

Of the mock tree

With the mock apple baubles

I think of your boots

With silver on the heels

I think that even if all that glitters

Is not gold, it is still evocative

One couldn’t quite call it the start of the day

Yet the artificial tree

Between the beech and the horse chestnut

Is what the children shout about

What did you make of the sculpture park

I’m sure I told you about my coming here

After my mother had died

After bombs were dropped on Yugoslavia

I hear the distant aeroplane

I am taken back, to you collecting me

From your airport; you wanting to show off

Your island, just as I wanted to show you mine

available on amazon

At Table

A dullness to the morning

Heavy in my thirteen-and-a-half stone

Writing in my hotel bedroom

Lost from my place called home

I decide to take cooked breakfast

To try to get back in the zone

It only costs five pounds extra

I have a window of my own

The railway line is fenced off

The stairwell filled with chrome

The silver birch leaves are limp

The television is the usual drone

The waitress is simply joyful

With the croissants, with the scone

The tradesman is way less happy

Apologising, on his mobile phone

These words are out of context

Should they make it to the tome

Would they be better off discarded

Or cut right back, made bare to the bone

available on amazon

Perspectives

Why is there no photograph

Of me with you

How sure of myself

Would I have had to have been

To ask a friend to snap us

With my arm around your shoulder

I don’t know where

You bought your outfit

Neither have I any understanding

Of how ridiculous you thought I looked

Or in what way you responded

To my father of the bride speech

You left me with my brothers

Went upstairs to our family bedroom

The ignominious hours were almost over

Though the everlasting damage was done

We were polite at breakfast, especially

With the remaining guests at table

A couple of days later

Back home in Devon

I wrote my own record

Of how I thought the day had gone

I didn’t capture any of these feelings

But yes, I do have a copy, somewhere

available on amazon