I saw a cow
Six or seven months in calf
Sold for seventeen-hundred guineas
I borrowed a book
Writing Poetry
By Doris Corti
With an introduction
Which I mistook
For being about me
Galvanised railings
Concrete slabs
For our seats
The auctioneers rattle
Repeats and repeats
I fear I face untold deceit
Sadness
On reflection
Surefooted the sun shone
On through
Valuers & Surveyor
Where I saw a cow
Six or seven months in calf
Old books
Bones
Tears of dried up dust
Parchment
Pretty pinks
Artists on the candelabra caper
Eyes closed
Eyes less than halfway
Wide open
Turned stones
Clay specks
Decked on dormant rust
Just because you can
Indeed so much
That you must
Just because I am
In the time
I learned to trust
Old books
Where now the repetition
Translated from dawn till dusk
By the shores of the longest river
With the still smooth pebble
Skipping on the water
Parchment
Where now Egyptian paper
Stated in fair governance
By the night of the oldest moon
With the still smooth dream
In the palm of your hand
Illiterate
Drives its own confusion
I will
I will
I will become obsessed
A peasant's son
Casts its own
No don't go there
Walk away
Walk away
No stay, pray do become
I thought I was angry
You spilt the uncollected blood
I chose a word of fancy
You knew; my own milk wood
Luddites in the valley
Geese in grandma's yard
The pictures of tomorrow
Sally, kissing old Tom Stoppard
That butterfly
Caught up in the spiders web
She swayed
With some knowledge of chaos theory
Flap long and hard enough
Dazed but not confused
You will always get away
Unscathed but bruised
I thought I was angry
You asked me if I could
I spoke of Reagan's Nancy
You know, that kind of neighbourhood
You can't break the machines now lad
You know; the looms and such stuff
You see with smoke and mirrors
We've bought the software bluff
Are you a young man
Or an old man, living your life
In reverse
Are you always striving
Belligerent, repugnant
With disquiet in your verse
The picture on the counter
Is of a cornfield
Bordered by poppies
The tyre with its worn weald
Is buggered
And that my lad is fact
To have all of this pleasure
With the pencil and the pen
In defence and attack
The picture is on a thank you card
'Fields of Flowers' by Julia Hawkins
An image sniffed by Crabtree and Evelyn
Am I the young man
In an old mans shoes
Giving or taking, or worse
Am I always dreaming
Beauty, softness, love
Lost therein, within my verse
