Relate

Morning calisthenics
Love thoughts turn to love
Railway wagons shuttle past
Did you take your girl out to tea

A picnic, in the park
Philadelphia & bagels
Love, balanced with care
Lace upon your knee

Speak for endless hours
Love to tell, swell as well
Hear the seaside fairground
A conch’s story of your girl’s sea



The pamphlet Embroidered Cadillac from which this poem is taken is available at the itunes store for only 99 pence, click here to be connected

Wakes Week

These are the flatlands
Mad as a hatter & cap lands
Where even right beside the sea
You cannot see the sea

Not because the view is obscured
By man or even by
Those rectangular caravans
Which go on for miles and miles

Years of infinitesimal lifetimes
Time enough to put up fences, gates, verandas
Time enough for dad’s tears, granddads tears
Mum’s tears, great grandchildren’s tears

Yet without undulation there is no vista
Of the everlasting ocean
Over which your sister promised to sail
To sail and set you free

With promise
She sailed to set you free from religion
Churches; three within spitting distance
One on every corner of the ever winding road

A Methodist chapel tacked on in full view
To capture the late or lonely stragglers
Back then many more, many more workers
People of the people, workers of the day

Dayworkers who worked of the evening
Believing that on Sunday they could rest
To play far away from the shadow
Of the crooked, crooked steeple


The pamphlet Embroidered Cadillac from which this poem is taken is available at the itunes store for only 99 pence, click here to be connected

Churchyards and Hilltops (Love & Dust)

Love & dust
So close they spoke together
If ever you have been
Deep into the quiet country

You know that someone was born here
But you were not here, at the birth
Or even at the death, except
That now you touch the silence

Smell the yew, how do you do that
Be true, to the truth inside of you
Laid down now; deep, yet here beside you

Earlier the breeze, on the plateau
Of the long grass, the grasses danced &
Swayed, played for Mother Earth’s fair children

Who listened, and beside the stillness
The starless sky; the orange moon in the
Grass filled camera’s eye

The still moon, that sent just, justly
The love and dust; now they walk
Forever, they go on further than before

Yet unexpected they come upon
And are frightened
Fearful, at the sight of the once opened door

Dusk turns into full on darkness
The churchyard says go silent
Silent into the dark of darkest night


Rainbows on my Spectacles is available at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/rainbows-on-my-spectacles/id486905289?mt=11

A few days ago

It was seven when we set off to sea
But even before we were lost
We had changed our destination

We had spoke of going to this place
To listen to the silence
To make love with nature

In nature with the noise of nothingness
To be there, with peace
With the richness of life's love all around us

The festival is a few weeks away
Yet already the campers have begun to arrive
Their half-barrel barbecues happily burn

Fed with the twigs of beech and hazel
Undisturbed we climb the stile
With its water tap and electric light

We wander off, out among the grasses
You lead on
We pull our clothes away, gently and together

I take a photograph of my shadow
Of your stature, of the swaying grasses
In the space that is somehow between us

We wonder at the wondrous land & skyscapes
Lay lightly down; with our love beside us
Stillness brings the unspoken meditation

For which we thank, for which we bless
We rise, just as the moon rose above us
We each take each others picture

We each take the moons picture
Hold hands and slowly stroll
Find our way back, slowly onwards

On from this place
A place we might call heaven
The moon is full

A few days ago
After our walk through Tennyson county
We had talked of returning to the church
In the still of night

The old map-book shows
That Tetford and Somersby have survived
Both are feintly found
On the torn out plotted paper

And by our slow drive
With the surest of directions
We arrive, park up under the light
Of the half lit telephone box

Across the road is Tennyson’s birthplace
Next door to the castellated manor house
Which itself is scenically misplaced
And fades into a decaying diversion

The churchyard gate is open
Old yews stand eerily still
We stand, chilled together
At the half-opened unbolted door

I feel afraid, I feel your fear
We enter as if into a presence
The door is left open
We hug; our fear is transferred

Passed through
One to the other
Onwards into that place
That no one ever knows

After a while we sit in the pews
I cannot settle
Anyway this is your place
The silent beauty suits you

It belongs to you
I stand aside
Reflect back
Smile upon your stillness

We walk at zero pace
Ambling
Without haste or urgency
Back to the parked car

The moon is full
The sky clear, well almost
Just a shade of sodium
Just a wisp of cloud

We drive off
Moths dance
In the headlights glare
We are heading home

Tonight we entered
Into the land of magic
Tonight we emerged
From the loss of love


 Rainbows on my Spectacles is available at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/rainbows-on-my-spectacles/id486905289?mt=11

Nowhere that we need to be

Moths
Caught
In the full beam
Of the halogen headlights

They dance
Dance to the music
Dance to the spirit
Or dance

To the silence of the summer

Listen out
For the ever present
Resonant frequencies
The still born silence of death

Forever
Somewhere or hereabouts
In deep sleep’s
Midnight air

Dance to that time of time ago
When madness was protected
By the curse of childlessness
On future generations

Walk nine miles or for nigh on ninety years
To be nowhere now that we need to be
There to set free, to see the grief
Believe the spectacle of families torn apart

Silently in silence we wonder
Would we be here if
Without of our own furrowed brows
Without those doubts and burdens

If we
As they had not to say
That this is the past
The last and final curtain

The hoedown
The showdown
The windblown ground
Around the gravestones

Of the slowdown motel
She then, betrothed and ached
Once, which was one time too many
She caught on

Yet for whose sake
Did she fall short of the full term dream
Who set up those bewitched, barbaric deadlines
Headlines now; but back then it seems
An everyday occurrence


The pamphlet Rainbows on my Spectacles is available at http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/rainbows-on-my-spectacles/id486905289?mt=11