Community

Your email asks plenty questions

Of the registers of the voice

Of the chest resonator

Of the arch of the palette

Of course I do remember

Walking towards Rena

On the grass

Outside of our studio

Yes our studio, ours for the week

At the tip-top of my kingdom

Though for you, for many of you

It was a different country entirely

And for me a different life

Well outside my comfort zone

Among actors and theatre directors

Shouting out for the whole world to hear

 

Land & Imagination

Often I am alone

On the two-sided

Two-seater churchyard bench

But not today, no

For today it is a Sunday in June

When sons walk out with their mothers

And farm shops close, so no half-way

Provisions for this cyclist

I have flown across skies

Of this hue before

I have landed

In equally beautiful places

Where the tastes of youth

Attracted the flight

Where the lust of expectation 

Garnered the urgency

 

Country Roads

And in that one moment

Watching

The Larkin documentary

I too was swept off to Beverley

Also to Ampleforth Abbey

In that one moment

I had risen from the sofa

To feel the sunshine

Thinking about being

Among writing friends

Of course, as with love

I would find an element

Of argument and discontent 

Fury and absence

In the Basildon Bond

En route to Rosedale

I witnessed 

A small village funeral

Carried out with some style

Later, on a private drive

With calypso-coloured

Rhododendrons

I surreptitiously drove towards

A restored country house

And in that one moment

I had entered

A new world order

Built from the success

Of wistful, wishful, absent-minded

Sunday afternoon thinking

Bread & Cheese

Still-life is still life isn’t it

Around the eggshell egg the air still moves

Inside the egg equilibrium tries to settle

On the reflective tray the tomatoes wait

If we also waited, if we waited long enough

The reflections change, change and decay

With a backdrop of nothingness

And a foreground, edged-off, much the same

What we see is in pure suspension

One artist did the decent thing

His objects hung (quince et al) on lengths of twine

Or string as we might say in the western world

The western world of the playboy

Who could well have featured in a still-life

That is, still life as a portrait

The playboy (the object) being hungover to dry

By the grip of his dominant father

Who may well have eaten the ploughman’s lunch

Which is the image, homed in on

In today’s exhibition

Ongoing Inkscape

I do not give up going to that place

That place of so so many places

Of many seashores

And many mountains

Of many fertile fields

And many baron deserts

I do not give up asking questions

Questions mostly of myself

Why do I choose to go there

Why do I need to go there

What do I hope to gather by going there

What do I hope to give you by going there

And, if as I hear

You want for nothing

What might that gift of

Nothing consist of

Do you honestly want to know nothing

Of my thoughts

Do you seriously want to know nothing

Of my actions

Is there truly nothing in my imagination

To interest you

Is there then nothing in my firmament

To convince you