Flight or Fight

One dog
Disturbs four hundred birds
One doubt
Unsettles four hundred certainties

The four hundred birds
Landed across the water
The one dog (and its owner)
Retreated, (as if in sure defeat)

Life goes very quickly
Looking back
On the recent past

Life is less tricky
Thinking back
On what's made to last

Life, even in Billericay
Stands back
To look out upon the cast

Available on Kindle

Algull Castle with Kate

'What fine memories will I have, ten years from now, of once having been in.... What will such memories hold, what associations of feelings which I cannot guess at this moment'
Antal Szerb - Journey by Moonlight

You received my gifts
With the gratitude of love
We drank champagne and we kissed
You asked if it was ok
For you now to ask to marry me

I made some poor joke
About my present certificated situation
Then moved
The circumstantial conversation on

Now you are capturing the castle
In watercolours
While I sit out in the afternoon sun
Writing words which may one day
Give a clue to what a chance I missed

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Centre Court

This shrine, divine
Leaves me, inclined
To feel for love
Under cotton sheets
After Muscadet and the castle chatter

Skin on skin
Breast on breast
Tongues kissing
As the boys
On the tennis court squeal with laughter

As our squeals
On the expectations
Of loves lustful sensations
Gut-strings, taut
On the racket; tension, suspense; one-all

Our strings also
Echo back and forth;
'Yes I love you'
'Yes I do love you'
After all it is one-all; it is one-all, isn't it

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Self-Service

I've found a breeze, and shade
After a drink
Of Summer Fruits with Cloudy Lemonade

What a world in which we live
Taking photographs
Of the sun's effect on this summer's June

Listening to agricultural machinery
Stirring up a fair-old agricultural aroma
Meanwhile, the young boy plays

That same young boy as all young boys
Some with their picture in the paper
Some locked away behind closed doors

Whosoever gave us the sunlight
Also gave us the depressions
The greater expressions of woe

From where we are grateful to leave
To find the breeze, and the shade
With a pitcher of Victorian Lemonade

Available on Kindle

Long View

Skyline

Sublime

Over the treetops

In time

Your sign

Falls on the page

First crime

You to be mine

Nothing now to stop us

That line

Grade nine

Calmed the rage

First to climb

Then to remind

The course of our way

The light of our day

Available on Kindle