Ways Back

Magnification brings out the blue
Chance gives the lead in
A dense woodland bank
Being the instigator

I was quite taken aback
At how taken aback my tutor was
Today I have done useful things
Today has been spiritually alive

It is true
I may have lost a treasure
Yet also I have been set up
To take tack, along another track

Whoever you are
You, who are out there, we need you
There is much healing to be done
Bunches of fragrant flowers would be a start

For my part, a few words
That you may read, again, and again, and again
Talk, as best you can frame; of truth, of beauty
Press on, as well as you are able, with love

Happenstance in Heptonstall

Poems Started at Lumb Bank

Arvon 2018

Available from Amazon

Times And Tasks

The old poems are the old poems
Their titles say much of my thinking; for example
Yorkshire Love Poems & Other Desperate Stuff

They too will be revisited, to find provenance
Also to examine the detail, the rationale
To find the unknown in the unknown

What of the river, for there may be one
What of the brackish water, how far to the sea
What of the writer, so so far into his own lifetime

Here I am to write, for several days, for several nights
Relentless, as the silver sky begins to enter
I could sleep, but then I would have to wake

The alternative is to drink coffee, or take a bath
There is no bath, but one could go for a walk
Though downhill there, also means uphill back

I could work on my collection, however
First I would care for the tutor's feedback
My tutorial is due just after four

There is a collective, I do not feel inclined to join
Yet know that others would wish that for me
With little sense of, or for, my own self-regard

Happenstance in Heptonstall

Poems Started at Lumb Bank

Arvon 2018

Available from Amazon

Objects And Places

The Gregory Poems 1985-1986 came out in 1987
Which could also have been the year
That I went to the University of Sussex
For an OU summer school in Cognitive Psychology

I was an engineer, my previous studies reflect that
Now I had chosen something altogether different
I took the book with me, as a defence mechanism
Along with my Peter Stuyvesant kingsize cigarettes

I remember the trip to Sark, also to York
But were they both in the same year
If so what year was that
How else to place a stake in the ground

There is a structure of sorts down in the woods
There was a structure of sorts up in the woods
Where children played, where children
With imaginary friends, lived their imaginary lives

There is a tree, and a field, at the top of this hill
There was a tree, and a field, at the top of that hill
A place to walk to, to take a breath
A place to smoke our Silk Cut filter tip cigarettes

Happenstance in Heptonstall

Poems Started at Lumb Bank

Arvon 2018

Available from Amazon

Times And Places

Feet flat, on the carpeted floor
Breathe in, breathe out
Headphones on, listening to Making Change Easy
Back straight, firm against the wooden chair

Across the valley, a rising bank of trees
Much the same view as from that basement room
In the Kenn (Exeter) Farmhouse B&B in 2010
Except today I am at a top floor window

Which does nothing for my fear of heights
In 2010 I wrote of 2004
Due  to my geographic proximities
Today I am here to refine a collection of 2004

Feet flat, on the carpeted floor
My book, Gregory Poems 1985-86 are beside me
Was that when my writing, or my poetry began
If so, then what made me turn to the verse

Yes, I had bought and read, John Lennon’s book
In His Own Write, which was a present
For my older brothers twenty-first birthday in 1964
When we lived in The Crown Inn, Birdsedge

I was still at school, though often playing truant
Especially from English, and French; but not
For too too much longer; I left to learn a trade
To become an Electrical Engineer, not a writer

Happenstance in Heptonstall

Poems Started at Lumb Bank

Arvon 2018

Available from Amazon

Eighty Nine

Body
Like a huge mountain

Mind
Like a vast blue sky

Breath
Like a non-disturbing wind

Available at Amazon