Mark IV GT

Racing off into the solitude

Years before I had learned

To compose poems in the car

Or at least years before I had

Recorded poetry in the car

Whilst I was driving

That solitary metal box

With four doors

Six windows

Square or rectangular

Which, on my eighteenth

Birthday I had kitted out

With hi-fi set ups

Costing just beyond what

I could comfortably afford

For if one is going to be alone

Didn’t one ought, indeed, to have

A top-notch, impressive, sound system

How else might

The sorrowful songs of loneliness

Seep through the silence

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Meavy

Crystal clear spring water

Moss covered trees

Sharp sharp sunlight

Pictures by the stream

A place of respite

A place for solitary escape

Except, every now, every then

Shared by the joy of the boy

But it’s just not true

As some might have you think

That together we did not care

For the moorland brooks or leats

Indeed a part of our

Very Dartmoor beginning

Was beside moonlit fords

With roaming herds of ponies

No wonder then that my magnetic energy draws me

To Sampford Spiney or to Whitchurch Down

The granite, the compass also, they so so attracted me

They so so firmly chose to direct me to places about you

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No. 4

The not so silent house

Is pushed, pulled, from pillar to post

Floorboards extracted

Joists replaced

New tongue and groove timbers installed

Before the conservatory was constructed

Even for a project manager

It takes some working out

How the normality of life

How the minutiae of life

Could have continued

Around such disruption

Dust did indeed beget dust

All of loss lost its way

All of excitement

Became buried or thwarted

By the devastation

By the missed directions

Stillness is as stillness never was

Yet, so I hear, you go on building

Was I the foil, were you in reality, the constructor

Knocking down all that you could

In search of all of which you felt

You nowhere near ever had; not ever

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Says It All

A small front room in a 1930s house

Plain Roman blinds in the bay window

Sculptures, paintings, vases, books

Two, small red leather settees for show

Lost at Sea is the message on TV

Vulnerability, in each, in all I see

Although occasionally, a tease

Though not yet in my direction

Correction, there was a one corner-smile

With style enough to bare her belly

Mother, daughter, son, potential future son in law

Me, an infrequent visitor, taking snaps, watching telly

It does not sell itself to me now

It didn’t sell it to me then, when

Neither frame, nor image were inclusive

When, at best, I could be called intrusive

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January

So cold

There must have been a reason

Frozen ground

There may be underlying treason

No child

Where did we leave him

Mute of joyful sound

Where were we yesterday evening

The trees

Still taller with a statue

Bare knees

Barer still if I could catch you

Scaffolding pole

Spans across two pillars

Plays a supportive role

To your, unsuited, emotion killers

Check it out

Look up the hotel reservations

Go walkabout

Find the solace of the deserted patients

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