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Sunday 31 December 2023

Fresh daisies

I begin by remembering something always different

From the poem by Yevtushenko, just called Waking


Think on that

Just, for the moment, think on

Some things, same things

Yet always different


Without then their past connections or disconnects

Afloat in space, without landing, without mooring

Awash with the newness of it all together

The marvel, the meander, the wondering why


And how in the shower the radio plays

Back there, in your en-suite bedroom

There are echoes, sing-alongs

Songs of love, with differences no longer intended



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Saturday 30 December 2023

Just me and you

We talk of past and present

In the future tense

Oh heaven sent we have the sense

To look ahead


Not to tear open

For some other scavengers

Not to bear any more their load

More so than their witness


We walk in steps

On quiet pavements

Under stars and sodium lights gathered

We skip across the gaps


To find a flat stone surface

Or a park bench

Or a stream

Just to sit, no more than that, for the moment


To listen to the night time

The silence of the hours

The spoken woken tokens

Of this rounded, founded, rarest love



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Friday 29 December 2023

Later

Old or newly lit

Separate yet held together

Those never have been

Street scenes when back along

All and everyone else

Went back home to their beds


Neon lights, night music

Alcohol

And dreams

Shared as if forever

A simple song, a submarine with everyone

Yellow in the chorus


Young so so seemingly fits

Snugly

Untethered ever greens

Open the doors and the far away windows

For another go

On the carousel



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Thursday 28 December 2023

Pebble stones

Rolled up trousers

Trilby's on our knees

Flying kites

And maybe we might

Be floating on the breeze


Hammocks and hurricanes

Those old narrow chicanes of love

Lollipops and spotted frocks

And pigeons which look like doves


Walk towards the picture taker

Images so clear to freeze

Passing rites

And maybe we might

Be sitting on the leaves


Grandpapas and Aunty Jane's

Those lost remains of love

Hollyhocks and empty docks

Seagulls in the pigeon loft above



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Wednesday 27 December 2023

Paint a thousand words

Some while ago I spoke about the limitations for the artist, the restrictions of his palette, of his two dimensional domain.

In contrast I spoke about the freedom of the poet, the writer; his endless choice of words, his multi-directional outlooks, or the limitless disarray of his languages.

Yet, here and now, with a simple plant pot and a few flowers, a mixture of greens and pinks and reds.

How little justice does he give, and how much worse is the tedious technical explanation; filled with Latin names and overblown prescriptive descriptions.

How much better then, even than a photograph, to ask the artist, with his water colours, to gently place layer upon layer.

To cast and capture the shadows, to flare out the blooms, to go right inside the nectar; there and then to give me the picture which I am today unable to recreate with words



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