FOXED AND FOLDED

i bought it in 1968 - it cost five shillings -

a paperback book of love poetry.  
the cover (psychedelic orange, 
pink and purple) still glows hopefully,

like an old dear in a gaudy cardigan.

the years have foxed the pages

deep brown.  corners are folded over,

so brittle they almost part.  i marked

the poems which spoke to me when i was twenty.  

not any more.  i read them now 
with a cold, discerning eye:

impatient with mismatched lines, loose

undisciplined sentiments.  
how harsh i've become!

i open the book at random, read:

'Here is an answer to play with:

the fire is dead.'

yes - too apt for comfort.  the years

which burned these pages brown

have all but burned me dry.  like this book,

my corners are turned over 

marking something which no longer matters.

LOSING TRACK

i used to be young and then
somehow i lost the knack.

you don't think of it as a skill:
cycling aloft on the wire,
but once belief goes - that's it:

you've veered off track
into a siding.  you recall
the switching point, the shudder
as your life became detached.

windows turn inward: reflect
your back-to-front face
which has forgotten how, lost when.

the dreams begin: leaving luggage
on a train. searching
through unknown cities. riding a bus
unable to name a destination.

i used to be young.
i didn't think of it as a skill.
you ask if i'd go back?

yes, but i don't remember these streets;
and anyway i've lost the knack.

SOU'WESTER

branches slap branches, flap

their few leaves, make wild

commotion and complaint: the air

is raving and motes of birds,

snatched in sky currents, fly

impossibly backwards.

the apple tree wags by the garden door,

smacks down a yellowed fruit on the flags

like a card player with a winning hand.

rooks, rain-beaded in the creaking willows,

wrap their hooks tight: jig to the beat of the storm.

HAIKU PEBBLES

a day of half-measures;
touching and just missing:
slightly off-centre


waking to a world
better than its dreams,
the snail delights in the rain


buzzard skywards
spiralling: leaves behind no marks
that i can discern


blackbird in the dusk sings
dusk in the blackbird:
theme and variations


each year the trees
blossom more beautifully
but my own flowers fade


rummaging in the bag
for a haiku, i found instead
empty space


puss cat intently
sniffing the rush matting:
remembrance of mice past


if it's true that
we reincarnate, then we are
our own ancestors


change the world
one doubt at a time: ask the
impossible question


this morning there was no world
beyond the dense white fog
which wrapped the field


i load up my plate
with the future.  the notice says:
all you can eat!

HARE’S BREADTH

where shall we put this
gift, which fate has wrapped
in new leaves
and sealed
with the dark startle
of the hare’s gaze?  where 

shall we fit it?  where keep
it safe?  between
great stones fitted knife-blade close,
under some restless
mountain, or in a mirror 
where no one has yet looked?  

do not try to fit it anywhere:
there is nowhere it belongs.
we must fit ourselves, instead,
into whatever space it leaves unfilled 

(though there is nowhere it has left unfilled)

THE HOUR BLUE

this is the moment
- there's one each day -
when dusk is deepening,

silence in the trees
(the birds have folded themselves small)
the wine is poured:

i want to raise my glass, 
smile at someone;
talk.  

it's nothing much.
it's everything.

THE ASHES SPEAK

all that is left of me is you:
do me credit.
achievements; dreams - grasped,
then lost: don't edit.

i was unkind: include that -
but marvellous too, don't forget.
i hid myself in words, so you couldn't find me;
all the same, we met.

cup my cold ashes in your hands,
then let them go.  as they billow past,
brush me off your coat onto the sand:
i was never meant to last.

all that is left of me is you:
so take me toward
somewhere i never really knew:
the best way forward.

MAGNOLIA STELLATA

this tree on its single leg

curtseying

to the glance of wings

as a bird flies through

its petals

caught up by the wind, fall back:

in the shape of a sword

ICARUS DOWNFALLEN

man goes flying

ground waits

man opens red heart goes flying

ground waits

man holds out heart-bird

ground swoops pecks it up

man rises light of heart free of heart

ground waits frowns

man rises rises

sun waits

ground waits sun waits

sea waits

man falls: sea wins

POEM FRAGMENT: TORN PAGE

a draft of an old poem of mine - probably from around 1995 - discovered on the back of a scribbled recipe.

DARK ANGEL

Someone has left a lily, tilted

in an antique flask - someone has painted

this annunciation before: the slide of planes

which descry the room, the collision of light

as if an angel lingered, beckoning –

having burned out the walls with its eyes.

The whole place now

stands open to brimming skies.

Leaving, the painter took his brushes. The lily

he’d found and cut with such reverence

he placed at the heart of the work -

then left the painting to compose itself. These walls

will never hold space the same way again,

because they have summoned an angel

to dispense the rain.

The room darkens

and the angel becomes more distinct.

A convulsion of light is its hand

burning the cup’s rim. All day the rain

has brimmed up there,

writhing and boiling, winding its dynamo.

The cup is taken: from an angel

with eyes through which rain pierces.

But had the painting shown any room

(since all rooms intersect) each would have held

an angel with its own annunciation. And wet tiles

with footprints leading away, and the soft drum

of rain on leaves.

Yet though in some rooms a lily, newly unclosed,

might lean - in others

the dark, inward-reaching eyes

would endlessly hold discourse with a rose.

Now with the unrolling of the sky and the light's wane

the thunder at last

brings down its harvest of tall rain.