dawn to day

Liquid sliver rolling still

in flowered cups, champagne flutes

of stained glass, droplets globe topping

the bell cluster comfrey. Cold moon glow. 
When all should roll, all statues.

A dawn blue mist slow rising

to rays of warmth - a morning kiss

to roll a splash of beads in the birdsong,

an awakening to all sky bound

and breaking fast for butterfly and bee.

How the night sky changes,

How the night sky changes
when there is so much fixed in movement.
People fall by the wayside of a heart,
free-fall from a sphere of influence,
each a star, the centre of their universe, seeds
on a map - vanishing.

The other side of the moon is still there, of course,
as are we, here on the circumference of this sphere
where giants race to peer long lashes over the never-ending hill
like it were a rainbow, thinking gold would be to see you,
hold your small hands to say thank you,

when light is already there and here,
sensing what is missing and what is missed
by the brushes of blinking
when giants have stretched,
yawned and slept.




Heavens
whimsy
abc 2013

Spring to summer,

Spring to summer is a glass bubbling births 
of chalk stream baptism and wood fires warming 

slow motion, extending over silver stumbling stones 
stretching a dance through cobblestones, weaving

the trees with cats-eye star imprints; sarongs,

or in a beaded chain of Whitstable iced pearls.

In the melt of what is new and what is old
Dover nets fill with the cliffs and the fisher's soul.

As we sort wheat from chaff like the next farmer along,

Love always brings in a harvest more than golden auburn.

The history of labour and loving is as undocumented

as ever, except for the note-taker maker-shakers, there 
would be no history written for love’s unpaid labourers.

With the harvest lurks searching horizons 
for weather; clocks and vanes. Love rests 
in a bouquet fed to the deer. It resuscitates
in wildflower wild-fire colour hypnosis 
with no scent at all, and yet it blooms. Synesthetic 

Love is...always in the heartwood hay and leaves 

when seasons dictate work routines, just like

clockwork; twenty-four, seven.




25/07/20

sea blue crystal

aquamarine sea blue crystal
white light crests roaring air rolling sound
snaking rocks rocking long harmonic breath
tones spilling waves sluicing waterfalls
sweeping volcanic plateau rock pool shore bound surf stretches
leaning impressions traversing stone sarong skin pore cliff

tidal-pull-wash beckoning back to sea jagged shell
rock pool waking life white lightening fireworks sea blue
crystal dreams confetti-ing flowering word shoals
aquamarine to indigo darkening depths
opening violet fathoms peddling stretch runners longing
an azure horizon

arching curves returning light-lapis cloud lines sun tints pink
sunset flamingo golden amber flare lavas wet sand dry

rose golden embers white bubbles inhale
turquoise to malachite





2008
edit
abc
breathing under water exercises

a poem about soup and lettuce

On the black volcanic sand it rained,
on the Sahara white, the sky fell down,
yet not one grain soaked, no muddy ground
to tell of footprints under a nomad's moon
swept by a roaring lions breath
arranged the landscape, valley and dune.

Snake tracks vanishing letters spun,
lizard feet wisped quick as a slithering tongue.

It rained one month the sky fell down,
yet not one grain soaked, no cactus cup
to catch one drop, condensed or not.
This silent irrigation, barefoot trod,
the red hot shifting map made dust
from lava turned to stone just for breathing air,

and there, a woman and baby, both so close to death,
cracked lips - how she longed for a taste of mud,

drained of every moisture bead, skin seamed,
rack of ribs, creaking bones, walked - one step,
one step, under a clear sky's fallen autograph.
Her baby held close by a fading scarf
made long ago by a Grandmother's hand,

knitted in the cemetery on the bench at Hoop Lane;
a grounds man by a wheelbarrow, smoking in the rain,
a memory plate of cut up fruit, eaten secretly at night
quietly in her tiny room surely kept them still alive,
walking through the blazing sun, so parched,
so close to death, not one more step to take: A mirage:

Visions of lettuce, sprouting from the sand
until unsure of truth or lie, oasis, sea or land,

one half coconut shell she did spy,
A few yards off in a shimmering heat of light.
A voice screamed from another land,
"Walk! I've cried every tear this desert lost
and have tried to stop the endless flood
for one half-filled shell of coconut.."

Then, like magic, there it was - soup in the sand,
and story told to children at a school:

A woman and baby so very close to death
are walking through desert isopleths
and find a coconut shell half filled up.
What should she do with this soup in a cup?
"Feed it all to the baby with her fingertips, Miss?"
is the innocent answer from a sweet child's lips.

So the woman takes the shell in her careful hand.
What would she do with the soup from the sand?



2008

Hunsdon Mead

Wildflower wildfire, the mead half
cut, intoxicant breeze weaves the oat,
wheat, and Lennie’s alfalfa – hay grass
for giraffe, sheep and llama, speckled
suffragette sarongs in far off skirts, bell
and buttercup swirls for butterfly, moth and bee.
Still, a golden buzz glows at sunset,
half the hay here cut but not yet baled.

A tractor trail, assassin’s work. To walk
like this, is to walk with the fallen,
no wild flowers for the vase on the table.
This loss is hay, a dusky husk underfoot.
The sky pouring a horizon of bees pondering 
low golden, a white owl hunting tatami flatlands.

One light threads the needles, a sunbeam all the way
through to a hay-auburn, at King George fields,
and this mead-gate in front.

Some days begin with a swim

Some days begin with a swim.
A man in a heavy coat, unties his shoes
on the back of a boat, places them
next to a handwritten note, jumps in.

Some days it's coffee, the dogs woof,
a flock of green parakeets...
an old heron on top of the roof.

There are swans gliding;
coots fight in the dreamy slumber of morning,
and a man slides into the soup
for the cold to take hold and take him under.

Some days cows and horses,
a bridge with faded flowers and tributes,
some days, love, affection,

and some, connection; some evenings
scarlet skies brewed from rainbows
makes golden

anyway.



2015
abc

Soft water, sweet

Soft water, sweet.

To leave a city

take a road a path a track

a river to where

softer water finds

calcium intentions

bathing octopus-inked

skin leather shell swirl fossil

flower and quill. She had carved a film

of salt line crease fold graffiti

circling an arm turning

in water, the dream

scape never seen whole.

To twist when an arm is soft

divides lines spread smudges 

mushroom to lightning strikes, 

our burnt toast heart swirls with legs!

Jumping beans! Turtle eggs. Blue egg 

breakfasts waving in blotches 

from a bandit’s nib. The painter, 

the pig's-ear carver artiste,

his bandit brush and her inky gun 

painting cathedrals. Our cerulean inks 

are melting drops of nostalgia...when 

nostalgia is sweet, soft, water.



7/2020