Category: Poetry

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Chalk at Broadstairs

When the tide, slow retreating from the beach north of Broadstairs,

Reveals all the liminal acres of shore,

A field of nobbly pinnacles rises

Slathered with purple, green-fingered, white-raw.

The chalk will feel greasy to fingertip gripping,

The seaweed is slippy beneath treading feet,

Yet the softest of stones is defeating the ocean

Absorbing the thunder where seas swell and meet.

The  cliffs, yes they tumble, they fall and they shout,

Collapse in the surf of the tide’s furthest rush,

But ten days in twelve the water drains backward

And the roar of the ocean will turn into hush.

The power of water is soon dissipated,

Rollers and breakers split into rills

And the cliffs, slowly crumbling, must face the ocean

But twice a day water retreats and then stills.

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Gold

To think of burying gold

When it hangs for free in the air

Just beyond the lover’s reach,

Just above her hair.

There beyond the snouts of dogs,

The winter-fingered trees

But bright and strong and in my eyes

The shining coin of spring’s surprise

It hangs to tempt and tease.

The crocus tips are up

And the night has returned to its hours

And all the city folk are glad

To tell seasons by the flowers.

Past the sour smell of square white bread

Put out to feed the birds

I route my return in time to pray

And gently finish the first spring day

With a gentler ring of words.

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View from a Train Window in Autumn

A litter of yellow apples lie by

An access trackway, unregarded and

Ignored, for all the hundred pounds yet spent

On fruit from other garden fields, these fall

And tumble, bruise, sleep rotten by a path

That once in several months a gang tramp down

To mend, rewire, or tense the straightening cords

That rig steel pylons down the western line.

If only I had time and way to climb that fence

Or scale that wall and gather them – or you

Could ever give that hopeful seedling, now

A giving, breathing creature in our world

Appreciation’s gratitude of use,

To taste the fruit just once before it falls!

See all along the callous iron line –

Permanent way – the rails have taken part,

Assumed autumnal motley, blood and brown,

And ballast beds a thousand dry-stemmed weeds,

But heaps of darling brambles, glowing brass

Gloss-tip bold hips are all by-passed.

The jungles of sloes, elder, buddleia,

Are thick and scrawny, generous and gay.

Each waiting on a season – while the train

Diesels past, cold or wet or damp or dry –

And never can we tap those running rivers,

Wine-fountains.  Realm of black cat and magpie,

Occasionally trespassed by working gangs

Of hi-vis lads with flasks and sandwiches

And itineraries by which time those briars

Must be cut back – until next year again

They show their open palms in generous glee,

Unregarding the sudden slash and hack,

Intrusive but impermanent and weak.

The oak still juts out limbs, regardless, hard,

The rowans stretch and slip down th’ embankment.

The brambles claw and catch, proliferate,

And everywhere in autumn you saw hips

In spring is but a net of green thorned twigs

And early summer, clouds of fragrant scent

Unrivalled by the essences, in glass,

Sold in a full room by the door of a

Large department store.  Clear out such memory!

Rather see those nebulous banquets

Ubiquitous and unique, that colour

Our paths and commutes when we least expect.

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View from a Train Window in May

The cream-white, soda-flush of hawthorn bloom

Extends in streaks and still-shot eruptions

To bring the hedgerows more than definition.

Punctuation, regular as breath,

In gasps, in pants, in drinking draughts of sky,

Until the rows we watch from the window

Of the chuckle-wheeled carriages, are made

New-coloured, like the newly-weds’ hallway,

Redecorated with a paint that seemed

Unexciting on the shelf, but cover

A whole wall and gloss it over green

And spring green, the new and living colour

Of an awakening land, and you will see

How white is more than simply white again.

Some of those hedges hold their purple clouds

Where lilacs pour their thick, re-shaping shock

Into the composition of our eyes

And unframed, unstructured pictures, unhung

And unlikely to be collected.

But this is Spring – this vision from the train –

This helpless rush at life and flowered trees

And never while you ride ignore the may.

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Cufflink Villanelle

Now I can wear her gift upon my wrists,

The reassembled clock-pieces to link

Our lives, half out-of-time with what persists.

 

These first pair, shared and bought, began the lists

Of contracts of giving, presents for ink,

Now I can wear her gift upon my wrists.

 

The next two are stiff, worn in Cambridge mists,

And I lost one of our favourites – flat stones sink

Our lives, half out-of-time with what persists.

 

I hung rings in her hair – this sight persists

When I wish memory’s eye would wink.

No eye can wear her gift upon my wrists…

 

They only hold together with sharp twists,

Straining but secure, I thought, but now think

Our lives half out-of-time with what persists.

 

But hands that held are impotent, blank fists,

And the last dregs of gladness, those I drink

Now.  Can I wear her gift upon my wrists,

Our lives half out-of-time with what persists?

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The Garden, Gone and Remaining

It’s dangerous, returning where

You left your living herbs to root.

A trip to re-taste friendship’s fruit

Was bittered by a chilly air.

 

The trees that stood between brick walls

That hid along the alleyway,

Perpendicular and grey

Behind the street thick with footfalls –

 

Those trees that softened up waste ground,

Beloved by none who owned them, no,

Beloved by one who knew them so,

Can no longer there be found.

 

Eight sycamores, wind-strewn and wild,

A faded, fallen apple, broke

Beneath the ivy’s unfair yoke,

And hazel and its hopeful child,

 

The ashes, birches, and tangled low

Odd-limbed gooseberries, all leaf

Their chance to fruit far too brief,

My chance to help them years ago.

 

If anybody knew or cared,

I did – who slept beneath the branch

And dreamt that plot my mind’s wide ranch

And ate the berries birds had shared.

 

Returning down that concrete path

Something airy worried me –

Then bare sky lay, no branch, no tree,

And sorrow mingled up with wrath.

 

For all these deeds and rights to build

What value has the love of soil?

For profit pulled from a rebar broil

Who counts the trees the clearers killed?

 

Small pain, oh yes, for all fall, trees.

What sentimental rot – what pose!

But gloved hands felled and counted those,

That last were climbed and held by these.

 

I know the width of limbs, the give

And sway of outstretched arms that reach,

From letting slower creatures teach

And show me how to be and live.

 

God speaks in rocks and fruits and trees,

So shouldn’t I be sad and cry

That disregarded saplings die

That I regarded, gave me ease?

 

From bed – this bed – beneath this spread

I’d wake and see them greet the day

Or sleeping, hear the wind at play

To test them, twitch them, shoulders spread,

 

Roots wild-set but gripping close,

Joying, fighting with the gale,

Ducking rain and flicking hail,

And then in sun, remain, repose.

 

I left a lot there in that ground,

A sage-bush brought and cropped and strong,

The trunk split-twisted, leaves grey and long,

Potatoes not yet dug or found.

 

Nothing’s lost.  I hope – it must be.

I know that God permits no waste,

And where our minds dash on in haste

He plays a longer game than we.

 

How many times a root re-springs,

How many times a spring re-flows,

Oh, every time you prune a rose

You prove the loveliness of dead things.

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Silence

Unwounded by words, the body of quiet swells,

Absorbs my breathed-out thought and inwardly tells

Me to ‘Recall that past promise.’  Distance

From what I once said begets a silence.

 

Now I am stilled by the weight of rest,

My free spirit mentions matters unconfessed

And in clarity born of sore conscience,

See how sorrow always begets a silence.

 

But with no clamour, remedy speaks next,

That offered hand, to give me when perplexed

A release from the curse of self-reliance

And thankfulness too begets a silence.

 

Take me into this quiet, where heart touches heart

And my words and my working all fall apart

And I know the true truth of the Spirit’s alliance

And awe, rediscovered, begets a silence.

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Lines from the British Museum I

The coin, a double-dozen thousand years,

Each year three hundred, sixty-five mornings,

Each morning, someone rising, the owner

Of a silver owl and a goddess’s head,

Unless it slept in soil somewhere.  But this,

The bright and heavy star, lost from its night,

Dropped from the dark, surely wasn’t hidden

Or let go, ever, was it?  So warm

Like just out of the pocket of a man

A double-dozen thousand years ago

And in a dusty land.  So bright, the polish

Of finger-sweat and greed still thick on it.

And even if it lay somewhere, still owned

By someone, or the heir and son, someone

Who didn’t know that this was his bequest

While it was locked in a box or folded

In heavy cloth, wrapped pocket-wise, forgot.

Can we even forget silver?  Are we

So rushed and careless, so full of hurry?

An element unseen, unfelt, like quarks,

Detectable by reflection and effect,

Its signature a half-life of regret…

If he had pride in striking such a picture,

Twice, once on either side, and then the man

Who cast it, glee to see the metal flow,

Then where is your treasuring, O tourist,

O passing tourist in this museum world?

Your stool was well-designed, gave pleasure, pay

To someone still living, his name not unknown!

Your trousers, brooch and boots are all silver.

To honour strangers perhaps we should strip

And put our clothes on slowly, prayerfully,

Again, instead of hurriedly dressing

In the morning’s mist of barely-slept sleep.

The prayerful life is a life well-lived,

The worshipful life one of peace and thanks,

The good news life looks with Jesus’ eyes

On the world that we make with our hands.

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Delabole Waterfall at High Tide

Upon the lip a flow like glass,

It seems as solid as the slate

Over which the waters mate,

Salt and sweet, where waves amass.

 

The waterfall persists its flow,

Its noisy rattle, chatter, rush

But the bigger water sweeps in hush

The shatters patterns with a throw.

 

Now synchronised in flow and draw

The waves ride in and mount the shelves

Some further, nearer, spend themselves

To salinate the pool-spread shore.

 

Is it a battle or a game?

These two waters meet head-on

Their distinct selves are seen, then gone.

And left, one cold and salt-sweet same.

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Limehouse Poppies

Somewhere just West of Limehouse

An emptied yard has lain and slept

Among the brick and rubble

Are promises the poppies kept,

To bloom between the foundation slab,

To stretch between the mortar,

Beneath the girders of the bridge

Beside the dockstill water.

They flourish in obedience

To a hundred-year-old-seed,

They quench with a silk-soft moment

An ancient personal need.

If you rode on a train and saw no life,

No bloom of weed or rose,

Then how would you know you were living

And how would you do what you chose?

Unless the flowers chose to rise

From the rubble where a warehouse stood

We’d have no daily proof of how

Ruins turn good.