“Turn back!” you frown, “you’re too young to be knowing
there’s nothing for you where you think you’re going
except a meeting with that vast Unknown.”
Gone is the time the power of your voice
could strike the Fear of Dog in man and beast.
We’d flinch, divert, or just hang back at least
whilst checking if we had a better choice.
Gone are the days you’d take on any fight;
in Time you met a dog you couldn’t beat,
though still prepared to take it to the street
to prove the spirit in you shines as bright,
and that, beneath the ash of age, your soul
burns just as fierce and stronog and hot as Charcoal.
Washing Up
Easing brittle rim of plate
into warm wetness of sink,
a flicker of aroma rises
and, ah, there!
Recollection, arching like a cat,
swoons into a flash of what we shared last night;
and I stop for a moment, smile.
This, too, is making love.
7/1/05
Poem For a Sleeping Sooz
Funny, since I am a man for whom
Words are the loom
On which we weave our loves;
The warp of agonies concealed,
The weft of bliss confessed
All formed, or so I thought, a part
Of the proper garments of the heart.
Lacking such, love went about undressed.
Yet how much, so much more expressed
By this sleep-heavy arm
Thrown across my chest!
Published “The Spectator” Saturday 23rd June, 2001
Despair
Despair comes, a red-eyed crow,
thick beak tearing at my living brain.
“Cheer up!” you say, but what do you know?
I shake my failing fist,
it rises, circles three times
and lands again.
Published in “Dreamcatcher” issue 8, 2001
Calder Valley, June, 2002
Shattered tooth majesty of a derelict mill.
Flash of sunlight through broken cloud.
A bus disgorges Asian girls,
slender in shalwaar-kameez.
Streamers trailing, a flight of dragonflies
comes laughing up the street.
Knuckled up fist of hill crouches.
Summer here is brief.