Do you see
The shimmered movement of trees far distant
Against a sky of palest grey
Washed in its hue
Inchoate yet grand in scale
All gentled for the bird
To land and leave and come once more
Or the child to climb and cry
Wet bark to feel
Look again
If you have not seen
The light refracted on your pane
Hard frosts and rains laid out
To mark our present time
A Herald’s shout, we are alive
We may still feel each breath
Taken and received
Here is my hand
Look into my eyes
Let nothing come between
The knowing and this feeling
Give intensity a chance
Unbridled passion a useful home
I’ll not deny it’s not for long
But this I have known
It is enough
The seeds are sown
Down where the marshes turn to mud
Down where the cherry blossom newly bud
There will you find what Virginia sought
There will you find what Hector bought
A tale more human for its telling
The trees in the Amazon they are felling.
 

It was not faith that brought me here

Nor burning love, nor fear 

For I have seen fresh cut flowers droop

In scented rooms of yesteryear

The tall and vaulted walls of glass

Made airless by the whims of those

That led their desiccated lives alone

Untouched by centuries that passed

Recruiting hope instead of meaning

Uncertain proofs confused with wilful ignorance 

A sop to meanness and a rank indifference 

All set to rules of precedent and a slow decay

Fat, thin, white and grey

Their honour made of cant and privilege

While good men wept their tears

For women folk made idle with neglect

Their masters’ bloated mediocrity 

An insult to a newborn’s intellect

Come now, throw off these shackles

Ignore the siren call of greed’s fake duty

Listen no longer to the hangman’s creed

Turn your faces to the sun

Step forward boldly into unknown places

Where no man serves another

And your labours can set you free.

I remember a river bed
The mud dried ribs bereft of dew
The banks emptied and desolate
Their sands all pitted and barren
Save the desiccated stumps of bracken
And the heat and the dust collecting
Upon their lifeless limbs
Their roots revealed and bare
 

I remember the long descent of sky
The grass field
The vast expanse of bleach and yellow
Lost to the horizon of faded cloud
All shimmering and refracted
In air dried to a scented stillness
The smell of arid dust
The touch of the untouched
 

I remember your voice
As you turned to me and said
How long do we have?
We should go back
What is there here to see?
Why did we come?
Do you know the way?
I’m tired now and the sun is unforgiving
 

Take me home
I want to go home
So we turned and found the path
Returned with all that should have been said
Unsaid
And took the highway back to the city
Where our lives went on
And soon enough you were gone.


 

 Too Far, Too Late
 

Can you no longer feel
The first uneasy warmth of early dawn
Upon your fresh, untested, new-virtued face
Or the slow stuttering glow of a wasted sun
Ceding to a darkness filled with stealth
That came so gently to us
With its fast descending dusk
To compass all in cloak of black
Mere marks, lost shadows upon our skin
An endless record of the passing time and place
Or harbinger of dread
For winds that howl and rap
Cold calling rhyme upon these panes of glass
It is a death rattle and a dying sigh
Forgotten heroes forever slain
Their weeping loved ones scattered
To the open plain
In wild disorder and perpetual flight
Crying their last laments with bitter tears
Here did they stand
And here did they fall
Too far, too late the day is lost
And we must sleep unknown
For Pity’s sake
They fought for all mankind
To find salvation and redress
But it was too far, too late
To come again
And meet with quietness and with strength
The poisoned barbs and arrows of dissent
Entangled cruel twists of fate
For these and countless others
Have I mourned
The bells have rung, the songs all sung
It was too far, too late. 

There will come a time
When we will choose
To turn to face the first few rays of sun
That creep upon a headland
Broad cut upon an ocean
Strong shadows on a beach
Where we are known to walk
Through shallow foam and sinking sand
Here shall we find
An easy rhythm unfixed by others
Sufficient to ourselves
Here shall we breathe
And taste dried salt upon our lips
Not from tears and sweat
Or fear, or guilt, or obligation
Such things must pass
And cede their place
To grass reeded dunes
Where your taste can linger long
And we are watched by seabirds
Calling witness to our love
Stretched out upon the strand
Dead to that passing world
Yet born again alive
To us as one
A lovers hand, a light caress
The only traces left
Upon the windswept land.
 

There is a silence in rapture

A stillness hard to find

For ecstasy is its own master 

And comes not to command 

But yields its dying calm 

Only at fair meeting of the spirit

Or with entangled corpus

Each has its beauty 

Its own hard fought resolution

Unpremeditated, dissolving, satisfying

Seeping through the skin of passion

To settle the imagination and such thoughts

As may take us from this material world

Into the realm of golden glow

Of settled bliss, of purpose reconciled

This is what humanity seeks

Whatever life may bring

Such is the power of Love

That we as mortals suffer to hope

Until we can hope no more

And the light is dimmed again

Somewhere on the road to Paradise.

She wears a little black dress

White blouse tucked in tight

Belted and high booted

She turns and smiles and waits

Fabulous 

And I mean it

The evening will fly tonight

And all will be mighty fine

I will feel good about myself

And what we have will be more than enough 

Contentment will reign

Even the buses will run on time

And then the weekend before us

Stretched to a slide of idleness and possibility

Until, until, until

The new week comes

Then will the underground hum

And I am inside myself again

Facing my own version of the past

Trying to make the best of it

And the early start

And more suspension

Until it all starts over again

And the memory prompts a return.

Come with me to the river’s edge

Where the willows weep

And the rushes sleep in wavy innocence

For meadows of wild red flower

Where courting songbirds sing

Of England’s Past a disappearing thing

See thick olive water seep its way

O’erlooked by God’s own church 

With arrowed spire built so long ago

Flanked by splendour and display

The Great House with its sloping tended lawns

Its cracked and mossy terrace 

Lined by noble columns of some creeping rose

Still sentinel proud for its curtsied village

Unchanged for a thousand years and more

Does your heart not yearn for this 

For its beauty or its shadow

For temperance and fair gentleness 

The quiet word

That knew its place for duty’s sake

With stiff unyielding lip across a generation

And then another

No fuss allowed just calm endurance

And another’s kiss perhaps 

Such fruits we eat until they are no more

Stolen in the orchards of such times 

We call them memories 

But now are judged as passing crimes.