In poetry, autumn is approaching death.

The mists of receding memory

part briefly in the shortening days

to feed the fruits of wisdom

to admiring young.

The dark night of winter

is a short blight

before life springs forth

again in proud perfection.

Floral beauty and rich crops

have spread their radiance,

fed their progeny, sown their seeds.

Done their job, returned to earth

to ...

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Beyond the Equinox

The land sleeps,

furrowed, cold and still.

Each field edge mourns

in widow’s weeds.

The flocks keep silence

on the hill,

while nature weeps

tomorrow’s seeds.

Penitent

in golden cloak,

the woodland

whispers overhead

and through the mist,

like incense smoke,

sheds slow confetti

for her dead.

...

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Edge

Gone is the mind where love and hope once played,
She feels the urge to paint a world with blood.
She watches moonlight dance along the blade.

She dreams a world of red in every shade,
Would banish all the rainbow if she could.
Gone is the mind where love and hope once played.

All trust now shredded, reason torn and frayed,
A hollow corpse where once a woman stood;
She watches moonlight dance along th...

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she sits

she knits

the needles click

as strand by strand

in cracked crabbed hands

each stitch

might haul them

back to land

her days, her nights are one, the same -

a gift of darkness borne by grief

to wounds already salted well.

lips taste each quarter

of the wind; she hears the tides

advance, retreat -

as if in echoes from

some  ancient stranded shell.

she feels t...

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Last stop before paradise.                                                                              

An April rain has streaked the windows, smudging the view of suburban streets.

The chill breeze bends the spring’s first flowers and the TV’s showing old repeats.

In the lounge of The Willows nursing home the care assistants are serving teas.

After the adverts comes the snooker and ever...

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Somewhere, nowhere, between the press of sheets and ventilator’s suck and hush, his hourglass drips. The moving mountains mark his time, his pulse, his pressure, as he slips and slides through crusts of consciousness. These walls can barely hold him now; what’s left could smudge and melt away through every crack, but for the weight of years ��" the slack tide of a fading past...

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