Tick, tock, distant star

How I wonder when you are

Just a timepiece in the sky

Your every 'now' another lie!

[Following on from the last poem and the 'time' theme]

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Around me, the unseen miracle

Of the past: the birds in the tree—the hills—the clouds—the people passing by,

I am at the centre of my time

                And they are all in the past

What stranger miracles are there?

After Walt Whitman, Miracles

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Mid month

as a good a time as any other

to write of howling winds that smother

Every hint

of comfort and the daily norms

to replace them all with Darragh's storms

Which break

the trees which crash and fall upon

wires, and thus: the village power has gone

And then

in every room in every country cottage

is darkness from the lack of wattage

No h...

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The rock

The rock on a high coast, on which I leant.

Your love, as strong as the rock.               

We were

children,

we held eternity blindly; we reached

for a meaning that was greater than life:

destiny.

Destiny - word of fools.

Your eye and mine:

they saw

only a hazed horizon.

Illusion.

Endless line before endless line

losing time to d...

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I, poet, may write of love

and in that moment feel

a meaning clear:

yet my soul knows love

my hand will never pen

You, reader, read that word

and think to know my mind  

              I say you cannot know the love

my heart placed behind that word, only

your sense of the love you thought you saw

The poet can never truly speak

and have his reader k...

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And in that first wailing cry my ashes were ordained:

As the ocean acknowledges its horizon,

knows infinity's finite edge

so my cry knew a destiny

knew my play and my learning

my work, my leisure, my sleep

the evil of my hands and the goodness of my heart

my loves, my hates, my pleasures.

Knew my world: that tiny flesh held all my futures

and in those fragile bones resid...

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Night has descended on the fields

but a summer night never darkens, only shields               

dreamers from the day's dull hold

as I am wakeful, bedded cold;

                and the trees stretch into the faded sky  

Night has alighted on my mind

but a wakened wraith can only stray, its kind

vanish as summer's dusky night flies on

as I am lost beyond my dream horizo...

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A grey shade in the cottage shadows

a paw lick of sinuous silence

a tail flick of smoke

a pounce on time's toll

Like a smoke devil escaped the chimney

she inhabits the lounge at night

never settling

she drifts across the hearth

Like the umbral weight of her past

she settles beyond my sight

I sense only the leak

of light left by her passing

Like th...

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Yesterday

I opened the windows of my room with the night

I let in the stars and slept in their time

    I knew their waning

When I awoke

My pillow was flattened with the weight of their time

My mind was present in the immensity of their span

    I knew their past now

Today

I curtained the new day in my room with the dawn

I breathed in time and dreamed of the...

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Unknown reader, be glad that I have opened the door and let out

the dust of my verse for you to see an age after the words first found form on the screen, or

perhaps I have let in your imagination so, turning, you can see a single almond

blossom, pink amongst its pale russet leaves, to tempt your words out

Unknown traveller, on this day, stay, venture out

and, before they fade,...

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As I write, each line reaches for memories

lost, fallen beyond the edge of the world:

kamarupa dwelling in infinity, fading

when my lines do not find them

and my words fail passion and desire.

Eons, lost pasts. Which of them

could dream my frail dream of this

verse? Which, thrown

across the fabric of time, could make

nothing everything?

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Written in March 2023: one year on.

(...sees races, eras, dates, generations,

The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together"

Walt Whitman, Kosmos)

Only fragile glass

                                   holds the cold

                                                                night's times at bay:

each star above the beech

owning its mo...

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Written in March 2022 in response to Simon Armitage's 'Resistance'

We watch

                      the News

unable

                to comprehend

the horror that is war:

we see

destruction... death... weeping...

children who do not understand

      held in the arms of mothers

                who do not understand

anything

                                except

...

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Because I have seen

such small glory as heaven found

Lit translucent in the wing of a dragonfly serene above the dark pond depths

Lit gold in the sunlit pelt of that one white cat still beneath the tree

Lit in Spring's faint skeleton of Winter's fallen leaf

Lit in the fractal eternity of each flake that floats snow down

and know the pain each angel hears

Held in a single seadr...

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He fills no space now in my quiet room.

Silence. A silence that I fill with ancient guilt,

my words morphing into pain, yet edited

away from anger, leaving a cold darkness

bereft of his voice, leaving a blind sorrow

censored of healing hope: a quietude.  

Outside, the sun is blown against the glass

as it would lighten spirits, yet

its gentling warmth cannot thaw

the chil...

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Seated. Warm. Propping up my latest book; the dark

pulls me from beyond the cottage window

into the cool awe of a perfect starnight

a gift to me as I walk across the damp lawn and, turning

look over the old stone wall

to the fields across the valley and up to the hills

and the arcing rim of the night

Standing. Chilled. Leaning on my garden wall; the stars

call me from ...

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1
A story about
                an old poet
    and his cottage

2
A dream of an old mariner
                lost in Wales
    adrift on his words

3
A memory of
                a young boy
    on his maiden voyage

4
A memory of
                innocence
    lost at sea

5
A line on a chart
                between a girl
    and loneliness

6
A communion
               ...

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memories taste

like snowflakes on my tongue

and melt in my soul

love remains

like ice on the garden pond

in the memory of water

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Democracy reveals the state
Of our disunity - Doug.E.Barr, poet

As I stood by the till

I heard a voice call out

It's over - the people's will:

A good result - a real rout

And ducked my head to pay

As the cashier agreed

And ducked my sad head to pray:

My silent view, an alien creed.

It's over - the people have had their say

That last faint hope is gone, done...

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Remember

The sea assaults

Of winter gales when

Towering spray sheets curl

Over the green-stripe tower

At the harbour mouth

And waves roll shoreward

Beside its jetty

Shingle crashing

Floating spume across the beach

With black stones cold shone by spray

That above the wave thrust

Hides the horizon behind its mist

As the sun shines low

On a December afternoon

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9th November 2019

1961

A wall of shame

cut through a city and a people

a bleak new division:

we and the world turned away

1989

A wall fell

remade a city, a people, a history

a bright new union:

we and the world rejoiced

2019

Now we fashion

our uniquely British wall

a tragedy of repeated history:

the world wonders, shrugs

2047

A...

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Inscribed on Emanuel Sweert's painting 'Florilegium': Man's life is a flower.

Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away; 
like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.
Book of Job 14:2

While I watched, her blossom

faded from the field

left no shadow

Now all life expects in this eleventh hour

we should revere lost heroes with a flower

But I shall not ...

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Waking to see autumn's lustre

lit on my beech

rust leaves gilt glowing

red gold bathed by

a rising sun's first grasp

of day.

Turning to see gold amber cirrus

low light the east -

beneath a darker grey purple

cloud bruise

that golden gleam of

dawning dawn.

So my sad grey purple dreams

dawn dim

their dark ghosts disconnect ...

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And so it begins. Or ends

The seasons change and as

September dies lies forgotten

Like Summer, Autumn October

Rears. Not misty mellow fruitfullness

With rusty leaf colour bright splashing

Hedgerow and tree russet yellow brown,

Mists that turn to rain and wind and heavy

Rain splashing in the track ruts and puddles

Around the farm;  every field soggy with all the

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As this first night knows me

as my soul becomes its dream

I understand my small being

is one with time's vast scream.

Even now I know between

my heart's first aspen flutter

and its last soft ashen beat

endless dark passions must clutter

my every empty lonely night

and bear down to hold my mind;

only this one moment knows a calm:  

a velvet dark - a fusty smell - fi...

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The sands move

brushed by moray tale

shivered in clouds

by a sole's shy shift

the currents stir

shaking silt

to mist the sea

to settle -

moving time

over an old log reel,

clearing the centuries  

discovering old timbers:

dead ribs

reaching up to past waves

offering their history

to the naked shipworms.

As the crabs scuttle to explore

as stars cree...

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Flogita - 13 September 2019

It stands

a great sail fin of rock

high towering - dominant

cloud mazed

haze hidden seat of hidden gods

and we,  yes,

we would rise to their heights,

stand in their pantheon

to observe the tiny world

beneath.

For from this seat

Prometheus set forth

and with Athena

set us in that tiny mortal world -

yet now we stand

proud o...

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The pomegranates
are ripe on the tree
across the road
and the swallows
are skimming beneath the power lines
and the soft blue sky
The washing on the balcony rail is dry
The village dogs bark
Church bells summon summer in
and the early morning peace
is broken as a tractor heads for the fields
The sun heats the soft grey
feathers on the pigeon’s back
and he leaves his chimney perch
abo...

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I wonder now what sin is worse

As we destroy this fragile earth

Who should we condemn the most? Who curse?

The careless or he who cares not for its worth?

When we misfile our plastic waste

Do we sin more than those who double wrap;

When we buy packaged goods in daily haste

Is it our fault we fall into the plastic trap?

And when we recycle those plastic trays

Wh...

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There is always one sacred moment

when the night's ink black sky

allows some personal atonement

to my dull and once-blind eye:

a single white star's icy reign,

absent in the deepest dark,

until the second that my brain

is riven by its diamond spark.

That this sheer shining crystal blazed

while hidden from my careful scan 

can only leave me dumb, amazed

that the min...

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"There is no sin except stupidity." Oscar Wilde -The Critic as Artist.

Mea culpa! Mea culpa!

Nostra maxima culpa!

Thus should we weep, we cry

As it all ends with a whimper, a sigh

It is the people's will, they say

Proroguing to get their glory day

Your vote was for an ideal state

For nation, borders, Keep Britain Great

Now, your vote means a total schism

As we se...

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Sitting to the east

Sloping down to the edge  

Of that other world

In the summer sun

In the winter chill

The sentinel watched over

The little family in the cottage in the hollow

Lately it had felt her sorrow  

It knew when she left Pant y Lleiniau

And walked slowly along the cart track

To reach the little bridge under the trees

Where she crossed Nant yr Efail ...

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Falstaff: 'Henry IV, Part 1' act 5, sc. 4

There is a man

Who would be a king. This is such stuff

As past dreams would make his many morrows

That he, Princeling, may strut upon life's stage

As one with pride.

Yet this is a man

Who must know a past. That is the stage

As present nightmare on which he played so sad a part

That he, Pretender, needs now attend our co...

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I am

barefoot

on a far tide line

sand rippled

spread

with estuary shells

with oystercatchers

soft where rills run down

or the sea pools

behind a half-sunk stone

or a mooring chain

I am

watching

moored yachts

swinging to the tide turn

above their sunken reflections

angled lines of cirrostratus

echoed below the horizon

in the mirror gloss sea

...

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In Mariamné's time

What trees would have grown so tall

What was there beyond the garden wall?

When she walked beyond the garden gate

Did she see the river's sudden spate

And did the rustle of a summer breeze

Mask the red kite's call above those trees

And did she hear the Spring birds' calls

Above the echo of Ystwyth's falls

Did she stroll her father's ways

And let the...

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As I walked

through the garden dew

'tween clipped box and shapely yew,

'tween hard hornbeam and

'tween friends

a perfect peace descends

As I walked

from the round green room

past dusky shade and roses' bloom,

past shapely hedge and

past huge urns

the garden quiet returns

As I walked

in the lakeside glory

to the enchanted terrace torri,

to the ...

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Where once her warm and sanguine heart

fell ashen grey to rest in cold base dirt

high over the familiar bush and shrub

proud crimson blooms pine for love  

Where their sacred beauty sings to my heart

they call forth the lovely nightingale

high in their cloudless summer sky

to sweetly sing their longing song

There, I too confess a secret yearning

silent hidden d...

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Who will ever tell or know

the unheard silent echoes

from passing lives laid low:

those ghosts of chanted psalms

once melodious in their praise

lie buried beneath the turf

within walls they helped to raise;

and who can see the cowled monks

whose ghostly whispered prayers

whose canticle or hymn

whispers through the evening's airs -

through the great stone entrance a...

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An almost mystic silence

descends on the lambent, lamb bent,

lamb bobbing fields

as the West sinking sun

leaves an early evening light,

the day has almost passed:

the bright pale green of the new larch buds

the rusty pink brown of the budding almond

the gold of a burgeoning dog wood

are set against

the solid darkness of a solitary fir tree

the soft clouds in a...

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The trees still sentinel stood

their green leaves whispering

rustling gently in the wood

in the same soft breeze

and I know some summer birds

sang in their canopy

a requiem without words

'neath the same blue sky

that through every passing year

quietly watched over me

safe within Ceredig's sphere

It has been too long a time

since our firs...

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The magpies

nesting in the beech

began shouting

angry

to see a squirrel

in their tree

Attracted

like bad boys in the playground

more magpies

joined in

hopping from branch to branch

a harsh chatter

of anger

The squirrel

preferring a quiet life

left

by way of my garden

wall

Today the tree is silent

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It was a strange

waking -

perhaps the wraith of a memory of a dream

lay with me,

offering some

hazed contentment

yet

a waking

knowing

the pillow

beside me

is

empty

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Long!

Long I laboured

through the seasons

through the years

working

on the plot:

delighting

as digging blistered my palms

and the soil grew fertile

as digging pained my back

and plants grew strong -

grew verdant

beside the deep dug pond

with its little stream

where I placed fish

an unplanned golden feast for a heron

and an otter

And as e...

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Broken

it is all bleak broken; half-hell-heard House, blight blasted, a

sound spoke maelstrom where we see no substance swirling over heads

and hearts unheard - untending - unending obstacles to speech where

he, bright-tied bright-eyed, oversees the game's communication farce fail

debate: debate dire-drowning in the noise.

Order!

Broken

it is all blame blighted; w...

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Chaos seems the wrong first word:

no light

no sound

no time

and nothing moving e'er occurred

Chaos speaks to me of chance:

a move

a crash

a force

that happen in time's dance

So before chaos, ah, but stop -

no before

(no time)

so just

stasis as creation's dark backdrop

Some cosmic joggle, as if perhaps

god sneezed:

atoms move

and ...

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Yet

My heart aches, and clouds hold fast my mind

Thought still I hear

The silence of the waves

The silence of their Siren pull

wash like hemlock through my senses

Their echoes crashing on my island shore

Returning to the sea

Unheard

Their hushed harmony

Foams surging up my beaches

A descant imprinted on my strand

Whispering back to the squalls

Unheeded.

Ne...

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First, it is only that the tree

is more a presence

less a shadow

beyond my window

then other horizons

light their resting clouds

with a subtle pre-dawn glow

that slowly sets the first gold sun glint

on each high branch above

against a new pale blue sky -

will dawn chasten my succubus

end our companioned time?

that half-felt fragile warmth beside me

seems to s...

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harbour entrance swell

river bridge

above the beach

the scraping rattle

millions of stones

sucked off the beach

returning to the sea

beside the harbour wall

crossing waves

rearing waves

joining

breaking in foam

crashing

onto the shingle

the vast pull

of the receding sea

the undertow of sound

the bay

grey brown sea

under a blue sky

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In the sun's mid-day heat

I see the tall field grasses flow, swell

and come towards me in waves               

surging before the day's wind

the seed-head spume constantly bowing

seems to fall on the field strand where I stand.

The rhythmic onslaught of the waves

continues through the long afternoon - 

a tide of wind-driven swells and rollers

always flowing to my feet, w...

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My rhymes form in clouds

over the arm chair

beside my note books

and the fire

My lines are captured

and preserved

in the remains of the forest

immortalised on its pulp
 

My words are held captive awhile

in the bright prison cells

where machines etch their pain

on smooth white sheets

My once quiet thoughts crash

noisily onto the leaves

again and ...

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