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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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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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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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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A series of 11 short poems

End of a Galaxy

A blink

In the silent depth of night

As the last leaf of the beech tree

As the silent tear of my love

End of Harmony

I see her dancing on the sands

I see her                                     as she sees me

and in that moment

sand, sea, sun, surf

vanish in the vortex

until

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I grew up in Wales

Around the Swansea docks

I walked beneath huge cargo ships

Held up with props and blocks

I was made in Wales

Around the southern ports

I watched the big ships dock

My family guessed my thoughts

I was mined in Wales

Near valleys black with slag

And closing pits and picket lines

With many a mine lodge flag

I was forged in Wales

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from an idea by Conrad Aiken

The Lounge

Netted windows with fawn roller blinds

lowered a little by their macramé tassels for his forty winks

Shush! Be quiet, he's having his nap, don't make a din -

or completely, when at night

he shovelled the last coal from the bin

concealed in its wooden cabinet

and lowered the heavy lid on the fire to keep it in

The Playroom

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When they grow up they dress in a new life:

a family of new suits and shirts to wear.

And the ties are new too.

He strides out on his new catwalk

proudly wearing his new self,

blind to the day the cloth may unravel

or fade or lose its style.

What will clothe him then?

I shall not grace his shoulders again:

I am the coat he has outworn

in my pockets are his memories

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Where sea and sky meet

                a green flash from the set sun

Lighting distant shores

In Spring my compass

                navigated the world round

Now Autumn tides ebb

In the Winter storms

                my old life invades the new

Waves crash past the strand

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Alf Smith was his name, though, we should remember him

As more than the labourer on a small Welsh farm

Who milked the cows and tended every farmer whim;

Twice daily fitting clusters onto teats and pouring milk to churns,

Taken for collection to stand beside the lane between the ferns.

Twice daily, too, he cleaned the shed with hose and broom

And waited to hear what chores would f...

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i

Innocent

     he met a force

Untried

            it held him

... and wonder drained the world of substance

            re-arranged the pages of his book to give more radiant a reading.

The light of new possibilities

pressed down on time.

The girl sang to him "You can hear the boats go by". He

l...

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I find that I must live in a world

Where, between that desperate dusk and a new dawn,

And between many a dawn and its dusk,

The only reality lies in love.

To be in love in that first dawn

And in the dusk, was to feel the sun

Warm our very passion every minute of every hour,

Reality lay only in the other.

And beyond that dreadful dusk, nothing

but dawns and dusk and ...

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The sound of one hand clapping

Who said that?

But I know what it means, now:

It is the lost beat of one heart loving

Not waving but drowning

I know that one:

Both origin and relevance now:

It is no pleasure, but one soul's need

No man is an island, entire of itself

Sung, used, re-used

The obvious is no less poignant

Now that I've found and lost my land

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There is no meaning

            and no sense,

            only clarity

I loved you and my heart began -

            past years unknown

            past pulse forgot

            Love created  

            our heart defined

            our lips sang

            our hands mapped

                        love

I loved you with my eyes          ...

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