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...

Read and leave comments (3)

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 ...

Read and leave comments (1)

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...

Read and leave comments (0)

To wake lit by that lunar light

Toiling from the depth of dreams

Misty minded from the night

So the distant land below the window seems

Illusory

To see beyond the shaded hedge

Hear again the whisper soft

As bedewed we walked, that ghostly pledge

Those lovely echoes of a distant past yet waft

Silently

To sense again her presence there

Knowing how we walked at ease

Read and leave comments (2)

I only try to write of joy

But you only read my sorrow

She came to me by chance

I suppose that's always so

We sang the bodies' lively dance

She rescued me from woe

She came to me in passion

I only knew my lonely life

We dreamt our bodies' ration

She rescued me from strife

The tear you see escape my eye

Remembers only pleasure

The gasp of breath yo...

Read and leave comments (0)

I sat all day in the corner

awaiting a call on the 'phone

but when it came through

the voice that I knew

was nowhere at all in the room

The nurse that called me much later

knew where I was travelling to

but she never heard

the call of the bird

that flew in my traveller's dream

The doctor gave me some drugs

to keep the malaria down

but the pills that I ...

Read and leave comments (0)

When I have gone

what waits this room

with its vacuum

                where I sat?

Does

my chair sits sightless

musing at my absence

midst space bereft

                   my music play on?

After I have left

ask my empty bed

all sheeted void

                about my dreams

Does

my mattress dent

minding my long night wraiths

maintain my ...

Read and leave comments (0)

Wandering through the sunlit trees

on grassy bluebell banks, brackened

by the unfurling of softly sensual shoots;

strolling in the tide turn rippling sea

as toes sift soft sea sand, silted

and lost to the advancing wave weft;

striding across bare barren felltop

on sheep shorn Spring sprung sod, surrounded 

by haze horizoned hills and hills and hills;

standing by the quie...

Read and leave comments (1)

There were those moments

pressed

against a Cornish rock

                in beach blackness

                with the shush of the rippling waves

                nearby in the night

lying

in a Sussex garden

                with the hot sun

                dappling our backs

parked

on a Ditchling hill

                with town lights

                spread below

Read and leave comments (0)

As I pass beyond my summer wall

Once more the land embraces my spirit

And its silence becomes my prayer

While I and heaven hear

The wind whispered psalm

As dusk caresses the tree tops

That surround my field fane -

I walk slowly through its grassy nave

Lost in my old memories

And pause at the far gate:

The sun sinks low behind me

And my long shadow stretches out in ...

Read and leave comments (0)

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

Read and leave comments (1)

This old farm cottage of mine

keeps all my years safe

for it knows my secret ways

and remembers

There are shadows in the shadows

but in some rooms

my sons have hidden smiles

to lead me in

There is more solitude indoors

but here and there

she has retained a past caress

to warm me

The old mirror we found at market

still retains her ghost

which...

Read and leave comments (0)

Those huge white flakes of fish

And the mashed potato dish

Have stayed in my memory

For sixty years

I remember the potato, creamy soft

Had a seasoned, peppery waft

And the choice of sauces:

Egg or parsley

It must have been a whole side of cod

I remember my grandfather like a god

Slowly stood to serve the fish

Separating the flakes

The etched glass...

Read and leave comments (2)

improved version!

I read a poem

                about a dresser

                and all the memories it held.

I remembered

                one thing

                in a sideboard.

I remembered

                a long cone shape

                wrapped in cord

                containing something

                hard and dark brown, that smelled.

I never knew

...

Read and leave comments (0)

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

Read and leave comments (3)

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...

Read and leave comments (0)

Much more than half my life ago

Some chance led us to this place;

Now, my heart is caught and held

By the peace of its earth and space.

Some while past, when first she left me

I could not make my soul adjust

But cached it safe within the plot

Beside her memory and her mortal dust.

And as the family aged and spread

My lonely tenancy grew content

Past spectres...

Read and leave comments (2)

The sky in front of me is pink, as I drive home‚

there will be a frost tonight.

Beneath it the brackened hills lie pinkly rust

And trees stand starkly laced in contrast

I see every distant twig defined, sharp against the pearlescent sky.

Not much later, I sit over tea and look west

to where the sky is left creamily gold.

Above, the darkling blue is split by a fading pink ...

Read and leave comments (0)