Forvie, March 2017
Dunes...
And then the sand flowed like the tide
Shifting the land at the wave edge of the sea
A vast striated plane of drifting whirling grains:
Aged dunes lost to the wail will of the wind.
As we walked close by the sea suck and ripple
The bound beach rose and swallowed our grounded feet
We seemed to be free floating sand cloud high
In the sandsmoke drifts rushing to their...
Tuesday 12th December 2017 3:17 pm
Absalom's Rise
Were you not my watch tower, erect above the chalky cliff
Stone guardian against all, high over the rough tides of my youth?
Was yours not the bastion, planted secure on the high turf:
Whose high walls embraced us and protected?
But that was then, now I am the ascended man -
Now I do not see your turrets from my farther shore
Black waves broke on your defences, your mortar crumbl...
Sunday 10th December 2017 4:05 pm
Lunch with my Grandmother
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...
Thursday 7th December 2017 2:41 pm
I read a poem
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
...
Tuesday 5th December 2017 11:58 am
Passing Fashions
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
...Saturday 25th November 2017 4:17 pm
Danse Macabre
Too much was lost in silence
too long the time that winds
between our words of love and passion
with communion only in our minds
Too much assumed in union
of our two souls' mute desires
but I did not see her inmost needs
or hear how quietly pain suspires
I should have peeped inside
while she nightly dreamed in peace
to glimpse her mind's apparel
as it dan...
Wednesday 22nd November 2017 2:14 pm
Winter from a Window
The empty stems of the fennel
Under umbrella heads of raindrops
Are perches for the waiting birds
The grey green sage leaves
Glow crystal white in the frost
Moss grows where the branch
Leaves the trunk of the bonsai
Its ruddy leaves falling
Amongst the yellowing leaves
A single crimson rose bud perishes
Yellow leaves have fallen from the dogwood
...Wednesday 15th November 2017 10:53 am
Parallel Echoes of Love
In the long small hours of dark Through the later time of darkness
I pause and gaze out at the stars As we lay entwined beneath the moon
Somehow the frosted ground The nightly scene now sacred
Sharpens the air and the starlight Welcomes the soft moonglow
Which lights my very soul: Entering both...
Tuesday 14th November 2017 1:35 pm
Ancestral
Am I to speak for your past?
May I?
Should I intrude?
For I am the spectre of your years: I was there beside you
In your cot and at your play
Now
I am all that is left
I am the breath of your childhood
I am the oxygen of your life
There is no limit to my presence in your life
...
Monday 13th November 2017 11:10 pm
Three Haiku
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
Saturday 11th November 2017 3:54 pm
Microcosm
They come together
in this place outside
yet at the centre of our world.
We have asked of them
our destiny
Have demanded nothing of them
except our future.
Who are these gods in whom we place our trust?
Who are these gods that we have selected?
These are the senate that we once elected:
The senators that ...
Thursday 9th November 2017 2:56 pm
Zen Reflexions
To discern
our place
To commune
To see
beyond our close shadow of death
To focus
my poet mind
I need direction
a qibla
Or some beads to tell
to take refuge from my life:
A candle flame
Only the candle
Flame
Flickering.
A journey into quietude
begins
Int...
Friday 3rd November 2017 4:36 pm
Above the Valley
As we pass through this Autumn realm,
See the valley bound wraiths of mist
Withdrawing like a tide from the willow
Islands of the marshland
With their starkly black boughed trees
Damply dripping with the mist's remains,
Chill air swirls in the rising breeze, and
Black starlings line the wires beyond a barn
But the red kite in his higher flight
Is lost to sight
...
Wednesday 1st November 2017 2:35 pm
The Traveller
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...
Saturday 28th October 2017 5:31 pm
The messages
What words have passed
What said
What read
What meaning cast?
What recall flows
What thought
What tort
What grievance shows?
What edge is crossed
What line
What sign
What friendship lost?
What nightmare grown
What meme
What seam
What darkness sown?
What text is read
What hyped
What typed
What despair fed?
What lov...
Wednesday 18th October 2017 2:22 pm
Earth Treasure
What is that glint
as the sod breaks and crumbles:
a sparkling hint
of discovery
as I dig the dusty summer soil?
This old garden has gained lost treasures
of man, woman and child for centuries -
What lies uncovered?
Teased from the clod
I find a tiny glass heart and this ...
Sunday 15th October 2017 10:26 am
Autumn
And then, suddenly, it was calm - the morning wind which threw
rain hard against the window panes and sent beech leaves rushing
across the grass to pile gold-brown against all that the borders grew,
all slowly dulling their greens to wet, muted browns, brushing
the soil as their leaves curl and droop - vibrant Spring-strength gone,
fading sadly.
The wind ...
Wednesday 11th October 2017 10:50 am
Water
MAN: In so short a time
I saw a future
Flow
Created
From the formless waters
Born
From the darkness
The way begins
All words are water
Flowing
GAIA: From my innermost being
I gave abundance!
My words flow from the mountain top
My words give succour to the land
My words are the waters of the sea
PRIEST: The ...
Wednesday 4th October 2017 4:30 pm
I, Ffynnon Drewi of Mynydd Bach
From the mountain
I pour forth
I give you my waters
to drink
and the many words
of my waters
to hear.
My waters have seen
the gathering
on the hill
above the lake
My waters have heard
the prayers
on the grass bank
My waters have known
the worship
in t...
Friday 29th September 2017 12:24 pm
No one hears
Though they are mine
I have no wisdom
Though they know me
They are deaf
In their mind
I am a man apart
I am all that is left
I am the helix of their birth and death and being
Knowing one, I know all
I am a voice
I seek nothing I seek peace
I hear all and I reflect
I see words and I grieve
I sense pain and I weep
I feel ...
Sunday 24th September 2017 12:40 pm
Words
words
no man should know
or say
words
no child should hear:
parent, pray
to be spared.
as he sat with his sons at home
and struggled to find
words:
he knew
she will never return to us
he knew
she is too ill
In a time when she was strong
for them
as her body weake...
Wednesday 20th September 2017 3:36 pm
RETROSPECTIVE
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...
Saturday 16th September 2017 6:06 pm
Cottage Garden
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...
Wednesday 23rd August 2017 10:14 am
Lost
And then
at my source
I was lost to your ocean.
Flowing... your endless bounty stole my direction
your depths embraced
your corals welcomed my load
I drowned in your currents.
My hands caressed
your waves
My body plumbed
your deepest sounds
Your pools
received
Your tides were constant
I sw...
Monday 21st August 2017 10:35 am
Ocean
Restless: my body is your ocean; my limbs the currents of the sea
You float on my waves - sink only a little
I hold your sacred vessel safe - we become one:
A perfect balance of forces
Your body runs its course through my being
I feel you cleave my waves
I know you as we sink
Black waters closing
And I know you as we rise
I hold you to float above the tide as we burst th...
Sunday 20th August 2017 4:53 pm
K.
Ah! I loved you!
Lost to your soul,
I bared my heart
Within your mind
I held my heart...
as if all hearts sang with mine
as if all lips knew
I felt your blood pulse
and heat my soul
as your hair scourged my body
(Ah! I loved your hair!)
...Sunday 6th August 2017 5:49 pm
Beyond Death
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 ...
Thursday 3rd August 2017 3:37 pm
Passing
Time stretched as she faded;
Lengthened, folded in on time
Extended, never ended.
Eternity must have seemed
An earthly hell
Peopled intermittently by friends:
A nightmare dream of pain and daemons
What superhuman will
Kept her through those summer months
What need, desire or wish
Held death's sad end at bay?
In the end, fading faded
Light left, sy...
Thursday 3rd August 2017 9:42 am
Wilderness 2001, 2021
You see
a land wraithed in smoke and the stink of death
You feel
man's determination dulled by desperation and
the hollow, guilty hope that the creeping fate might end
at a neighbour's door.
You cannot farm in the present
At least not in Wales.
The hills were silent memorials to herds brought low,
Uncropped: a tragedy of gr...
Friday 28th July 2017 3:00 pm
The Consultant (Revelation, first draft)
First, the over-quiet room where we sat together
Waiting, quiet as all the others – waiting
Until she left me for the first time…
Then I was called
As he spoke the shock hit, solid as a punch;
Left me breathless, faint, unmanned;
So obviously lost that chair and water came
And briefly the patient was I – not her.
Then my mind began to grasp the truth it had shunne...
Saturday 22nd July 2017 3:46 pm
Revelation
The shock was solid as a punch
That left me breathless, faint, unmanned;
So obviously lost that chair and water came
And it was I – so very briefly – nursed
Until my mind began to grasp the truth it had shunned.
How could I not have guessed or known
The woe, the pain, the destruction?
After all these many years, my failure to feel –
My hiding from the very possibility ...
Friday 21st July 2017 12:07 pm
Beyond
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 ...
Wednesday 28th June 2017 4:13 pm
Meaning
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
...Thursday 15th June 2017 4:42 pm
Druid Lane
We came upon
A mystic way leading nowhere but the hills.
Floored in leaves, tree roofed, bank-bound
Untrodden but by wanderers for centuries past.
What lay beyond, worthy of such industry?
Perhaps a long forgotten hearth tenured by shepherd or crone.
Or did this tended track pass on to a hilltop way:
Miles now lost to grass and sheep,
A one-time druidic path to some time-er...
Thursday 15th June 2017 4:30 pm
Monument
After Ezra Pound and Giacomo Leopardi
And so you were
everything to me, that is now less than dust –
lost, captive of the soil
That surrounds and nourishes my soul.
And so now I –
still stranded, umbral shade of past desire –
left, am guardian of sad recall
watching branch and blo...
Saturday 10th June 2017 5:30 pm
Cariad
Cariad
A word of the heart
Born deep in the being,
resonant with the land's love
Cariad
A word for the soul
Harmonic with soft timbre,
warmed on heart's ember
Cariad
A word from the deep
Breathed only in love -
impossible to deny
Cariad
A word never of the brain
Soft spoke; heart's heat
ea...
Monday 15th May 2017 4:04 pm
Loss
In those darkest, darkling months
when both belief and hope were lost
when love was stretched taught beyond endurance
when pain and understanding spiralled
Still
There was some doubt of destiny:
could love be snatched away;
and child a mother lose?
A new reality to supplant all we knew
and dreamt.
...Monday 1st May 2017 12:04 pm
Hope
Yesterday, the sun shone black upon my soul
Depth's depth deep beneath my heart.
Lumined ne'er by hope
Thoughts sank weighted low
Today, dawn'd, in heaven's mantle rais'd,
Glims golden future in my mind.
Light lightened all by future faith
Heart, mind and soul exalting up
Her voice love levered up, returned it from the depths
Dark voids where happiness was stra...
Monday 24th April 2017 4:54 pm
Nant Lluest-Fach
Walking, I discover
Hills I never knew in thirty years of passing;
Valleys, deserted, hidden in folds and time:
Mair says once there was a community here
Self contained, sufficient unto itself
Walking, I find
Landscapes we could have seen before, perhaps shared
Their riches, dreamed their past, known their present:
I'm told these Druid hills sing history itself
Sing...
Wednesday 12th April 2017 2:00 pm
Suicide’s Beck
To a friend
There is a small and unremarkable bridge I often cross
That now stands guardian to the memory of a friend.
When your burden became too much, it held you in its thrall
And gave passage across your own imagin’d Styx.
And on that very day and hour your demon choice was made
What base chance made me bypass the bridge, and you?
This i...
Wednesday 29th March 2017 3:28 pm
Love
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 ...
Tuesday 21st March 2017 1:53 pm
On leaving a hospital room
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 ...
Monday 20th March 2017 2:46 pm
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