I do not dream of a freedom for the morning

I plainly know of it, and it knows all.

Before the greying dawn fully evaporates,

there’s water here, and fruit from the tree,

the shadows interminable, as the falling years are leaves

swept back from some autumn memory.

And true that path will clear, bedecked by hedge and lawn,

and the sun then grows a brilliant white,

shining on...

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Those boughs that bend in the wind,

flustered, flapping, mirror a mind

crocheted, closed for solar influence

in wasted lands of blasted heath.

The droll footsteps of the flocks

come winding, paths shorn, cris-crossing.

Letters delivered through the post-box

now leaning, drunk-angled through twigs

that break as the snap of bones

through winter’s chill.

And do...

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(May 8th 2015)

That limpid, facile phrase

Purple-edged, wind-bitten, flat

Faced up for passing feet

Eight-thirty AM, outside

The drab closed bookies

This stilled scrap facsimile lies

A just resolution, barren

Torn into four

By hands fed words other than truth

Scattered as the once-flaming candle

Pinched out, dies

Now a mere token for vaguely wandering

Ha...

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Dead men drift here and there on restless tides,

washed as driftwood on a rain-decked shore.

Crows pick through the detritus, crass, craven,

and seated, the ministerial detachment surveys;

parleying with thin air, tapping stones with moccasin,

etching out the masterplan, no pretence to descend

until the paths are hollowed out, bordered, lifted

with coarse luminescence to a sil...

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Rush me off my feet and put me,

on some mute stale wasteground.

Keep several yards away and pace out

a circle around my signpost figure.

When night draws on and the first

nascent flames flicker unstable in

the near instance,

I shall know truth as you cannot.

A shadow frozen, skeletal, an endless

retreat, smeared relic of monochrome,

ever distant in the oil-washed dawn...

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I leave by front door.  Climb up, north,

beyond cardboard houses lining the route

away from the roaring city.

But, no lie, sound travels; on bridges of air,

rivers of dust, canyons delved by word and cry.

The swarming bustle echoes down centuries;

building, toil, murder, love, revolution, dying birdsong;

hate, war; the engines of humanity, channelled, set.

I walk away,...

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