The big oaks at the corner
stretch their leaves to gather the evening sun.
A breeze lifts and turns them,
dark, bright, bright, dark.
A green glitter effect
that entrances me
starting the long stretching walk along the lane.

As I walk, the sun lights overhead leaves,
creates broderie anglais shadows
where cars slowly trail only feet apart.
Above a lacy sheet of alto cumulus spreads
pi...

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The overwhelming sky enthralls me
Shows me its magic, fills me with glory
Layers of stratus, piles of towering cumulus
Cirrus lacing glazes overtop
Neon pink icy scribbling on an evening horizon
Fireworks sunsets, pale sleepy dawns
Reds, yellows, purples, greens overwrite the blue and black
Gauguin, Picasso, Rothko must have felt this
The Starry Night is truth, no wonder Vincent suffered s...

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Child of Empire, he freely starved in Valetta
Free to resent the many fat priests
Free to go
Desperate, hoping

Stowaway to Istanbul
Free to be beaten by the Ottomans
Sent back to hunger
Not stopped yet

Stowaway to Britain
Set loose in Imperial London
Free to prosper
Free to work

Free-diver repairing Brighton’s Pier
Freely volunteered in 1914’s Expeditionary Force
Free to marry,...

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Precipitation within sight
Rain, drizzle, mizzle
Soft weather, mucky weather
‘The Smoky Smirr o Rain’
Liquid sunshine
Slow words, gentle
But it was spitting this morning
Pitter patter, splash, splish, splodge, squelch
And it bucketed down last night
A torrent,  raining cats and dogs
Not a light soaking rain
Squalling, hailing and sleeting
Flooding, flowing, swamping
A deluge chucking ...

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Great men die, and so they lie
In their tombs and graves
Glorified, magnified
By their followers and slaves

Quiet mounds on the Downs
Lasting through the many ages
May cover cruel tyrants
Rather than wise sages

All men must die, all tombs will lie

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Deep in the time of eclipse
As birds bed down and dusk creeps up
We see the Suns halo and crown
Reaching out to her children
Light in the darkness

Sunlight scatters from escaping electrons
Bounces off minute dust particles
While stripped atoms glow as crown jewels
Incandescently hot
Ethereal furnace

The act of seeing makes real
The fact of knowing sees beauty
The inner joyousness o...

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Driving in a roast red desert
Headlights staring into primeval dark
The untrammeled sky glorious

Above us a bridge of stars
Rivering between rocky horizons
At once near and so very far

Cricking my neck to see
I bounced around the back of the open jeep
Absorbing, amid the shudders, splendor

Star birth and death, worlds hidden by distance
Great glowing nebulae
Fat in the centre, a d...

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We did not ask for this

We cannot control what we must

We can only rise to the times

And do what we see as right

There is no one there to listen

No parent in the sky

We are the author of our souls

The believer in our faith

Children of the universe

Intellect and compassion?

Built solely from an interplay of atomic particles

Our strange stay here on Earth

The true...

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Chalk undulates across Southern England
Hills, gentle yet steep
Can be overtopped by clay peppered with flints
So treasured by the old folk

As old as the hills is true here
The chalk is a two hundred million year ocean
Stiffened and folded over time
By our living planet

Several human species
Have hunted  in these valleys
Have dug into and sculpted these hills
Have left their ghosts ...

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We wade though the bright grass

Tired, footsore, happy

Hearing a bird calling by the reeds

Notes curling amongst themselves,

Spinning through the warm air

Distantly, traffic busies itself,

Here, tranquillity reigns,

After a full night dancing,

We walk.

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English summers, often damp, can invoke long stifling twilights

Nothing landbound needlessly moves

Contrails crayon across the sky

So many, this close to London’s hub

Distantly, the buzz of a low plane, pleasure rider reaching up

Into the realm of the starlings as they sussurate

A car comes past in the lane droning away round the curves

Here the runway cross remains

The old...

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Source of heat and fuel for life

Beautiful at the horizon

Painting clouds and sky

We bask and burn in her glory

And she  sits supreme at system centre

Girdled by her planets

Visited by stray comets

Regally burning  

Interior electrons impede her light

Rendering our glowing orb opaque

Not that you can see this

It would burn your eyes out

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To walk among ruins is to realize the fragility of life

To connect with those who came before

To observe commonalties,

To puzzle at differences

To marvel at ingenuity

To hear their voices echoed in stones that have stood for thousands of years

Inevitably, to misunderstand the message

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