So many openings
so many openings
through which the world
enters,
mingles,
melts into me
only to flow on
into others, world
into self, self into
world,
like sticks in a stream,
bent by the light, we
pass through a prism
rainbowed and scattered
we are not what we
seem
Nothing is what it is
like mercury,
but dancing,
river-sea surface,
tide-high, reaches
at rocks, catches
at a low wet
sky
mist salves the wounds
of autumned oaks
turning yellow on fading
hills
objects are widowed of shape
and essence, nothing is what
it is without its
absence
empty mist,
up close,
is a plenitude
of drops, an ocean
of reflected
worlds
No matter where
no matter where
we look surprises turn
assumptions to ash,
smoke twisting into
all the shapes we can’t
imagine
over there, I can only
guess at what the journey
brings:
watermeadows
strapped with iris-blades,
meadowsweet sloughing
cream skins in shadows
where oaks lose their fisted
roots
nothing is as we
expect it. Always
our expectations flit
like bats in and
out of what is and
what is not
Poems & stones
in a poem
words are thoughts
or images, or
thoughts & images
are words,
compacted
into lines of
stones
yet stones are
a reverberation
of atoms
& a pulse of
light
Two for Reznikoff
old man sits
alone, his solitude
so absolute even when the train
is full no-one will
sit with him
*
somewhere in that
blank and black
night there is
an estuary turfed
with rippled
tide
unseen but not
unknown it moves
without reason or
cause
when the dawn comes
it will be gone
Overheard
What’s he say?
It’s too late
Too late for what?
Three weeks too late
For what?
Time will tell…
On the way to work
on the road to
the station a one-eyed
seagull meets a
man with a large
head
Gum tree lost
gum tree lost most
of its leaves til
just a few hang
limp and lean
flicked here and
there by hardly
a breeze, furious
when a wind comes
by
it’s not in
its element here
in Devon Atlantic
northern hemisphere
rain
roots don’t
tether in Devon
clay, don’t belong
here, won’t be
long here, just
a few leaves left
in Devon
air
Colorado triptych
I see a lone bluebird
shimmering
on a stump beside
Clear Creek ice-white
lake
I see cows in trucks
on the road towards
snow-glistening
mountains
hours later stars now shine
on a white frozen lake I may never
see again
Lady sews dreams
lady sews dreams on a winter porch, fingernails still flavoured with peonies ~ to speak, maybe, or to be quiet, to let the air say what has to be said ~ come in, she whispers, come in, sit down, have a drink ~ no excuses ~ OK, maybe a few ~ into sharp hands, her grey head sings for April & curses each elegant note ~ no joke to remember the dark birds have flown ~ 60 years & only one shooting star, only one ~ beyond pneumonia & tenderness, she sees it again ~ pale kiss of light in dark April ~ as now, she turns to candlelight disquiet, flirting for dreams in frail winter air
Four sheep
four sheep & bent hawthorn
stapled to a windy
hillside
*
high tide
low cloud
brief meeting
*
among tussocks of sharp grass
crow circles a limping lamb
*
heron hunched in flight
mountain hunched
in another time
Notes I made long ago
sun and moon light
scattered in furrows,
only red clay remembers
turning blade of plough
while iron soon forgets
casual stone
it is here I hear
green woodpecker sawing
through leaf-drained air
while trees raise their
chlorophyll arms to
God knows where
we are a measure of this moment
here at the ear of twilight,
shadowed furrows heeling
to the dark
In memorium
songthrush hit by car, on its back,
flapping til it dies. Hard as it is,
keep alive the moment of the
kill. Remember the small life and
the flapping wings, and that it
once sang with all its heart
Not sleeping
half moon in rain behind
curtains, hushed breeze and
dark pines. Sleep will
come, but not just now