To write

 

be blind

white out

the space

be psychedelic

grow tropical,

melt it

be brutal

slash, cut

til small is big

be gentle

nurture

your demons

Untitled

Winter was a single wing

flying to an enamelled horizon.

My words condensed before me

and you, sycamore tree, threw them back, 

singing  a blackbird's aria.

 

Untitled

 

in a clearing,

fish

still

afternoon,

dilute sun,

pewter-glint

minute hand

suspended

3.15

Ronald Binge's Magic

 

Zephyr is one of thse words I'd love to use in a poem, but I don't have the nerve. I'm getting it in sideways though. 

Ronald Binge is probably not the first name you'd shout out if you were asked to name a composer but the Derby-born Binge did  compose one of the most familiar tunes ever in these parts, 'The Elizabethan Serenade'. 

Reduced to poverty with the death of his father as a result of injuries in WW1, he never received formal musical training, but a local church choirmaster, seeing his potetial, taught him to play piano and organ. In the late  1930s he found himself employed as composer and arranger for the Mantovani Orchestra. If, like me, you remember their music, you'll know the wonderful lush cascading strings that were Mantovani's signature; I still love to hear that music.

But the zephyr; the zephyr is to be heard in 'Sailing By', familiar to many from the BBC's Shipping forecast; Binge's beautiful evocation of sailing on a fresh breeze, more than a zephyr I'd say, but there, I got to use the word........4 times now

Anyway, close your eyes, play this bit of music and be transported to the south seas. A sailing boat  a little way out on the water but with the palm trees still in plain view. The sun on your skin, time of no importance whatsoever and dreaming.

Did anyone ever compose a tune that could transprt you so successfully to another world. Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFdas-kMF74

Which?

 

Which?

The film strip of my life:

the constant change, albeit slow:

was I all of those?

That youthful face, hardly;

neither lines nor traces,

none of my history there.

Or the newly married

with all his questions answered

before most arrived;

can he be my truest self

before he has questioned yourself?

And then, with the first signs of grey

and a modicum of success writing poetry;

was he the arrival; I suspect he thought so,

though the years were already picking up speed

and his dreams beginning to look ragged

in their flight.

Now this face, growing gaunt,

age seldom recognized in the mirror,

but seen with shock in the updating

of passport and license photographs.

Time sculpts beauty away, individuality too;

but stripped of self-importance, pride diminished,

there, at last, inside the scribble of age, is my bared self.

The Year Moving On

 

Nothing marks the year moving on so well as

the leaves in the park transported by November

gales. ‘In step, men’ or should I say ‘mice’; lifted,

brown and scuttling, their year’s work done, already

composting with nature’s relentless efficiency,

their sopping undersides rotting; already half way to

humus and chased underneath hedges for ferrying

to the underworld by worms to become, without

delay, the richness of another year coming.

Two Rainbows

 There's been a lot of frost recently, it is January after all. But seeing two rainbows on either end of the bay the other day brought an expected touch of frost.

Two Rainbows

Two rainbows, miles apart, glimmered

above the steel-coloured bay. I stood

watching them, straight sided stubs just,

equal in size but gauzy, one as faint as the other, 

both on the point of disappearing.

I waited for that moment, but, instead, they

grew by degrees, spectral pillars, curved

and high in the graphite heavens converged;

a Romanesque arch soaring, spanning

the length of Donegal Bay, magnificent;

in that moment a difference was erased.

All is still

 

All is still.

I have stopped to listen,

but there is only myself.

If you shout,

wherever it is you are,

I will hear you

because here, 

I am all;

I am the full of here.

If you shout,

your voice

will flood my ears;

if not your voice, you, 

you yourself

will fill me.

  

A Photograph Almost; 50 Years Ago.

 

My father at the kitchen table,

over the Sunday papers;

the sun coming and going

as lives do.

His pipe-smoke, DNA-like,

spiralling silvery upward,

joining the angels dancing 

in the Heaven above his head,

Happy 2025, let's hope it is less destructive than 2024.