Passage

        

We were lovers;

now I'm off

and you're packed away;

you folded up small.

So with curving spine

and arms belting knees

tight under chin, I roll on;

a wheel from an accident.

Ahead there is space,

to wander in,

to kick up dust;

space where fires won't burn.

Breathing

We take it for granted. And then comes dying, we stand around the bed watching the work that is breathing. And you think my father is dying and he must work; work harder than he has all his life. How merciless is death that makes you toil to pass through its gate.

Breathing

Now my father's life

is breathing.

Heavy work.

He has already slipped away

to be alone

while we outside

mark every breath

like lap timers.

Now come the spaces:

a breath

is an isolated thing.

Finally one breath

arrives alone.

I feel a soul has left,

but just then

I see, so clearly,

it was hope

that slipped out of the room.

Hughie

Hughie thinks of sex without faces;

he often thinks this way

because there never was a welcoming face,

so he never had sex,

and this July he'll be 46.

Hughie lives alone and is settled in his ways;

people think him peculiar,

never ask him to join them in the pub

or wherever.

He is growing more peculiar, they say.

Hughie has an office job;

colleagues bid him good morning at coffee-break

but sit at a different table.

He eats his lunch in the Arms bar,

and always sits facing  the wall.

SUMMER ORCHARD EVENING.

On an evening

when apple was eating the worm,

tree grating the sun

with some clouds, dusty birds;

the green cloth

was spread to the orchard wall.

I watched bees collecting post

while cat was a tea cosy

with dozey trip-wire eyes.

Suddenly dog alarm in the hedge

comes bursting from the undergrowth:

big game hunter

and cat gone steeplejack.

Then dog winks

and we stretch out,

and I go back to being a microscope

eyeball deep in daisies.

Sure Sight

I see
pearl-like
dawn
in
your face

a desolate
blue
yonder
in
your irises

the wash
of slivered
moonlight
in
your smile

I know of
nowhere
less trodden
more
perfect

I contract
to be
forever
an explorer
in that universe.

An Owl in my head

An idea from the animals represented on the bicorns worn by felos at carnaval in Galicia.

‘There is an owl in my head’

said Joseph. ‘I am wise,

wisest of all creatures’.

‘There is a tiger in my head’

said Paul. ‘I am  fierce,

all creatures fear me’.

‘A stag in mine’

said Thomas. ‘ I am majestic,

admired by all’.

‘My head is empty’

said Jim. ‘a space

for all creatures to come and go.’

In memory of my mother

She was

Two cups of flour resourceful

Plumb-line straight

Three sides of a triangle logical

Rain-coat wise

Five woollen blankets caring.

I asked Picasso what he did on September 6th, 1957 ̶ your birthday.

Just back from a few days in Barcelona where I visited the wonderful Museu Picasso. In particular, I enjoyed his Las Meninas Series. This series includes the subset of 9 paintings called The Pigeons which he started on Sept 6th 1957, before returning to Las Meninas on Sept 14th. Though very different in content, he always considered the 9 Pigeons paintings among the 58 Las Meninas Series; I think I know why.

The Pigeons, Picasso. Sept 6th, 1957

I asked Picasso what he did on September 6^th, 1957  ̶   your birthday.

“I was working on Las Meninas. I had put an almost human face

on the Margarida Maria and there the ideas stalled.

On my balcony, pigeons emerged from fluffed up shapelessness.”

Out of the ocean into air,

into clanging space,

grabbing at the caul of light around you.

“I needed to resuscitate a sense of the absurd;

the pigeons twitched

with comic self-consciousness.”

Water’s membrane shut behind you,

things were sounding into being;

you were sounding into being.

“The round angled; the space faceted”, said Picasso. 

The Dog

A dog built around his snarling teeth   

demonstrates human instincts

when I cross his ground.

Glass stare, no, spikes from his face,

his crew cut spines speared,

snarl or smile, legs set in concrete:

stance consciousness.              

The considered setting of his growl:

natural resonance of nerves.

The chosen time for a step:

psychology of closing, removing space,

building a crescendo of presence.

Then the howling with muscle release:

snap of dogs, snap of men.

Final Breath

in memory of Pearse Hutchinson

In that last moment your breath halted in your mouth;

the  air teetered on your tongue; one last taste perhaps.

Death flew across the room, your eyes followed it,

leaving us, exiting through the walls.

Vivaldi played on,

emerged from behind  your troubled  breathing.

For that few moments,

baroque splendour  was your breath condensing around us.

The Tide's High Blood Mark

  

                 (Before The Firing Squad)

Ready

           

            The sun's tide

            is licking me.

           

Aim

            In one eye-full I have examined every brick,

            seen the crack in that window,     

       `   the wasp on the flag

            and still felt the sun

            and heard the voice right down

            to a bubble on his vocal cords.                                        

Fire

            The sun travelled its 93 million miles.

            Threw my shadow against the bricks.

            My shadow stretched

            My shadow stretched

            My shadow stretched

            And the sun said

            That my shadow was as tall and slender

            As any wave that ever rose

            That ever rose out of the full tide

            Climbed and stretched its arms

            Over the bricks of this barracks wall.

Old Man

The tyre hanging in the garden

is proof that children used to  play there;

but in the breeze it’s a shaking head.

Today snowflakes flying by

leave the sycamore white on its northern side.

The garden is still: no snowman, no footprints.

The tyre is an old man;

with an old voice, he explains:  

“I cannot remember names; truth is

I hung too close to the trunk to be of use;

the sycamore branches bolted upwards;

to this day they’ve never spread out.”  

A Brief Note on an Imminent Famine.

Everyone here will starve:

each bone will be a stripe,

each hand a bowl,

each leg a stick.

Then there'll be the gluttony

of cameras:

our threadbare skin 

will be devoured,

our eyes exported

shining like pickles.

A Snagging Memory

Before The End.

The bedside lamp shone

in the pool of her eye;

it made her teeth translucent,

runnelled her face.

Daylight and I were reluctant visitors;

the  room smelling of trapped breath,

sickness and decay made me anxious

that I might inhale her disease;

and all I loved gone,

all dwindled down to duty.

Fragile Nature

Interference.

A fish is dreaming,

elbow deep.

With my fingertip

I draw a herring-bone

across his heaven;

he bolts.

Now the lake dreams,

empty like a canyon.