Eternity

 

Sunset,

an acetylene torch,

cut a line,

an exhilaration of light

across my eyes.

A forgotten jubilation

or a future jubilation

flooded through me;

a euphoria in 

the momentariness of eternity.

The Best of Poetry and Miscellaneous Yap

 

Well, that’s it, done, if this job is ever done. I mean ever done to perfection. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but, anyway, I’m finished.

Proofreading. Proofreading your own work involves fighting a form of blindness, the eye skating over the familiar lines; line after line of over-familiarity causing the eye not to see.

I won’t complain, it’s a new collection, the first in years. I’ve been writing all the time, but more or less in isolation. I don’t submit work to magazines or competitions, not since starting the Poetry and Miscellaneous Blog in 2007. And with that, I’ve been largely absent from poetry circles.

That’s not a great choice really, like many things, there’s an amount of self-promotion needed to succeed in the world of poetry, involving networking, having a strong presence in that world. That’s okay, not my strong suit though. Introverted by nature, I’m not a natural when it comes to mingling. So the blog was my solution, and continues to be.

And readers of my blog (there are some) know, all to well, it’s a mixed bag. A photographer discards the majority of his/her shots to publish the best. And that is best in poetry too. But keeping a blog alive requires a flow of posts, and so, for better or worse, I throw it all up there, and being digital, I don’t have to duck any rotten tomatoes coming back. Poems do require time to ferment, ideally as long as you can wait, tweaking bits here and there, re-reading, refining, planing away the bumps.

Anyway, the job is done. The Sound of Water Searching is at the publishers. It could be called ‘The Best of Poetry and Miscellaneous Yap’, which after the many years of the blog’s existence should be a good collection. If not, expect my next blog to be on snake-charming earthworms.

I ask you

to throw

me away

Moonlight Shimmering

 

Last night the moonlight shimmered on the water;

I stood at my window watching its languid movement.

Lover slip into the pool;

swim immediately beneath the surface

luminescent nudity,

amorphous fluidity.

Sea gently clap,

mountains hunch forward;

squinting house eyes

see how the moon swims in the bay.

Last night the sun’s lover went shining on the ocean;

I stood at my window and watched like shadows watch.

History

 

Eventually, in love,

they withdrew into their republic of two;

behind newly created borders,

they declared independent, enacted laws,

developed new customs,

a new language, etc, etc.

My memory is that it was a closed state:

suspicious, restrictive;

the two citizens were equal

until, of course, they were not;

and that was the kernel of the subsequent unrest

and eventual breakdown of order.

In many ways, I  think, their history

is the history of all states.

Pandemic Times

Things have improved, there was a time, not long ago, when windows looked like they were going to be omnipresent in our future relations; it was upsetting and somehow ridiculous. Here's Kay and I not too long ago meeting our daughter; sad to say, it's likely to happen again.

Old Stuff

 

When I’ve written this,

once again, I’ll be emptied

and, once again, I’ll go rooting

through the old boxes in the attic,

the same old stuff.

Then I’ll say what I’ve already said

with different words,

and I will imagine for a while

that it is new,

and I will be pleased.

And so it may go,

till I am able to blow the words,

dry specks, off the page

and conclude finally

that I have said all I have to say.

Memories

 

Memories, dried flowers

in pages of time;

I wallow

knee-deep in their coloured depths,

a Monet’s garden, expecting

somehow, their aesthetic appeal

will give me some wisdom;

they will not

they are of their time,

visions incarcerated in old pages.

War

 

I will call it ‘A War-torn Landscape’:

an empty room: black, cavernous;

occasional thuds, voices, cries, remote like

the piping of sea birds faint in ocean thunder.

Centre of the room a mother weeping, her

bomb-blasted tears streaming down her face,

the grille of her teeth set into a vent of anguish,

her figure slack as peel from a knife.

I will tell you that she has been told of her son’s death

and that you must console her.

And now I must tell you that you will find no words,

and, anyway, she will not see you.

From A Childhood

 

It’s late, the sky’s my screen. Laurence Olivier is fleeing

through a forest, dark fronds clutching, clawing at him;

a gothic tale, full of the drama of black and white.

The forest is vast and he must run blindly through it,

somewhere behind is the story I haven’t seen, and

somewhere ahead is a boundary with a land no one knows.

I am at my window, the land I know is quenched;

above, across the inexplicable expanse of the Heavens, is adventure;

I watch it, take it to my bed, and know tomorrow colour will return.

Happy New Year.

You are

 

Life is a flash,

and loving is its perfect state.

I never looked for sparkle in people,

never quite expected it,

but age has a separate lens,

polished by time,

tempered by experience;

through that,

I see

that you are my bright light.

Being

 It's not quite Christmas but the contentment would be a wish. 

Being.

A sparkling Summer’s afternoon,

not doing, but being.

A solar panel,

bang centre of the back garden,

converting energy to contentment,

while activity is reduced

to fingertips running along the suede

of newly mown grass

and time is suspended,

dissipated into the blue yonder.

Windy Day

 

On a windy day, I, cloud,

trees and grass are one and

heaven, earth and water;

blue of sky trimmed with

cloud white and drizzle grey,

sway of branches, swell of

waves and dresses, flight

of hats and litter down street,

astray, voices from mouths,

birds careering into beyond

and leaves’ mouths lisping

off tune in the brightly breeze

lifting, hues patched and

colours drifting; eyes’ lights

and hearts billowing upward.

Migrants arriving at European borders

How wonderful the European stars must look

strung along the wire strands of border fences

or those butterflies, the endless coils of razor wire.

One might, upon seeing them, be reminded of staves

of music: Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms

or lines of text: Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes,

or how civilisation was aghast seeing those photographs:

the skeletal faces of the innocent behind Auschwitz fences;

the horror that such could happen in our own time.

A Hand in Water

 

A Hand in Water

for my father

Trailing a hand from a boat:

that morning sluicing through my fingers

was my most perfect with you.

More than fifty years on,

the memory is in my fingers

as I watch a Hollywood hand trawl water.

Fishing for sunlight on a lake is a carefree pursuit,

not so fishing for your smile in memories;

but that flow through my fingers

is the feeling of complete happiness,

though the smile I’ve given you

may well be my own production.