Beside Me

 

Sometimes I stop,

I think I hear you.

Though improbable,

I love those moments

and wonder if, just maybe,

you are, after all, beside me.

Wind and Tree

 

‘You’re still here’ said the wind to the tree;

‘And where else would I be, this is home!’

But the wind was already gone.

Some days later, ‘But don’t you get bored?’

‘Even the stirring of soil beneath my roots interests me

                                      when I am home,’ said the tree.

But the wind was already gone.

When passing again, the wind asked, ‘Don’t you long to travel?’

‘This place and I are inseparable lovers.’

But the wind was already gone.

The next time the tree asked, ‘Won’t you stop a moment?’

‘Oh, to have such freedom!’ replied the wind

and it already gone.

And so.......(with a smile or a sigh)

 

Professorial types, gowned, stooped,

hands clasped behind their backs,

                    on the feet of their ghosts

tottering towards the sea.

Disturbed into flight,

chevron flashed, jet-sleek,

                              they blade low over the strand,

                                                              career upward,

                                                                 out over the headland

                                                                                       and are gone.

Like us,

the way our souls leave.

Cruelty to Fish

 

Of course, the issue of cruelty to fish never really existed:

scaly, the antithesis of cuddliness; no legs, cross mouths

and eyes that don’t blink, well, that’s just freaky;

and, of course, they don’t scream, ugly looking critters

shaped like torpedoes; extra-terrestrial.

And still I remember the Siamese fighting fish that time after time

over days, returned to the bottom of the tank to try,

with a brush of its caudal fin, to relaunch its dying companion

or the girl in the shallows, playing with a rock salmon, lobbing it

a few yards out to sea and it returning like a dog with a ball;

was I not seeing the glint of a smile on its piscine features?

Brains

 

 The moon is an exotic fruit sitting

precariously in the clutch of branches;

a forlorn look on its face; lost soul.

Our apple trees have been bare for months;

they spend winter in a mire of despondency,

raking the sky for fugitive fruits.

Buds are fingertips in our garden;

they are ineffectual in an expanding universe;

roots, on the other hand, have the brains for trees.

.

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.