As I gazed at the flames of the fire,
It rekindled a childhood vision;
Memories of  a chill winter morn,
Wrapped in a blanket, I watched
A daily ritual unfold.
Cold, dead, grey ash was removed.
Wood, coal and paper then placed
With pious propriety. A sacrifice offered
Of one single match.
Drifts of dark smoke and crackles of wood
Nurtured cold coals into life.
The fire was fanned until roaring
With bright  yellow licks that leapt up the flue.
A welcoming warmth would draw us together,
Working and playing in a radiant glow
Of orange incandescence.  
In the evening we would always make toast
Before the dying embers were lost.

I have looked towards a million worlds tonight,
fearful that there might be more like ours,
where despair and anger rage and reign,
hiding between hollows and sea slapped shores.

Land lust.
Territorial.
Imperial.

From lizards to lesser beasts and higher mortals,
there is an extreme decadence in achieving life;
primordial slime where time is irrelevant
and chance, they say, defies the odds of a God.

Needs must
Territorial
Ethereal

Exploring to exploit and crudely anoint
another New World is the genome dynamic.
This surpasses mere survival and squats
with dictatorial ardour in the heart of our universe.

We are halted on the path
where a small amphibious mite
has sprung headlong into an unknown world,
its river home now out of sight.
Fingernail-size it shrinks on the path,
absorbing the colours of the gravelled ground
and somehow surviving
the rigours of walkers and riders around.
Its freedom now moves it from riverbank hollows
to find the instinctive role that it follows.
Cradled in cupped hands it is carried to water
but I explain its life lies elsewhere.
These precious moments shared with my daughter
are but part of the time which may see it grow
and spawn in the seasons yet to come,
while we witness a cycle that’s just begun.

The sun slides from the sleek red western sky
and the dew-damp evening air
dissolves the coloured confetti,
strewn like some abandoned paper chase
upon the ground.
The sound of the wedding
party flows from the function rooms,
where harmony grits its teeth against all odds.
Where will they be after those heaven sent
seven years?
The tears of happiness today
may turn in time and turning back is always all too late.
The froth, the tulle and tux must just be packed
away. This wedding day seems captive but need not be
kept in a cage.
It should be free to age like fine wine:
a marriage robust, fragrant, full-bodied and forever fruity.
To be sipped and savoured frequently
in memory of the love of that first
and finest taste.

Slack canvas bends with the first strokes:
brush and paint scar a waiting whiteness.
Others follow of less distinct pressure
but now with an affected swirl
a life emerges.

Colours are selected with random thoroughness,
outlining only what the eye believes it sees.
Shapes conform to break the rules and innovate,
where bright arrays can glide through blundered blobs:
ochre, umber, raw sienna.

Sable is saved for finer life forms
steadfastly fixed in oil.
Tentatively mixtures are blended
to blur the more familiar with
darker and darker hues.

The creator remains anonymous.

The wood chimes are clunking
with each sweep of breeze,
lending melody in this space.
This is where I dig,
dividing root from soil,
time from life, and us
from everybody else.

Squirrel scampers the border,
raising hackles and creating a
two-legged dog and mayhem.
This must be his habitat,
passed down through generations
until the brick and concrete conspired
to break the oak stronghold.

The view from the decking
throws itself through other gardens
to the far distant fast lane.
Noiseless here, with only
the high haunting whistle
of the slow circling
red kite.

This unkempt spread of damp, bedraggled lawn
Presents a sorry sight.  And there, forlorn
In rotted heaps, the summer’s fruits decay,
While winter winds still strip the trees that sway
And scatter yet more leaves to sodden fields
Of mud and nettle.  Each proud meadow yields
To colder days, and beaten tracks are churned,
Where baking summer sun had burned
The brittle grass and bracken.  Gone the sound
Of insects.  Idle stumps and logs are crowned
With moss and patterned lichen in the hush
Around this woodland scene: the brilliant blush
Of russet splendour (always all too brief)
And gilded floor of leaf on silent leaf.