The Poppy Queen

In wispy waves she courts the breeze
At fringes in the summer fields
And gentle are the thoughts that greet
Her scarlet sprinkling of the wheat.

Busy martins sweep the sky
As poplar leaves commune on high.
Mares tails drawn in frozen swirls
Fix Denton’s merry morning world.

My flow of thought runs deep and clear,
I sense her presence drawing near.
Above corn’s coarse and brittle throng
I hear her soaring, crimson song.

She smiles on all who smile with her
Then lingers at their hidden ear
To whisper words they all once knew
When gathered by a moonlit Yew.

No sorrows bind the spirit’s surge
As worlds within these moments merge.
So, what I am and I will be
I see in flower, leaf and tree.

I will leave her golden throne
With a heart so happy to have known
A sense of joy in being free
To feel creation laugh with me.

You Shall Fall Asleep in My Arms


My love let’s steal away,
Leave this sterile room, their disinfected halls.
Unwind emotional swaddling
Wrapped about you by frowning folk
Populating your world;
They peer into the hourglass windows of your eyes
And watch in silence the sand’s last flow.

Let’s abscond,
Tear up an ancient script
And rewrite the last scene.
Reach in and hold your grains,
Then slip them through your fingers
At your rate.

Let’s reclaim
Your imagination, images, thoughts, life-
Soft, now, peace returns from exile.
Undress,slip off the garments of sorrow they gave you.
Step off the care pathway,
Let their world fall at your feet.
And one last time
You shall fall asleep in my arms.

I want to leave

I want to leave.
Not just this room, its people, my breath crushing waste.
Not just this tethered sham, absurd marionette world.
Not just this crafty shepherd’s panacea.
No. I just want to BE elsewhere.

I want to know.
Is all you and I do, say, achieve, share, prepare and care for;
Is all you and I admire, hate, spoil, cry over and destroy;
Is all you and I hope for, taught about and embraced over,
Erased by the cosmic gardener?

I want to be still.
Rejoice in NOW, sense everything, leave nothing unsaid, undone.
Nature’s confetti; good for the moment then left to the rain.

Old Man on a Park Bench

I saw him there,
Old and alone with his thoughts,
Decaying leaves between his fingers,
Scanning velvet vignettes flawed memory supports,
Recalling sadness, but its joy that lingers,
And wasted empty space
He can’t displace.

Last life now waits on
Dreams left unfulfilled:
Bright faces fired by the promise of youth,
Hearts full of hope in a future he can’t rebuild,
The crushing certainty of final truth;
That life now ticks away
On a watch display.

He called his dog.
Dismissing missing ends
When life was a no through road.
When it’s unethical to regret, he pretends.
He slipped into ‘now’ mode.
Homeward tugged by a lead,
He followed the creed.

A garden path.
A woman with the doormat smile.
Another Sunday’s roast to toast
Another end of a slow weekend mile.
Is this retirement by the coast?
Filling final scenes
With machine routines?

One Thoughtful March Morning

Along the avenue, awake
To the tall, strong old wood.
Wise in the bright wonder of dawn,
I walked with her.

I miss the pleasures endowed by your smiles,
Faint now in the clay pain of a memory
As another clump of mistletoe
Grows in glory spherical upon a twisted apple bough.

New beauty in ancient form,
Daffodil bright in this tepid haze
Brings me again to Love;
Eternal youth smiling at a tainted, withered man.

My dear poplar companions-
Faithful to my end, hardly changing, locked
To cyclic seasons’  quest,
I bow to your spired, quiet wisdom.

In the grey sag of my painful limp,
Unworthy for her I felt-
And felt the same impulse of youth,
Unchanged by life’s casual decline.

Inside a yearning synchronised
With young joy; immortal smile.
Crimpled skin supports long dying,
Crying into a dreamed of coffin’s womb.

Love, you were always here;
Sometimes hidden, often present,
Never aging but forever young;
Alive in light for all living.

Saharan Observations

I watched him, drinking from a plastic bottle
where I struggle to find water.
They come every year, grim-faced, rich;
disconnected from this landscape,
they rejoice in overcoming two weeks pain
to gain bragging rights in some distant bar,
just a radio call from a car￾and we fight our land with bare hands and
calloused feet.
Well 'tablet man' you don't see me,
hunched against the savage stinging sand,
face furrowed by struggle, worsened by weather,
rough edged, inelastic and defiant.
I watched him, swept up by some 4x4
to leave our sand to us again once more
and renew his acquaintance with hotels and plastic.
They disrespect us with sympathy and ignorance.

Still born cry

I have heard them cry out of the cold and dark,
Waking up where no one breathes or sees or is;
Little wonders of the waters born elsewhere,
Clinging by instinct to some infinite void.

I reach for them. One by one they slip away,
Disfellowshipped from all love by misfortune.
With me they’d be safe, warm and gurgling with joy.
(Doctor said they were just mind healing spectres.)

Grief at need denied in perpetuity.
Not dead, but there waiting for a mother’s call.
Let go for closure, nurses said, please let go.
Numb in the machine hum of a healing room.

So, light dissolves and yields to another night.
They are with me and I will not let them go.
Accepting their end would render me useless,
My fingers will be on their lips as I die.