A New Light

Stand and celebrate the new light.
Let dawn hear your spirit sing with an open heart.
Allow the sun with healing gold
To nurse away the cruel night.

Concerns cringe and cower in a stillness
That releases the latent soul from account.
First light smiles and questions
Your value of spent time.

In this dawn a new you can be born.
Step inside and smile, you’re alive-
Given a new beginning,
Forgiven and wrapped in verdant love.

It can and should be done.
Today smiles with opulent promise;
New miles graced with scenery
Drawn by an emancipated mind.

The modelling architects of false failure are unyoked;
Every future moment excites.
Now it’s you, not their construct.
Free at last to live.

Last return to an old church

The old church beckoned.
Like a small boy who had found a dead lamb
It urged him to draw near-
Its pull greater than the push of fear.

The tower loomed ahead,
Like a giant sarcophagus ****** up one night for the ******;
Ageing, headstone grey,
Endlessly in wait for its prey.

The birdsong ceased,
Like doorstep chatter at the passing of a hearse.
All was stony still,
Subject to a potent will.

A shadow quenched the sun,
Like an oil slick slipping over a dying gull’s eyes.
It penetrated his skin
And he drew its darkness in.

At the porch he paused,
Like a fly frozen between wriggles on a spider’s web.
Journey’s end, he could not pretend.
His soul ready to descend.

Reality retreated,
Like the last boat home from an island in plague.
He succumbed to the bite
Of the avenging Black Knight.

Mother and daughter moments

The passing on of strength,
The power of protection, love in action;
Mother to daughter who becomes mother.
In the mirror, together, their smiles-
Millions and millions of miles;
So on they go.

In the heart of the forest,
In the still of the night, a baby cries;
Father stirs, universal mother cares.
In her sounds soothing we know peace.
At our death’s terror we call her;
Her light spares no shadow.

Mums conceive the cosmos;
Their children rise to fall, but rise again.
An unassuming strident song lies
Underneath the fleeting, unending repeating:
Sowing the color into connecting lives;
Creating with Love.

Suffolk Evening-A Prose Poem

Brown, parched, burnt;
Fire kissed by sun,
Ochre meadows of strewn stubble
Drift away from damp, decaying barns
As the last orange gleam of day
Steals into another warm night.

Crows weave in high taut circles,
Spilling their croaked admonishments
Over empty fields left to sleep in the glow
Of a resplendent transparent moon.

Broad ridged expanses
Lie naked underfoot,
Imbued with the toil of the forgotten.

Ancient flint spires pierce the horizon
Stacked on land veined by silting slits of stony wetness.
All is still ; silent in remembrance.

Brandy Cove

Brandy cove:
Sun setting in your eyes,
Warm rays, warm sighs.
Feelings in deep, rich hue
Painted inside us.

West wind:
Senses sprung with tales
Of swollen seas.
Smiles with gull cries-
All is love.

Pebbles rustle,
Love shared by sea’s rhythm.
Whole world, our world.
Life sings, we dance again.
We laugh and fly.

Twilight’s curtain;
A shawl to warm our dream.
Sea sounds die,
Talking  in distant whispers.
In love we lie.

The Clock-towered widow

...And there the old clock-towered widow sat,
taking her daily deep draughts of girlish things:
of pleats and plaits and wished-for wedding rings,
of memories synchronised with her neat fifties hat.

Schoolgirls clustered in giggling groups,
gaggling and clucking like happy hens at dawn-
hyperactive and over-eager for a share of the corn.
She sipped images of ballet and hula hoops.

A sudden sunbeam lanced the mood;
Cowered by the persistent, penal chimes she rose,
dutifully diligent in her destroying personal prose.
She whispered something incoherent and crude.

Nursing shadows, losing pride,
She skirted the cold stones of the old town;
needing home and the comfort of a dressing gown.
In her usual secret solitude she cried.

The Summer Pledge

Come walk with me this fragrant summer day,
We’ll wind our way to where the water gleams,
Where gentle winds in wistful willows play
And love’s cup holds the elixir of our dreams.

We’ll weave paths through a milky thistle maze
And amble on an alder avenue,
Then watch the sun’s bronze blaze raise
Through river mist his rainbow retinue.

And when his shafts of silken light will lance
The lofty boughs that court mid morning’s haze,
He’ll smile to see his sunbeams’ dappled dance
On joyful faces gilded by his rays.

Close by the honeysuckle crested hedge,
Where bitter blackthorn’s vicious fingers thread,
I’ll turn to read your eyes and hear your pledge
Windward whispered on lips of cherry red.

And as the blithe and languid meadow grass
With swaying grace plays host to consummation,
we’ll know before this fateful day  shall pass
Our lives entwined will build on love’s foundation.

The Little Boy

Out of a grave dark street
On a stiff and sterile morn
Walked a stringless marionette
With a ghastly ashen form.

I clasped my greatcoat close
For a ripping wind thrashed by
And pencil-thin limbs shuffled
Past a man who couldn’t cry.

Against the wrath of winter
Crying havoc round the lake
He wore defiant rags like banners
Wildly flapping in his wake.

‘l hope he soon finds shelter’-
Thought I wrapped up so warm
‘gainst the whirling swirling leaves
And a frenzied snowflake swarm.

His face then turned towards me
With lifeless stone grey eyes,
That seemed to have full  knowledge
Of  my  self-supporting lies.

So I pursued him boldly
As he scurried on his way
And threw my coat around him-
A shield  to storm’s affray.

Alas! I stumbled forward
And fell into the snow
For the stunted waif I followed
Had gone where I could never go.