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NIGEL Feb 2019
Address to a lost daughter

Little girl, eyes sparkling with questions,
Speak to me now;
I am old in ways and oft forgotten.
Come to me, whisper into the cold of the night.
Deliver another dream of how it might have been.

Little girl, stir the woman you became,
light a tiny flame
that with kindness kindles one warm thought.
Smile for me, moisten eyes weary with life-
or else make a brazier of my heart should you depart.

Little girl, your voice will be heard
when all leave me;
Its truth immune to the final smother of time,
cleaving life's ties with a quiet coward.
It pours faith and hope into the chalice of love.
NIGEL Jul 2018
After the word storm.

So, what of me, so who cares?
It went wrong, we wouldn't talk,
self defence sowed hate in eyes
that saw lies expressed by a honest face;
disgrace in words given truthfully.
Quiet now. Hurt alone.

If, perhaps, I had kept my counsel,
been silent when injustice ran amok,
Not allowed the angry waves of spite
licence to uproot the bright flowers of peace;
love may yet have kept her throne.
Silence does not atone.

Tomorrow will be cold, colourless,
each persistent heartbeat, redundant.
What is life if it is not shared?
We all should be paired with another-
all able to approach an end and know
that someone once cared.
NIGEL Sep 2018
Again, hope
Cold ideas slip away,
Leaving a dread of tomorrow.
Lost salvation leaves a scar shown to all.
Death is close but there’s still hope.
All must be new, fresh and clean,
Unlike it’s ever been
And I must close down a black part of me.

Tomorrow is the key;
New dawn will surely explode
All leaden regrets, wounding guilt-
And sun burns bright passion into will,
Holding it above the morass of doubt,
Leaving me without
A reason to abhor my sorry existence.
Night is a canvas for dreams
Painted without mercy, stroked
With the creative whims of divine justice.

I turn to her, imaged in sturdy stone;
Queen of the night, font of rebirth
Or else with earth
Destined to entomb another failure.
NIGEL Dec 2018
A lover's plea in winter

Please wait awhile.
Sheltered by the furrowed brow of winter
Heavy hanging from the eaves,
We’ll share hidden, stolen moments
Canopied by ochre leaves.
Clasp my pleading palm;
Mingling moist warmth with smiles.
Cast off burdens of care.
Let the crisp, crackle, crunch of ice
Accompany we who dare.

Do not think at all,
Indulge this moment to milk your heart.
Wallow in the wash of wishes won,
When succulent, ripe rapture
Spawns a love that’s ne’er undone.
NIGEL Nov 2018
A moment in perfection


It’s now, it’s in this moment;
No hallowed existence savours more.
What mind brazed with the rigours of aesthetic strife,
Pursuing a perfect prize of lonely absolution,
Could hope to know love such as this?
Would Bliss outshine this divine kiss of lovers’ eyes?

Our shared smiles but hint
At a deep glory of eternal rapport,
Distilled mutually into a second’s instant knowledge.
Our touch is immune to the angry anguish of age.
There’s no end to original beauty.
What personal passion could fashion with such quality?

Three words of towering strength
Whispered wilfully into warm ears
Sears excitement into hearts melded with desire.
In life is any goal higher than knowledge of this?
Where impermanence has no meaning
We will live gently to give tenderly of ourselves.
NIGEL Apr 2017
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.
NIGEL Oct 2020
Autumn atonement

Autumn fire crackles and crisps under foot.
White willow leaves in unanchored mayhem
Eddy against the savage rampage of the wind;
Maelstroms of the abandoned in some last act Danse Macabre.

Unbridled minds are afoot,
Flaying spring’s children from wailing trees,
Wind shepherding huddled heaps
To the dark ditch tombs of the lost.

A dying year in arrhythmic gasps
Disfellowships the splendor of summer.
To atonement I turn, a supplication wind whispered.
Left with the dead, a hope for personal renewal.
NIGEL Oct 2020
A Walk in the Quiet Night

Tonight, footfall is gone,
All focusing minds
Walled up in rooms,
Boxed within non
Engagement lines.
Government brooms

Sweep up citizens
Like confetti put
Away in its box.
Neat under a lens;
Viewed as soot
Or an earth staining pox

From the silent high.
The trees now sleep,
Yet an earth wide call
To arms is surely nigh.
The ape age may seep
Away, the potential stall

And the Great Planter
May choose again;
Something less destructive.
So it may please Her
To watch the pain rain
A little while on the obstructive.
NIGEL Dec 2020
A Walk in the Quiet Night

Tonight, footfall is gone,
All focusing minds
Walled up in rooms,
Boxed within non
Engagement lines.
Government brooms

Sweep up citizens
Like confetti put
Away in its box.
Neat under a lens;
Viewed as soot
Or an earth staining pox

From the silent high.
The trees now sleep,
Yet an earth wide call
To arms is surely nigh.
The ape age may seep
Away, the potential stall

And the Great Planter
May choose again;
Something less destructive.
So it may please Her
To watch the pain rain
A little while on the obstructive.
NIGEL Jan 2019
...Before  Sleep I saw you.....

I saw her but she didn't see me.
I saw the ivory cheeks, the jet jewel, the coal black hair.
I saw the charisma, crystal clear
under a crescent moon.
I saw her up-stretched arms embrace the sky.
I saw her violet aura, her secret luminescence
leave an echo of lustre on the laudatory leaves.
In the deep night I saw a rainbow
rise from her regal eyes.
I saw her kneel in communion with stars.
I knew love as never before.
NIGEL May 2016
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.
NIGEL Oct 2020
Coming To Terms

In a dark place immune to summer sunshine
Sorrow’s harsh rule forces tears in silence.
Unrequited love paints interior landscapes grey,
Usurping hopes spawned on our perfect day.
Betrayed emotions crush the heart,
Impale with mistrust good thoughts when apart.

Dawn comes when tears are spent.
A low ebb reveals private pains then turns-
Turns as recovery surfs the incoming tide;
Renewal’s gush dissolving chains.
NIGEL May 2022
Day’s End at Rhosneigr

The old land drew up its duvet;
Cloud cliffs brushed in light rose but seeping color,
Draining to quiet grey. A face
Set by Earth’s mason in impassive upward gaze
To become an eternal watcher of skies.

Gulls cried. Sea swirled sand.
Sounds merged to manage a mutinous mind;
A merciful panacea, anesthesia
To help draw down the blind on life’s debts.
This salve of beauty is but a *****.

Peddling pretense for indulgence,
She gains addled adherents who are mocked by reason.
What is done is not undone by this.
Truth that hides beyond the dune’s shadows,
Emerges with the encroaching nemesis of night..
NIGEL Dec 2018
Eign Morn

Brave little robin,
Strident breasted,
Gilded in courage
Struts against the cruel steel of the north.

Kingsfisher Knight,
Aquamarine dash,
Lethal splash, strikes
Through moist mist whispers on ponds.

Determined ducks,
Arrowed against austerity,
Sweep surely out;
Scything sharply beneath cloy clouds.

Careful coot,
Cowering under overhang,
covets cache,
In languid reeds with haste hidden.

Managed man
Meanders among majesty,
Out of scene,
Observing gentle, cyclic savagery.
Eign is a small place near the river Wye in Herefordshire England.
NIGEL Dec 2020
Fire to Fire

With fire you came,
With fire you went;
Imparting, restarting and keen to ferment
The destructive divisions that bruise human hearts
So your children could play out their predestined parts.

With dawn you gave,
With dawn you took;
Forgiving, admitting, dictating your book.
Words that enslave but purport to set free
Condemn you and me to fail such as thee.

With evening you harvest,
With evening you leave
To the Grave slaves of instinct who all believed
That the Ultimate Love would erase their sad guilt
Because of the blood that from one man was spilt.
when you draw near to Him, you lose your slavery to instinct. The converse also applies...
NIGEL Jul 2018
Ghanaian Girl

I saw her coming back,
Red-smocked urchin riddled with the dew of false promise,
Beaming as she spoke of bright tomorrows.
Couldn’t bring myself to tell her of the sorrows
That waited to strike us down.

Yes, we’ve been happy,
In moments stolen after work sharing dreams spawned by their lies.
She believed them, is believing still.
Yet, I fight to find the will
To raise my head each day.

They have our hope hostage,
Its holy nature yoked to their greed, deceiving us daily.
They shout to us often of pay rises,
Promising rewards and great surprises,
If only we gave more.

I hate to leave my child.
Some uncle’s wife is struggling to cope with the village young.
When she first bleeds I will be here,
I cannot know another year
In separation from my light.

Last month people came from Europe,
They saw their new school, fresh water and underprivileged smiles.
Such self-congratulation! Such effervescence!
I will not assuage collective conscience
With demeaning thanksgiving.

We yet have our dignity.
We know great honour and pride in the quiet suffering of our duty.
(Do you think He will stop the pain?
Will He pause in his great work to explain
Why I was singled out?)
NIGEL Jan 2020
Impressions of a Windy Night

Low, leaden hills slip away,
Creatured, cold gloom rises,
Paints a belladonna sky again-
Buoyed by the magic might of night.

Quick and quiet are abroad,
Searching with stealth the shadows,
Slipping away from the glow,
Picking the pockets of proud fools.

Cobweb whispers of the unsafe
Cling to the wind’s brisk breath.
Briny bright the bristling sea surges
And owls hold court with the moon.

The wind baying with whipping wand
Strikes hawthorn, hazel and ash-
Now a black mass of cackling hags
Delighting in the dread of folk.

The crisp cries of a fox
Rip away a sudden silence...
Then all is awe again,
Tuned to the turn of the firmament.
NIGEL Jun 2020
Invocation

Your incandescence emerges from cyclic play of labyrinthine colours,
An alternating spectre in this overbearing world of ours.
Your time-immune face flames, resolves in swirling coalescence.
You speak. I kneel. I give absolute acquiescence.
Mental walls made transparent to the love light of your eyes
Are breached and I offer no defence to the disarming smile
You give to reveal your knowledge of what within me lies.
I cannot feel where I am or know what this implies.

You leave me to watch in wonder when you weave into the wind.
You grant my spirit a mirror for your gentle face,
And now alone, I am cloaked again by the silence of this place,
Clinging to thoughts watermarked by your ethereal grace.
NIGEL Jan 2020
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.
NIGEL Jan 2020
Lady Life

In the fly ****** fruit I see her,
In the bloated morning gall,
In the proud pheasant’s colours
And the old oak’s acorn stall.

She dances with the sunbeams
As they play upon the hearth,
Russet passions burning sprightly
As old autumn walks her path.

I see her in umbellifer,
In heather coarse and bright,
In broom and storms and sediment
Where larvae hide from light.

She creeps upon a spider’s web
And buries with the jay,
Then watches as the hazelnuts
Are lardered in a drey.

I hear her music at the brook
That chuckles over stones
And in the heavy evening air
That hosts a Buzzard’s moans.

She inspires awe and wonder when
The day’s eye lingers low,
His wake a silent orange roar
That rakes the evening’s glow.  

I see her in the fingers
That grip an Elder’s bough
And in the quaint expression
She has painted on a cow.

I see her in the water
That’s woven by the waves
And in a silent, starry night
That whispers over graves.

I know her when I seem alone
Yet sense a soft cocoon
That cradles carefully a child
Who’s lost beneath the moon.

I hope my love may know at last
A happy final home,
And oh I wish with all my heart
I’ll never feel alone.
NIGEL Aug 2018
Last Night In The Wood...

I walked into the wood last night;
I wandered in the wild,
waxing with wordless wisdom.
Owls in oaks orchestrated cries;
shrill singing at the still moon.

Leaves long lost lay beneath,
above the abject sky;
layered loosely, left bereft
by the hard harvest of winter.
Armed with an anthem of ages, I smiled.

I surfed the strange tides of night,
I kissed the silent starlight,
I sang with a heart whole and happy;
unhinged from fear and fraud.
I paused to ply the peace with prayer
NIGEL Aug 2016
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.
NIGEL Jan 2020
Leaving Sun

Leaving sun,
Hand holding sleeping son,
Gilding a dead day with peaceful dying.
Night caresses, undresses the civilised mind
As silence seals the sheep fold.

New morning,
Yawning and thoughts spawning decay.
Memories bleed your smiles, unheard sighs
Salve not the soft silence of absence.
Brilliance is defied by a curtain.

High noon,
Battered and badgered a dead mind.
This day, for you, the darkness I will share;
The thinking and unthinking linked in last love.
Tomorrow is sorrow's anchor.

Sinking sun,
Walking and talking with inner shadows
Choreographed by the legacy of unkissed departed.
Restarted life-sullied now, and unsure.
No cure for impure future.

Dew dark downs,
Cruel cold burns bones.
Sitting on Earth’s lap in hope for the sun,
No one comes, no one will come,
But I’ll see the Earth kiss the sun.

Numb weight,
As clouds wait on first glow,
Knows harmony with mind’s frightened void.
Then wisdom wells in a dawn chorus of joy.
And Mercy lights up a face.

Raised in rays
I see his face unburdened by bliss
And I kiss this rising son.
NIGEL Dec 2018
Let the soul sing

Stop. Wait. Walk away, away to somewhere lonely,
To where time’s dust blows in your face,
To where people are not
And you
Are only you.

Feel. Silence. Face the light in the east and renew.
Evict the stained self, the shaping cacophony of life
Will not be here.
Only nothing
Before the filling.

Accept and renew.
NIGEL Oct 2020
Lost on 11th Avenue

The light fails,
The cyclic long decline of dusk
Belongs to us again.
The ever neutral sun has gone
And calm calamity cradles the earth.

The darkness
In indifference ghosts in.
The cold and never-found are here,
Still clinging to unheeded hopes
That diminish and dissolve in these quiet nights.

How many
Hurt unheard in the hidden spaces?
The dishonored die daily,
Failing the deadly demands of life;
Those who cannot conform.

Stripped of safety,
Tears freeze on frightened faces,
Hunched alone in friendless places-
Yet feeling and being as you or me
Who have all yet nothing when we turn away.
NIGEL Sep 2018
Marble Harvest

For the rank and file beneath white bleached stones,
Laid in parallel lines above broken bones,
Life’s fruits and dreams dark death denied-
Scything this white harvest from  despairing cries.

From across the sea they came to kneel,
Upon this cloy earth their wounds to heal.
Written in faces washed by tears
Are bleak farewells, lost hopes and fears.

For such sacrifice of unfathomable enormity
They stone-carved here in cold, sterile uniformity.
I wonder at the end of this dark grey day
Can death to stop death ever sweep evil away?
NIGEL Dec 2018
Morning in Monnow Vale

Take my hand and let us walk awhile,
Together we’ll feel the dew- making breath of dawn
and greet the sun with grateful exultation.
We’ll hear Earth’s gentle verdant giant yawn
and wash our minds in birdsong mile by mile.
perchance a kiss will give love its affirmation
or else affection may be written in a smile.

I won’t clothe your hopes in easy promises
Or try to embody the essence of all that’s good.
You will know me and you will know the truth-
Oh yes. You may go. That much is understood.

Feel me, the very me inside of you;
Nothing more pure, no better than this could be.
These great moments the mundane betray.
Feel, feel life’s passion not cling to its debris!
NIGEL Jul 2016
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.
NIGEL Sep 2018
Musings from the shadows

I live in this dust; the cathedral quiet loads
encasement into the psyche of a lost spirit.
The old house plays her tune of shadows;
a refuge for the fettered dead,
and I dread another rising of the moon.

The small boy will see me tonight and cry,
afraid and unaware as he stares at a suggestion
of a face, a hint of existence in another place,
a bad copy, greyed and lost.
At what cost the extension of a soul?

Dawn sprays the walls in light, effaces again.
The pain of solitude locks me into plaster.
This is no dream, I scream without sound;
I stop, unseen. Unheard. Unnoticed.
Life without form, death without end.
From their perspective...
NIGEL Apr 2020
Nothing is private.

They are there:
Watching, listening,
Inducing, controlling,
Judging, interfering.
Experimenting.
You can't even hide
Inside.
NIGEL Nov 2019
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?
NIGEL Dec 2020
Once against now

Today I went back; walked along paths divorced from now
By forty four years and so scored my tears into this land;
Little boy with simple joy standing here in awe and bright belief-
Sacred memories softly torn asunder by licentious change.

Conker trees ripped and trampled to spectres by houses
Still thrive within the quiet musings of an ageing mind.
To be eight and to await this world’s unfolding
Was to sit on the lip of tomorrow in wonder.

Now his wrinkled wraith tries to be him again.
But the omnipotence of time forces the chime of another hour.
Yet I can smell the seeds my father helped to plant;
How I wish he was here, sure and strong again.
NIGEL Mar 2019
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.
NIGEL Jun 2018
Paphos Embrace

I look out to sea and perceive you;
Soft focused eyes, moist mouth.
Your words are magic music,
Like musk they move my mind.

You glide gently towards me;
Gown falling to glistening waves.
Your eyes glow of meadow green,
Your hair gleams of ethereal gold.

With scents that scintillate senses
You ****** and secure submission.
Feather soft skin in warm succulence
Enthrals as hungry fingers roam.

My strident want waxes proudly;
Kissed deftly by silken lips.
You rise and set above me,
Wine-wet and wide open.

With piercing joy unbridled
We fly on love's sweet euphoria.
Then lie together laughing
As I awaken to find you gone.
NIGEL Apr 2020
Persephone

She comes to her mother’s arms:
This time of thresholds, this mantle of new starts,
This cradle of lives, festival of births,
This verdant lifting from the dead,
This effusive, joyful time!
Cold shadows fast fade as new light invades.

In this womb we might be:
Our time of meanings, our caresses under her smile,
Our music of charms, spells of secrets,
Our dismantling of tedious time.
Our frozen fire could melt;
Merging mirth will meld when no access is withheld.

I will honour with thanks the Moon:
We could dance deftly, or be still in love,
We could nurse fingers, or bathe with eyes,
We could climb heights, or fall into bliss,
We could simply be free.
Goddess blessed, Spring graced, traced by light
NIGEL Jan 2019
Primrose

I walk alone.
My head heavy with everything
That’s worth nothing.

I search for simplicity,
But it’s here in you:
In your closet concentric pentagons
Fixing the succulent fire of Spring,
In your five pure petal hearts,
In your hidden song to the sun.

I see the bright joy of rebirth,
The exuberant energy of renewal.
I enjoy the creative grace of the divine.

You give me peace within.
NIGEL Dec 2020
Repugnance

He stirred in the shadows, crept into a moonlit doorway:
His good name undressed by desire,
His waist inspired by bottles and poles,
His peace throttled by need,
His seed primed to feed a warm womb.

He awaited a waif, walking wistfully into wild night:
Imagined struggles stroking his distention,
bleeding out glistening drops upon a coal black
Slab, dribbling man dew over
Fingers that linger. Enflamed flesh clasped and firm.

Slow rain wormed in crevices,
Need-engorged tissue stretching fly stiches.
He became what they hate and fear.
Know the enemy...
NIGEL Mar 2019
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.
NIGEL Mar 2019
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.
NIGEL Jun 2020
Substance Abuse

Kitten soft and gentle screams
Melt into pallid pulses of the night.
I must lie involved with dreams
To freeze the unease of now.

He calls from another world;
Insipid intrusions on insular rides.
But you can leave all curled
On a duvet warm and bright.

To succumb to the numb
Soothes the slow sweep of despair.
The joy of elsewhere
Is worth the price to be dumb.

College clean machines whir-
Should I infer from the cat’s purr
Happiness reigns supreme?
I seem to dissolve....
NIGEL May 2016
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.
NIGEL Oct 2020
Sweet surrender

I hold your head.
I open my doors,
For soul’s eyes to look within;
A creative embrace,
An empty space
To paint in colors of love.

I frame your face.
A chance to delve
Inside where outside cannot go.
A time to know
A moment’s glow,
Where sense has no dominion.

I caress your hair,
Feather a dream
To skylark soar above routine.
The stains of life
Caress the knife
That cuts the bonds of doubt.

I ask you now
To give your all
And spill the careful cup of years.
Release to me
The secret key
To open the door on your heart.
when you love, give your all
NIGEL Dec 2020
The Ballad Of Foxham Bill

I  knew a man down Wiltshire way,
We called him Foxham Bill.
He’d sit astride his tractor
And swagger up Spirthill.

Up top he’d stop and look around,
A broad smile on his face,
Below the farm he knew so well
His life bound to that place.

Before he set to work each day
He’d ponder on his fold;
With pride he’d think about his wife,
His three girls good as gold.

On his descent he’d fill the lanes,
Surveying his estate.
We’d strain our necks and back our cars,
Give way to Bill’s old crate.

It stayed that way for years I guess,
His routine would hardly falter,
But then daughter June a sailor met
Who brought her to the altar.

Next Mary flew around the world,
Back-packing I’d heard say,
Got fixed up with an Aussie lass
When cruising down Sydney way.

Now down to one, his pride and joy
(She’d never tasted town),
Bill had a boy in mind for her
With him she’d settle down.

But Julie, bless her, took the veil
And married her school mate.
They took a plane one Saturday
And now live in Kuwait.

Wife Betty would not leave the roost,
Of that he could be certain,
With thirty years under the yoke
She’d make their final curtain.

But ringing in the church one day
Elizabeth met Sam-
Within three weeks of knowing him
She’d left for Chippenham.

Now every day he climbed that hill
His swagger was no more,
His smile had gone, he wore a frown,
His tractor lost it’s roar.

As bad luck went, his was the worst,
Alone now on his farm,
He worked away the lonely days
And tried not to self-harm.

One day a Jaguar pulled up,
A stranger knocked his door.
He said his farm and land was sold-
His tenancy no more.

So Foxham Bill, a farmer spent,
Took all his compensation
And bought a house in Bremhill Wick,
Investment ‘gainst inflation.

His Massey Ferguson he kept
A’rusting on his drive,
And every day took all he had
To try and stay alive.

The NHS it did it’s best,
They would not taste defeat,
With CBT and counselling
They’d have Bill on his feet.

But then one morn I took my rod
And set out for the river,
It wasn’t a chill that caught my breath
Or a  wind that made me shiver.

For in the midst of Avon’s flow,
It’s front wheels spinning free,
Was that tired old red tractor
And Bill hanging from a tree.

So dear reader, I’d say to you
(Be you rich or poor)
The only constant thing is change
Of that you can be sure.









© (no references, veiled or otherwise, to any person living or dead )
A very British poem, probably not good to plan things too much, lest those who watch may surprise you with changes!  :- )
NIGEL Dec 2018
The Beech Grove

Last steps make no sound;
They superimpose on moist unstirred grass,
On a cold bright lane, shadow strewn.
Flanked by beech, destiny’s guard of honor,
Branches crowd in intangible, tangled glory.
Feet fall within a psychic landscape,
Bereft of earthly impact
Above wrenched-away Earth.


Dappled light dazzles
Those left to wait for unheralded end,
Smearing the screen of one born of silence.
A sight of earth displaced from sense;
Cold clarity. Gone absolutely.
The steps of the unbelonging
Walk an empty country lane-
An after dinner stroll that ends
In Another Place.
NIGEL May 2016
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.
..one day in Canterbury I  saw an old lady talking to herself as she sat near the clock tower. She was there the next day at the same time. She was there the following day.....
NIGEL Dec 2018
The Enduring Joy

The joy of giving simply to others
Is given to those who heed the call.
When we give, the Light within us
Is shared to feed the Light in all.
NIGEL Apr 2020
The Leaving

It’s six thirty three,
The alarm: a frigid banshee.
My key:
Lost in a beneath-bed puzzle.

Arrive at work,
My space: lost to a ****.
His Merck:
Here and defining late.

This meeting,
Tabled folk: my business ring.
Anything:
Is better than this?

It’s ten thirty,
The boss: success thirsty.
*****:
No ethics for this race.

It’s twelve forty five,
Salad: on this we thrive.
I skive:
Long lunch for Sue.

Two forty one,
My work: nowhere to run.
Begun:
Disenfranchisement.

By five twenty two,
Morals: ***** you.
Their glue:
Rinsed away by rain.

It’s now 6.08
Life: It can’t now wait.
Free state:
Leaving feels good!
NIGEL Apr 2016
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.
NIGEL Mar 2020
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.
NIGEL Apr 2016
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.
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