Don't try

I'm everything you know
And do not know

Don't try.

Now throw the ball

It's a curiosity.  When I, full of purpose, square up
To the yawning, waiting sheet  - and indeed write frowningly
Perhaps, some ‘not bad’ words.  Which, although
Laboriously born, are as true as earnest slog
Can make them - up the unforgiving path of prose
Aspiring to be something other than the stubborn clay it is...

I stop.  

And listen.

Then know

That all the time another poem was writing itself
Alone, some faint wraith, left hanging in the air
Of that spell you cast, unknowingly. Unknown.

I sometimes sensed it padding lightly past,
Or in an upstairs room. Maybe glimpsed it drifting
Near my window, whispering to the words

To crystal

So they, so you
Are clear lattice

Seeking nothing for themselves
Just light.

And your slow dance

If I can see and sing it,

Balanced in the air

Just so.

Had I a hollowed out word I would give it to you.  
An empty vessel, a waiting truth
Hovering to be told.
But for now, intention only
Bloodless, Lonely.

Cold.

You would see what it could be - love it to become.
Warm it to the brim with unique worth - elating it
To rise and reach through all the lettered strata that
We ride our work - our lives - upon:
To join our everyday and sacred company

Of speech.  



-  Our beautiful inheritance of polished tools
Waiting to transform the world -

Roses are grey
Violets are grey
When you look at them in a certain way

It's true.


All the things I did - and could not - say
Now put aside by time, I will say now.

I finally see the multicolours of your life

Of you.

Simple blessing beauty kindness
Sprinkled from on high
And welling from below
And as ordinary and lovely
As an egg cooked on a stove

The brick wall.  Definition of a place
The rounded edge of each hardness is now
A letting in as well.  A happier tolerance
Of otherness outside. Almost a welcome
To my patch my place my being here
Inside.
Come inside. You other.
Come inside.

Let me change my life. Slide down underneath the table
Of the right and proper. Rejoin the child
Happy fitting things together. Unfamiliar. But joyful with fat fingers.  
Hidden by the cloth
While the grown ups crown their cups with words
I do not understand.  

At any moment shoes may shift.  An edge goes up.   A monster of a face enquires.

I stare back. Smile to make them go away.  They do not know

Someone else's toes do though.

I will talk to you.

Let's get back to where we want to be.
And where is that, exactly?

Or just tell me - vaguely even - what would be good
For you, for me?

Now each day, suns are rising in a clearer sky -
We can both see the choices of renewal.

Emergent like a bird
We are all fledglings souls again.. Hesitant,

Excited at the edge of emptied air
That draws us on and out.. And more

And more
To as yet unimagined worlds, new wings

New felt realities we do not understand
But need - for  flight, to the horizon,

And our next breath.

Every now and then in the chatter and witter
And text and blather and the well-turned well-meant phrase
Of wherefore and because and if-then-but,
And mind the gap and be careful not to litter -
That plot our safe prosaic paths of tidy, well-lit days,
Someone walks out from this swirl of words,

But is not of it.  
And looks at you.

And looks at you.

Space. Now.

Something touched and felt.  
Time also woken in your glance - time warm
And tangible,  but - so brought to life -
Is thus gliding like an emerald snake
Towards its rest and hollow:
Towards another darker now that is
Loss and lost and forever loss,
containing as it will - no you.


But for now the dark eyes of your spell
have driven time away.
And now is all we have and all we need.
Together we contemplate the candle of your silence.  
And its snuffing out in absence.

A third presence at our table, at the end.

I walked into the rain. And, turning from,
I watched the curving flight of a bird that
Noticed me the high trees in mist across the valley.

And now,
Birch log in hand I open the stove door.
A rush of radiance. Intense comfort.
Like someone's hands about your face,
Forcing eyes to meet in urgent reassurance

Of human warmth and purpose.

Poems let the cold air in.

There will still be hearths and fires and warmth

But doors swing open. Sometimes

In the night

The breath of moors and moons and birdsong blown

To distances


The exhilaration of the strange.


But out there is

But out there is…


Aligned with the deep

Loving all of

Is ness,

Being,


Worms in fields,

Larks

Planets, and


The Nothing that is worth worship


And the furthest reaches of

Of

I am.

I scratched a living here and there
I don't know where.

And then I found a glade a space
A place

To be where thin sunlight was enough to live by.
Love by, maybe,
Sparingly.

As broken fingers moved to intertwine,

And all the days and nights were breathing
Threads of air.

But it was where

A note was sounded. Pure. Away.

So I might believe

That your haggard face in that regretful place

Was not all there was to see or say.

Come let us look together at our writing
And how it does caress the world to meaning and to be.  
A word is not just breath, or dark lines on the white:
It is an instrument of conjuring touch; a single feather maybe,
But think what they can do in numbers in the sky,
Or singly, with a smile, when a face is turned away.

So it is with these. And more than that - these ghostly fingers
Take hold to lift together stories by the million;
Shape, lay waste, and seed, and seed again.

To grow stone lintels on a prehistoric plain.
Spell bridges, roads and dwellings  - all the necessary noise of life.

And then bring it back to this small line and time.
That points to what may be.

No need to read the information leaflet
Carefully before treatment can begin.
Do not use as directed if that does not
Work for you.  May be taken ****** or aurally
Or applied to any sensitive area of skin.


If side effects occur, do it even more.
These may include: mid line or end point
Rhymes, a sense of quiet elation as a rhythm
Builds.   Thrills are quite common too when
A soaring, singing line comes flying on the wind quite suddenly


From what was empty sky.  You will know
Then that the Muse is On The Wing and must take
In ever larger doses by breathing deeply of your world -
Feeling the bubbling alchemy of heart and pen..


At which point - as you'll see


It is acceptable - even recommended! - to shout a bit
And bounce around the kitchen spilling tea.

The word Lyrical. Let us dwell upon it

For a moment.

It is of skies and waters and green leaves

Of descant harmonies and slim fingers

Splayed upon a page.



Of the clean air in the morning,

Just after dawn -

A slow incantation of

A poem whispered

to only one.


Of being very still to watch a bird

Alight, but then seem to stay for fleeting ecstasy

Of sun on feathers -

Before it flies.  


It is of Untouched time - and this

Little flight of words released


For you.

A blast of playful air that hits me with a whoop.
Enthralling, charismatic weather  - in your face!

A gutsy wind that spices up the day, twisting,
Teasing leaves to mass hysteria by the rush,

The flourish of a superhero cape then instantly away
To riff across the valley trailing shards of rain

Climbing for a mile to trees seen against a roaring sky
Then arcing back with shock wave force of

Spatterings that sting but wake me to
A pitch of seeing, cascading words around me,
Of a world now sharp and new - edged,

With delight.



Almost too much to write.

Welcome. Come in.

Shall we begin?


You ask me why I'm haunted
And by what?
A good question
I will try and tell you.

Ghosts are not things of night. They live on
In abandoned margins of our own
Ancestral selves. When something that was us
Is now an entity unloved and so too dark
To live in frail modern skin.

So, lest others see, I have Shunned it -
A powerful Amish word - it is no longer me -

It is some thing I can disown, avoid
Abhor; seek safety by concealment in another's
Hurt - so I see it lurks
Out There.

- a furtive fly tip of a still breathing form abandoned
on a cold flat road far away from friends or familiar habitation

So Lest others see

- then drive away to warmth to light to reassuring
‘There there’ conversation.

But I know it never goes. It survived my hate.
And crawled away to wait.

It is still dwelling in the cold fen winter landscape
Of the mind - the soul -
As dusk invades the stillness of the barren pasture
Near that road, have grown to know that ‘distance-from’
Is no longer safety.

And the shadows change the sight of my familiar path,
To strangenesses of my own self that now
Stare back from shades. Then a sudden howling  
From a distant wood half seen against a skyline.  
It will soon be dark. And it will be uncoiling.
And I know I will not sleep.


Nothing more terrible
Nothing more true


Where neither words nor another's presence
nor priests
nor books
nor God

Can distract from or protect from

WHO IS THIS NOW WHO IS COMING?

Closer yet, and closer yet, to me.  



Good heavens. Well that was interesting
I really felt the fear creeping towards me then.
Tell me Do you think it's real?


You mean Do you think he's real?
Oh yes - he's real. He's looking at you now..

I don't yet know him well you understand.

I have discovered we were friends once in a long forgotten war.

And we have spoken well - it has been hard.
But we did not turn our eyes away this time

So I am hopeful that together -  we will be
Anew.  
So let others see: I said to him
Welcome. Come in

Shall we begin?

It was a throw-away line you said.
But then again - it wasn't. At least - I
Wasn't sure.

So I picked it up when you weren't looking
And put it in my pocket. Later,
Carefully unfolding it I thought you
Might have wanted to say more.

But now, creased with time and wondering I see
It's just a scrap. So I put it back.

But carefully -

Upon the floor.

Shall I compare thee to a corona virus?
Thou art more resilient to my T cells.
Self isolation and employers’ threats to fire us
Will never keep me from you....  Oh, hells bells! -
Sometimes I wonder if our temperatures were raised
Together - I might just have a (dry cough) chance.
But however skilfully these lines are phrased
I cannot forsee any avenue of advance:
My compromised immune system’s done -
It cannot tell a virus from a sonnet.
One’s 14 lines, and t’other Covid19 but which one?
Never mind, my sympathetic nervous system’s on it!

Come on, let’s go! No need to plan it...
Hang on, what’s this? - “Keep 2 metres’ distance”?

**** it.

I was about to vouchsafe importantly at
Your meeting.

But then you spoke
In your soft accent,
Getting wrong, a preposition.

And looked at me, and smiled.

And I forgot
The lot.

The words climb slowly
To where we are already.
Here.
Now.

Standing on this ridge, I turn and see you,
Also seeing sky and earth anew.

The windway playing with the leaves
The fine light on the edges of the trees,
Falling to broken beauty on slopes to rivers, far far down.


Words follow us. They have to.
We are there before them,
But they do not know their place.

They puff up right beside us, Apologise for being late,
Look briefly into our eyes.
But then try to overtake.

Look there look here and think of it like this.

They think they know

With guile, place ornate frames around the view.

But I still see you.

We talked long and late by the fire.
Our world, the easy company of friends who know.
Outside, the snow was falling like the years -
Months in drifts against the house.

Time was slowed for us and we simply - were.
- A grateful coming home from years at sea.
And, shedding fretful summer's fever to achieve,
We breathed our time, our inwardness, our peace.

And at the bottom of the season's well
We found a heart of time to come as bright
As summer skies of clearing rain,
And all the promise of green shoots, and the light.

We talked long and late by the fire.
Our world, the easy company of friends who know.
Outside, the snow was falling like the years -
Months in drifts against the house.


At the bottom of the season's well of words
We found a heart of time to come as bright
As summer skies of clearing rain,
And all the promise of green shoots, and the light.

A pattering on the roof. A grey wavy day. Branches.
Warm cat is half asleep. The willow turning green in
The blessing of the sodden earth

Heavy with low skies,
A pregnancy of clouds and slow time.

Shall I compare thee to a motorway?
Thou hast better surfacing and a softer verge.
We fight our ceaseless cone wars night and day -
Now with your unrestricted middle lane let me merge.

My central reservation: my love may cause derision.
My lighting gantry does not now reach so high.
My global positioning system lacks precision
But could we at least give it a try?

Oh please give way and let me in
Please don't hard shoulder my little furry dice
I've got the jump leads on, I'll put my litter in the bin
I think - oh yesss! - I've hit the red line! - that WAS nice.

So long as men can love and fossil fuels bring other sorts of fire
So long last all the pile ups of middle aged desire.

Now grey morning and seeing through the
Little frame, my window willow with no leaves.
She waits till now - and finds in solstice
Her naked time that draws my eyes to her

She knows.

From this hurly burly
Let me step.

Just in the head, you understand:
Slight change of posture

All that's needed to be the Watcher
In the midst.

Now distanced by two decades at least;
But still too close to call, too close to say,
In some ways - yes - too close for comfort.

You, my father. 
Every day I still remember the many 
Fathers that I knew until the end -
And still know now. 

But mostly I do not know
What really happened:
What it felt like tapping out the Morse
In the rusty tubs that formed the clanking convoys -
Some steam driven, slow, and prey to watching underwater wolves.

But a surface raider got you in the end
Sunk the boat and with it your straw hat
Now both miles deep near Africa.

And later in the crowded camp, 
Trading that jumper, knitted by your mum, for food.

But watching others fading, knowing hope had 
Fallen on the wire, before they did.

But you kept going, on through all those days
To home, to peace, another life and comfort,
With which you told yourself you ought to be content.

And in many ways you were: 
Working reading fishing tennis golf, keeping bees, carpentry 
Playing bridge 
And holidays in south coast towns,
And reciting Shakespeare right out loud

At breakfast, in the bath, on county walks,
In bed.
"Listen to this line, Jerry," And I did.

You singing half remembered silly songs while shaving 
That ended in the middle 
of a line
Then started up again and again
And drove me and Mum half mad.

But that was you.

We fit together, more or less, in words
And roads and love. The winding courses
Of our time when we shall all, in day or dark,
Come to know grief.

He dabs his pursed lips after station porridge
And looks
Sad.
A sort of kiss..

A black speck. Tiny mite. A life.
Floating past the mountain of my face.
Scale of things, and poorly words to say
Anything at all.

It is enough, maybe All
To watch the fire, the flame. And see,
With no words, the Heavens,
And the earth.

Not for you the opening bars.
Sit back, fold hands, a little smile
At the beauty of the others' notes, familiar.

Now, you feel it coming. A caress
Of knowing fingers, lips. The flute rises
To an acquiescing nod, and

As our natural state is poetry
Every single word you say or see
Can stop you. Dead.  Fingers, cursors
Hover over screens.  
Hesitant to touch the light.
The light is.
And now
You live.

Your hair pulled back to bun,
Your focus on the phone.
Head up for inspiration once,
Then quick return to frowning words.

I watch you from across the train;
An elegance of tassled shawl,
Faint scent, disdainful glance
At passing green. A sigh.

Much later in the journey,
The reply.  Temples briefly held;
A hand that comforts
And despairs.  

Those careful words that did not work.

I think many people fall in love with you.
And through you, something in themselves
They never found, or more likely, lost
In all the trying to be true.

Times trying to be better, love in turmoil.  
Find a path, to please oneself and other.  
Neither all too often.  And at

The ending of the light, contemplate
A little life, meandering to its close.  

And then there's you.

We saw someone together on TV
She was called Sunny Quick.
The camera followed as she ran - so light,
She danced - down stairs.  

We both thought - but you said it -
"Good name".  And it was so exactly
Right. The thought, the pause, the
Words. So right that I knew then.

And still do

Babies are Right.  Down cobbled streets
Is me.  
The cool desktop, the smooth pen
Is me.
The whole world

Take me to my own strange places
And show me the beauty there.  
Is that what poems are all about?
The russet leaves, the glories of the
Autumn - yes. But I want the ruins
Within - the grey dripping lassitude
Of self, that knows no good of self or other -

To feel the  sun.

Tides and Seasons. Enfolding and Release.
The strengthening breath of Autumn calls
Our light to soften -
Quieten.  Quieten now,

As simple bore and stroke of days
Rolls the year along its darkening
Pathways, rich with blinded leaves:
Our deciduous words of change.  

Inherent meditation of the time, the place -
The single leaf that drifts across the pale
Cathedral's face sees and is this loving light
On fields, on houses, ponds and streams.  
Lie down with you.  Watch you
Close your eyes.

You have to face it as a sin against your friend
- The easy lie. A stupid comforter - 'I was about
To stop anyway' - half way through the run.

Not true, not true. I only said it to make you
Feel better.   But neither of us did.  Panting
On the road, with the untruth between us.

The snarling shouting mob of skin and bone
Howl me raw your sure sublime trajectory of rage.

You arc with more and more and more
All held within your careful Monday self;  

You are legion now:  a fiery crowd of verbs
Unanswerable with spitting inspiration.

The beauty is too bright to see.  I run

Before the meek warm waters of apology
Drag you to bedraggled shore
And dry sense.

Dark sky reserve gives way to swathes
Of generous reds in bursting final words
Against the sky.  Multitudinous -
To overwhelm the mind with more and more
And teach us to inhale the time the day the
Lovely sway in heavenly gatherings, floating
Harvest festivals of oak and ash and beech
And dreams.  

So lift me, sing me, ease me. Let me
Lie with like of you, and
So show trust in me, my words, when I
Do not.   To say a word of truth to you
Of this day too glorious to stay
Nor - in right mind - would we wish it so:

It banishes itself from sight.  
And so will come again.

What if it was the poems in our unformed breath
That really changed us, and the world?  
Not the known, the clear, the stones of words,
But the languaged sigh when someone in a crowd
Looks up.

Words should soar at break of day.
Impatient with the serotonin low, I
Break out coffee toast and sun.
How dare a... take a run
At this word...Neurotransmitter...
Stop me having fun?

Let there be brilliant light
For all.   Right here right now.  Always there
Above a cloud or two they say.
In fact I'll try another high jump word
To raise sky higher still,  the day -      
...5-hydroxytryptamine...

Hooray!

I see you in all your worldly goodness.
Bright as a welder's arc. Sudden.
Stark. So stark against the mind's sky.
Oh my sky, my new found hand -
Of God, or Donne. Who will tell of this?
In a year, ten years, the century to come?
                      
The encounters you can't calculate that matter.

You really never write a poem
They write you.

You rarely ever write a poem
They humble you.

Maybe the only good we ever know:
The hunger for the strange.  

Our inheritance of otherness
In the wandered rain of words.

My love returning from the field of other.  
Gently gently to the nearby time.

I cannot see you, feel you. Where you look
Is not for me. I know a word
Will come forth when you sleep.

Take your saying to the opening day - to speak
- To see - a better world.
All the everything you are is now.

In this next breath.

Waiting room door opening for me.
Pigeon coming
The Other Way.

The melancholy is there alright
But real unreal in sense of simple
Thinking wrong right turn?
Who knows?

Some future state of economic social
******* that leaves all free to breathe
With sun and joyful rain at every turn.

And dragging selves that wrap themselves
Against the slowing rain
Are gone.

But here we are, and here it is
Rickets or gravity
Little difference. We are left
To ourselves.

Dark lines mark the pallid page to life
And start to sing
Of glooms and brightness; heavy steps
And light.
To a final Overwhelming.

- So we talk and write of Death.

But then the wind rises. The leaves now
Lift again, though 'Sit by you sit by you'
The Death bird sings by day by night.

The words welcome the sounds,
Listening in their fields of white
- all my good shepherds -
In the high fields, lanes and valleys of my life.