'And do you think these words are meant for you?'
She nods and looks a moment far beyond the room.
'I think some may be - yes.  Not sure I want
To know'
'And how do you feel about that?'
'The words or the uncertainty?'
'Either. Both. You playing games with me?'
'Believe me - no.
But maybe words must be the only bridge
Between us now.'

She sighs. 'We go our ways, we play
Our roles and mime to expectations,
Others' and our own,  to puppet-please
Through low-lit trudging slabs of days.

But deeper common streams of time
May spring from separated human years,
Make symmetry of selves and find
A breathing river loving all our lost and found.

That we may always know.'

I watched you as a drop of water run
Liquid in this bony place of stanchions
Cases, bags and hardened faces.

For a time you lasted here
Shaken by bad tempered stampings
Waitings
Delays and
Endings.

Until at last
You fell.
And rose again
As cloudy light
Enchantment for a sky we cannot see.

A moment on a morning street in Town
That petalled day of doorways and dream-travellers
Staring at the unimagined light
Holding shabbed down crowns
And fading sceptres of themselves
Towards the day that also sheds
Its blankets. rising to the sky, the churches and
All breath,
All life.

You were sitting, waiting, on a wall
At dusk
Long legs swinging, idle, lovely
In the slowing day and half light of
The trees.

I saw the hair, the hands, the don't care
Look, but your head was raised and saw
Beyond the passing and the dust
To sparkling times that were so surely there
To find tomorrow.

You watch the words with me no longer.
They left in early sunshine
Neither of us
Wanted.

A seeing that conjures what it most desires:
A solemn gathering of words that lift
To music always waiting listening
For you.

The words are  there to find
At heart of matter in the pristine time
Our imaginations inhabit yet -

But now in recollected stillness.
As I watch you walk away and fade
Between the trees,
And tangled undergrowth of waking life.

He moves them forward so sensitively.
Palms spread: firmly gently, shielding ushering
To the front
Each small dark group with grieving wreathes.

As they advance he swings behind another
-Almost jaunty light he moves -
Till time is right, and then again
They go to place against the stone

More flowers.

A splinter of time is felt in carpet treads
And your smiling question look
When you know exactly what it is
I want
As you are always there in tails of light
From ivy shining gold on
Waiting trees in evening's thinning presence

As I wait now.

And from this place I watch myself
And see the knots and pain so clear:
They are all the meals I eat that
Parents ate that all the silent unnamed
Faces round this table now
That were and breathed and tasted morning air,
And are not.

Breathe through me.

Now feel all they meant to say.

I stroke words with mouse's arrow -
But feel no easy daylight common sense,
Blessed and cursed to know
Elating separation from the scrabbles
In shallow city seas of present
Struggle to survive and breed.

And yes I know there will be more -
More fresh and blue high wakening days;
While earths of slow engendering wait
Content to breathe alone until I
Stop

To breathe with them.

We start.
Talking
And sort of...
Running.

At the first climb
We stop, breathing
Heavily - both dead, but for a comma -
And look at concrete under our feet
and windmills turning distant on the hill.

You OK?
Yes.

Start again.
on the Way now
Hawthorn and mud beside us and new green in the fields.
Easier victories of pace and breath alongside talk.
Of Warburtons and nuts and bolts.
Getting into it now
Feeling good - seeing green, paces flow
And rocky styles and sloping fields made possible.

'To that edge?'
'OK'
- Our version of sprinting -
Across the hard ridged grass
To an upward sloping wall corner,
And now the first real pain in chest and legs.  Briefly desperate.  
But another topic turns words to distance
Along a gully and narrow treed ridge
To another climb.
Our brief paces stab the ground.
Paces
To
Keep
Going

No words now.
Nothing but
Splitting lungs.
We push unforgiving gravity
Up a turning track
Going up
Still going up and around

The agony of contrasts -
Pale glorious clouds lift late sky colours of rose and blue
- While we are slow and heavy torments of road, and stones, and bones.

Can see the lookout now at Royd
We can do it
We can.
Can I...?

*******

Christ.

Doubled up gasping clutching the wall
Try to read the tourist sign's shaking print -
- may it stop the pounding -
But hearing also that eerie sweeping close now, and the gears -
A dizzying look up at the spinning blades

Can't believe we've got this high...

But no rest - chill of early Sping
Tells us not to linger with our light going:
Shadowing will be the woods:
Drawing up dark between the trees,
And we're not there yet.

Easy now.  
"Doing OK?"
"Doing OK."
We float along high fields and farms and light and words
How many milliseconds for hot cross bun dough?
How about a Triumph Triple?
(And you can forget electric scooters in Brighouse)

While late March branches hint at leaves
In the narrow lane we half run-walk
- Across another field - and under a quietening sky
A dark downward flight through trees to tarmac, street lights and...  

The Big Finish

- Aches gone and tiring feet forgotten
In a final dash to the pub.

Briefly arching for air over the car.

"Not bad -"
"No - Not bad at all"
Whose turn is it?
(That Third Person never buys a pint)

Lager?
Yes.
Nuts?


Definitely.


*                *      ­          *


Postscript:
          -  And however long or short, I will still have run with Neil                
                                  across those sloping fields with the light
                                          and the words and the hedges -

Sometimes I can go to that place where everything
Is beautiful
Or fascinating
Or wondrous.
Even my father's encroaching depression,
Following us
Up the green sweeps of the golf course
As we tramped together
With the words slowly failing
Between us

I could cry at that now.
I could not cry then.

Finally it stood beside us
Baleful.
Then coldly with us
In the back seat of the car
All the way home.

And so it turns from sweet to sour
And - worse than this -
No taste at all as dry grass trodden
Brown and flat inconsequential, blown
And underfoot
As our paces walk away from each
Until the sound is gone.

Now - saved by patterns rhythms lines
And forms of seeing that can find a path
To that surprising place of rightness in
Sudden sight of you again
Across the crowded years

Where all the lost unspoken words
Can sound anew.

She just could not believe that she had come
To this

                                        Again

He had  said – Come on – you used to like this
Just for me – and us – it might be good.

- Try
- Please

For me.

Yes – for him.
                                            Again.

So on this chilly day:
Awkward helmet boots and fumbly gloves.
Cold and fear and knees near ears
(The pillion's lot on sports machines.
...and he wouldn't buy the chop...)

They were off, and now she hoped that was not a pun.
She did her best not to wobble and resisted the temptation to put her feet down when they stopped. Ungainly awful Stop Wait, Jerky Action.
An old film forced to watch.  
Miserable claustrophobia in  traffic queues, between a fuel tanker and a hearse.
Hot foul breath of diesel smoke.
  
She felt sick.  
She wanted out.

[The World convulsed, dissolved reformed
Things changed for her for once
For all]



The slipstream coming off the curved bubble above the glowing clocks buffeted her head with a roaring chaos that added to wild riot.  She hooked the next gear and opened the throttle wider.   The determined act of twisting the grip brought her body lower to lie on the tank, and her heart closer to the heart of the engine's breathing fiery centre.   A green high-sided truck disappeared over her shoulder into into her past: into non-existence.  And in front she knew - a climbing curve left and a stiff side wind.   She relished the anticipation of the change, getting ready to shift her weight, her eyes burning up the road - fixing the aiming point at the apex of the bend. Now! - the bike eased off the vertical, and healed into the challenge of a new world order of curve and cross winds.    
An alliance of forces at the Edge:  United,
Poised, and aimed by thought and skill -  the creation and flex of a true sword.    

And the noise!  

The noise was an overwhelming but understood cacophony – the packed high-RPM music of the Engine - loud and hard.  
The blaring exhaust and the tyre roar and the wind...
Coming at her from the left now.  She bucked and weaved a little with road bumps and sideways forces - a muscular fish in a torrent - but these were trivial disturbances.  
Together they were the embodiment of an Act of Will and Purpose -
THIS course THIS speed.  
She wanted more.  

More power, more speed - so more lean to hold it
With now a less than perfect gear change in the mix.  
A sudden bump absorbed by the suspension, and the left hand wing mirror blazes with a shower of sparks from the grounded footpeg arcing back into the dusk.  The rear tyre briefly spins in mid air – the engine screaming to the rev limiter - and returns to tarmac with a zwip.    A rictus of mortality  and terror shudder the bike -
A whiff of Death that lets her live.
This time.

They were through the moment.  

And she had kept the throttle wide.


Courage.  

No substitute. And its sometime close friend -

Instinct.

You live by them together or not at all.  

This curve was ending, and the speed extreme
Almost – Supernatural.

Difficult to hold her head forward against
The flat of the wind's hand held up in her way:
“An end to your defiance!”  

But she was not to be turned aside.   The landscape could only be seen clearly about a mile ahead - All else was pulsing blur:  
An unwinding ribbon of dark green and blue and orange - like a star field at jump to light speed.  But the moment held forever visceral –  remembered forever.       She thought her heart would burst with the joy of being alive on this edge -  
At this time  
Of all time.  

She knew -

There would be more curves and cross-winds
But Now - she was Up Front, In Charge
and,  BY GOD she shouted with the wind
SHE WAS GOING FOR IT!

You did not want him to touch you at first
But he did anyway
Held you so your feet were off the ground
(put me down you thought)

But there was something in his lift
The easy, irritating way almost
He did it to you
Like you had no substance

But when he put you down and
Looked long
You wished
-and you were -

Still up there.

Light and dark and drills and drainrods
In several windows where a wind a move
A night shale fall

Once was.

Hovering hooked hands
Hating the alliteration as much as
Unwanted rhyme.

Too inward now
So go out to the different dark
I meant dark only
Dark

And a voice from another room heard not heard
An explanation of something I should think
But moving on as News people say
We hear the distant vehicle with a purposing
Of sorts

And nearer out of sorts a startled cat with clearer explanations
Than the laugh that reassures
From the other room

And upstairs notebooks lying underbed
Incomprehensibly heavy with the tortuous oughts

Of ink.

Scotch at sundown.  Good cat on the chair,
And then green light I know
will be there for me in the bedroom.  Cars
And self mocking subjects with the fumes of sleep
not far away.  Paradoxically I think another drink will just allow the bottom of the page to become reachable...

What do the dots mean?  
“You know We know It's possible.  And maybe you can participate in this thought too.”  

Not wanting to carry on like a stony upward path near moors near Langsett.  
With a forgiving friend that runs as well.  
But not too well for me to fall behind in the chat chat chat of miles to go before I drink and miles to go before I drink....

A piece of bread to soak up spirits to their full height?
Not quite

And I'm always frowning always at the paper and at you
I do not mean to

You see?

The ****** rhymes they get in without me wanting (and also wanting)
The clever trite score of sound like sugar hit that ashames me after
Drinking down the self congratulation of a chime of words.


And there it is
The stone of end at the top and the last thing we might see

Before descent to all the rivers and the ferns and...

And words

I wish you could be here now
Waiting for the winter dawn
-too early yet -

Outside - cold black and thin treed
Hard by the Dark River

But here the glow touches each to each

You rise to draw a curtain slowly
- night clothes open softly to the screen -
And I am briefly jealous of Peter Mandleson.

And yet – I fear sometimes you do not know it
And then yet – maybe in the forgiving light of some days
Of some soft evenings
You do -
When the lilt and sway of easy nothing finds balance at the heart
Of everything
And all is possible, and time is kind.


2.
And then - a 'when',and an 'if', and a shattering of hard light
through cold glass, and
Out again
To weave another self - become the one that holds the stuff of others
and does the stuff
Out there.

- No one else to cope or conquer
All the 'I's' rest on you - you cannot rest.
- In the fever of the day's words and words and words....
While you – slightly apart even here,
Strive for stillness
And the steady smiling gaze that lights up
The unspoken words
Between.

3.
The wonder of it all
Searching out and up:
With much found already
Your blood and soul knowing, moving upwards through
The memories of silly shoves of playground fears and falls
Lighting them from within.
The Opening Flower - open hands and eyes for others
Others turning to look...

Gently walking with them pacing out their lives
They touch the lilt and lift
Of you.

You will give back their profound dance to their mind and eyes.
The Peripheral Vision – the little moving light that says –
listen to me
listen to me
This is your birthright -
Quietly saying – you are all power to embrace


And part

To wander in byways for all the simple certainties of drifting in the
Now:
All there is...

Now - To reach up wide and far through the thin bars
Feeling warm rain and hope and light.
The beautiful graceful stem and leafing of the logic:
Tell me who you are.

....

Maybe,

In the end,

“Drifting is an important value”

For you

Too!



- For S.
Christmas 2008

Herding flatly in the heat of streets
They rise up
Expecting rights and comfort all around.
But there is none.

Well, as a matter of fact there is some
(Thanks to Matt Cook we can all be more honest now
In poems.  Gear-changing - so much fun)

For instance, take 1 - 4 above.  
It's about groups of people in cafes and bars
In a hot evening city.  I wasn't feeling
Like Joining In.
So,
They were all irritating gits in my eyes
All condemned therefore in writing about it.
Then and afterwards
They were sad desperate zombies, so they were
All looking for a fix of pleasure, distraction, coin
Of their toil exchanging misery for oblivion and so

Doomed
Doomed
Doomed.  

But they weren't really
Of course.

I expect many of them had a truly great time.
Staggering laughter, blow-out fun, exuberance
Of release - and dancing through the
Smoke and din and drink and clashing colours, scents.

Maybe in midst someone of special poise  
Looked felt words across that bar that
Roared and rocked them far apart.  
Then laser quiet unites:
A magic channel switching out the noise.
Later they loved.
It tasted good and lasted.

Years, children, garden, wins,
Losses, and still some Mayhem Friends -
'Remember that night, and the chap
With the crash hat
Who just stood and looked?

I wonder what happened

To him?'

These lines these words are coming home, coming home.  
Playful, light with nothing to forgive
Or do
Really

But this is real.
This is all my world now...
Are they for me are they for you?

Me I guess
But they may reach
You

I still lie. Words are so easy to lie with.

But to truth with words you first have to
Lie with them.
Love them
Have intimate surprising knowledge of them
(because intimacy is always surprising)

Is this what makes intimacy so scary for some?

In touching you
With words or eyes or soft nails between

We might touch off a sudden flash or crack
Of powder dry for years.

That face that curve of neck those eyes
A tilt of feature and a look that does
Not mean to but cannot help but hold
Me helpless staring - almost daft with
Being with you
Distant in the world.

A New Moon seen through winter branches.

It's such a pain when you lose a poem on the motorway.
Near Leicester, as I recall.
(Or not)

And it was such a good opening -

Such a line

Full of simple power - lyric heart and
Earth and you...  
But now not here
Now no more.

Like friend who died with sunken eyes
I could then just see
3 weeks ago:
A curious distance from death.

The day after I could still see him,

And in 5 years time I will again
I know.

But 3 weeks?

The first thing you notice
As the clothed self starts to dissolve
Is the relaxation.
A kind of sinking into the the buoyant world
And surrender
So is in there too
But not capitulation poor and bowed
More a fizzy feel for all the
Overwhelming all
That can be
In the curve of fences
Seen from trains
And blurs of green and soft remembered walks
Of girls.

Mostly.

I have to say.

And moon and planets squirrelled through
The secret words of electrons to
The screen.


Food is all around us but we starve.

I once tried to write a poem
(or was it prose?)
About two so in love
(was it you and me?)
That they couldn't kiss because
Each time
They looked,
They smiled,
Then grinned
At each other and their all,

And just their teeth met
Click.
And they laughed
Just to be.

How did I love thee? Let me count your teeth.

I walk in from the dark and wet  
The glass door sprung to slow me.
Find a chair.
Collapse.

Am I exhausted or
Not?

I don't know.

A friend of long ago and now is dying
The shadow of his place with gulls and shops
I leave on Albert Road.  
Broken arm across his short betraying breaths
With that inevitability grin
I know so well from school and later,
As little bitter fortunes

Unfurled their flags.

I walked in through his easy door
Words floundering till whisky hits
Then:
Of course we will! Sure we will!
- We fill the months and weeks with plans
Travel to the sights he wants for him.
Boats and Locos, Houses, Friends.
The evening slews in amber liquid,
Fades in fervent words.

Morning grey.
For me the stunned drive back to work
And England's ridges higher -  home to home.

Finally Southbank - monied words.
Their voices to the ceiling reach:
A gentle civilised hubub of the saved
Bathed in culture, purpose and the careful light.

And you are back there, purposing a
Fractured night
That counts each clock chime you restored.

Oh now, by all the alleys, faces, roads
And domes of London,

Would it were not so

Not so
Not so
Not so.

And there is nothing wrong with Depression
Strange to say
It has its rhythms and
Almost
Its delights
Too.

Too heavy to raise your eyes
You stare at the world
Through the black bars
About four feet from you
Sloping down.

Leaves
And rain
A dark green world
But even through these tragic rimmed tunnels
That were eyes
I can see it's green
But it's hard too.
That leaf - the one with the rust on the left edge
In the rain.
I don't want it or I to move
From here.

Bare pad of feet on wood - he feels her warmth
Sashay in the towelling robe to sit
Before him in her simple finery,
Hair in dripping ringlets from the shower.

Across the little kitchen table eyes
Meet and know in comfortable quiet.

The tea between them steams its blessing.

A misty world is waiting for the words
She leans and looks to know his question.  
"Diamonds, dreams, or love?" he says.

A slight incline of head and hazel eyes.
Outside the quantum dance of autumn leaves,
But here is human trust that wills
A circle round them both Forever.  

"Kindly Chinese soldiers live in Cookham"
A slim hand reaches past his cup to touch
His fingers, "Don't worry - dreams do that, My Love,
And we started/ended with the third as it should be..."
And as for diamonds - well, the day will tell!"

They look their love and rise to go their ways.

The leaves dance on.

Sometimes you need a poem.
Sometimes only a poem will do.
Or at least a couple of words
That hardly know each other
Dancing together
Close.
Just a few steps.

And you never know – it might build.

Hesitantly...

Has
The grey rain
Taken

The Beat
Away?


No way, No WAY, NO WAY!

In absent minded surfacing from sleep
He rolls and bops her gently on the head.

A jump for both.

(They still sail dream-skies singly: clouds and rain)

A yawn, a sigh of loosening night..then giggles
...and half into the pillow:
'Do you always do that after...?
'Always.'
The secret smiles that start face down in cotton
Mean mischievous all.
And so the artful stray: fingers across the sheeted fields to find
To touch: the stroke, the tease, the tender joke
Of cartoon-witches' nails that swiftly change
To quietest whisper of his finger-end near lashes  
To brush the boyish shock of hair that falls
Across her face and is so  

Perfect.  

2. And growing light reveals what last night shone
From so deep within her
And now she knows it too.
Seeing in his eyes the certainty she feels -
Now her Longing Being is achieved
As they climb to light together and  
The lovely dance that wants to happen
Draws them on the little loving path
To earthly joy - and no worse for that...

3. What fingers and eyes began as wisps
And threads of possibilities,
Now feel the planet-surge of ocean swell
And sensual intertwine of selves and limbs so serious-silly
That detail blurs then flashes sharp as ice:
The little sweat that slightly pools - twice - at the base  
Of her back
He strokes with hands behind her
As her naked song and curves and rhythms rock above him - ribcage moving
breath half open lips...
Yeys and ooaoos and silences.
She dives to ****** a smiling kiss in midst
Of whirling storms (that shock of hair again!)
Then resumes the unselfconscious closed-eye calm
Whose movement is the music of the earth.  

4. Then all goes quiet.


Excuse me.
Mmm?
Are you meditating?
Mmm.
Don't you mean OM?
Shh! -  A secret smile -  and, well, why not?


The shiver of a different self - not unwelcome but unsettling
Creature of a liquid ecstasy
Now very close
And something far beyond itself
Or rather saved to birthright body-spirit-soul
Answers, tells,
But will not be tamed.

5. The final moves:  her face sky-upwards, back,
Eyes closed, she sees the bursting stars
Inside her head - falling falling falling  
The golden smile of Rightness Here and Now...
It's done...

Ruined, softly felled on forest floor
With sighs of syncopated  breath

He draws a sheet the length of her pale form.  

6. Hands on his chest, she rises  

Face framed by sheets - medieval queen.
"I thought you were a Princess, not a nun"  
"I'm glad you noticed -  I am both, of course."  
Exalted from the inner pagents' light
With one smooth move you panther to the floor.
"Stay - let me see you whole again and human"
(She knows he fears that alien point in love)
She stands patient, watching, while I gaze.
Enough?
Enough.
It is not right to linger.

A playful far-too-rapid Tai Chi twirl,

Then off to make the tea...



- For The Dancing Princess
- For S.
Late Summer 2009

("Undimmed the joy of this new-happening love.
With all the confident lightness born of vows
As yet unspoken but more real for that.")

I passed to you a magazine with
An article on Love and Loving.
'Here - look at this', was lightly said,
- With grin and irony of look -
'If you want to know about love...'

Then back to screen and papers, emails, work.

Quiet for a space in open plan humdrum.

Then looking up: your hand, the magazine.
'Yes' was all you said.

But your eyes
Were full and dark and teared in pity
For you.

For all the World.

Light labour
But labour still
To crystal the words
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.

Here she is she is she is!
My wordy wordy baby
A gurgling delight
Of diverse messy
Life.
Almost ready for whatever
you may bring...

Yes
She's a poem
She's a song
She won't be here too long,
But she can sing,

And all for you.

Words are dangled, shown distant
To me
A hint of pattern
Links
And music
Perhaps.

Have I the strength or will to walk towards them?
In the swirls of life noise,
Litter distracts my feet
And in itself, might form..
Maybe another poem..?

That's the trouble
And the glory
You never get there.

Good.

She sits behind her screen
With few words for me, lying
Barely in her presence.
We both wait
We both hear constant wind
From massive fans some rooms away
But they have taken all the stuff
For air to ruffle – no leafy movement to distract
From thoughts of what I owe
To all not here.  
So, still this room for now -
Like a pothole, really
Where the only thing ruffled, usually, is me.
(All these tunnels look alike to some)


Now - wheeling in to shelving thick with labels.
Green gowns, short words each to each.
"Rapid induction for this one please, John."
And with a green mask and cold sharp
To the back of my left hand,
I fall back from the world into...

Gone.

Coming down the carriage with her coffee, tea and name badge,
She LOOKS like an Emelia.
Serious and quite beautiful in some ways
In her dark skirt
Her keys that hang and jingle
Her expression of slightly resentful concentration -
A miniscule pursing of the lips as she pours
- She was not made for this.
She was once a princess.

She still is.

The lyric life arising larks from you
In mornings evenings
Days of yellow leaves
And roads of
Dark and wet

But light and fortitude of lightness come from words
Spoken
With wings.

I owe a poem to that sloping road and gate
Outside the doctor's waiting in the sunshine.
The bare trees, cars and few people
Waited too.

Just a Monday morning
Outside the doctor's.
- Just a gentle kiss from the World
In the sunshine.

There are salvations in staring at the joins in the blocks of the rocks.
Like a fire from denial too long of that crouched and smouldering
In the learnt importance of crossing roads.
Importance that will not allow a life
Afterwards
But - maybe we can say - in the midst of getting and spending
Wrench yourself away
To stand still and stare at the stones
That way sanity lies....
Far away from boredom
And fearful cold to start with
- but not boring.

And *** - what of that?
Like walking on the fell naturally grows to a run...
For fun
For more than that
Where it all Comes together?!
yes - indeed.  
Intensity of staring with eyes shut in passion
The glorious arc -  
That commands the eye away from fragile later worlds
That may or may not be...

You gave me in the shining image raw with
Water, claws and streaming head  
- That oblate crunch of teeth  
Set in a grin that lives and dies with all our rivers.

Loving on the run,
You keep your red blood rapture close:  
Defiant body heat  
Amongst the Winter reeds and ******* eddies  
Lit with bone white moons coldly  
Whispering to the quaking weak
'you..and you - you will not see the Spring...'

But YOU - You will  
You've got it sorted you have - YOU!
And I know about your Previous -
Oh yes, Sunshine, the list goes on:  
That already-landed trout,  
The picnic scraps,  
The soggy **** (a shock   they   were!)
The little girl in daddy's boat
Who so wanted you for home and comfort...

But you love and leave them all YOU do.
Hey! Come back here! I've got more questions to…

But you've gone of course -
A bark, a twist, a finger (if you had one) to the bleary world.  

Taking your pagan grace to depths we cannot see.  
The Celtic torq of crystal bubbles track
Your ancient underwater poetry and poise  
This artist's camera lightly saves.

And me?
My hopeful words: a suffixed flap  
Of flattened gestures;  

While slim you slip away  
To snap your life on Life,  
Salvaging the Sun  

For Spring,
For us.