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.

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.

The sly obscuring sheets are undulating seas
And landscapes white and shadows
Flowing.

All taken in a vivid moment's memory,
As langorous limbs are briefly open fields of
Sharing.

And - I know - of course not all you are.
But allow a sunlit second: you naked, with me,
Smiling.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oh that I could tower the words
Or send them powering underground
To feel the warmth of deeper worlds
And find the geologic power
Of you.

Then I should see and know your goodly earth
That concrete, brief and money serving prose
So slyly veils, betrays so sickly from me
Every day.

I want you in the coldly marbled glory of
A soaring place of awe for dreams -
A monument valley where the trivial has no place.
I want you in the moment of a glance -
A quiet corner of a room
Where plots for good
May hatch.


I want you in the tears and smiles
And curious nothings
Of all the many miles
To come.

Green leaves at the window submarine my room.
A drift of wind, then still,
This waiting,  haikued day.

All the journeys in the world are waiting too,
For our telling and retelling, rummaging for words
To pleasingly adorn, but pointedly, the page;
Voices for another life to hear, maybe, and find their road.

Till all the storms of self subside,
Our ghost voices left to breathe from shades,                                                                
And whisper on a wind that always knew the lines,
As others ride the chattering of their days.

So come with me, to silence. Stay.
- There are no words for truths of Being With.
The million little brush strokes of the willows -
They simply say: just dance today.

For MWF
Summer 2014

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.

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.

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.

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 asked the cat if it had a muzzle.
It gave me a look. Got off my lap.
Came back and sat
In profile.

Now is the very time. The most high.
I tell you all to stand.  There is the sun
Of freedom.  There, see.  
Stand up and speak, be heard, be seen
To see it.  Spirits stretch to light
By nature, by all of us in eyes that
Meet in quiet powerful crowds.

We may slowly, sadly walk to home.
But we will ever each be keeping close
The open, breathing words.

I saw the  heavy angel of the bell
And heard his plainsong clear.
The length of fleshy life he showed to me.

I walked away and all steps were bell-notes
Telling me a silent truth of in and out.
Clapping hands that followed, filling

All the valleys of my mind with mother joy:
A grace and blessing of no thoughts
Just ringing life and clouds and air.

Footfalls in a street of light. A
Wondering.  A slowing to the pace
Of searching for beyond - beyond
The gated places. All such places
Come to grief.  

But grief as leaving, grief as seeing.
Grief as necessary arcs in rainy skies:
To help you wonder
Help you see.

Plane wheels slow, a last half turn, and stop.
Fading jets, ignored companions for the miles,
So loud again in silence.

Their ringing absence leaves a sliver of clear sight.
As all unwind from one life to another
Searching in a tiny 'and' of time
For the pieces they must carry off from
Now to then.

You hold back a little from the crowd,

And look away and see beyond the
London grey, a tree in fullest height of green.

And in that fragile moment's grace
Heart and mind leap through to fields, to water
And to empty skies that have nothing,  
So have all.

You rise and walk along the aisle.

You smile.

Do you know the words that tell, can hit
The apple with a thin and twisting bolt
Of truth? The Gessler'd page - a sneer
Of whiteness waiting for the fall, the fail
Of wish that aims too low too high.  

You have no choice. Breath cannot hold for long.
Release release release the words
Are flying - not yours now. To **** or save
The wide-eyed boy. Your own
And William's son. The world,
The only one.

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.

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.

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.

Need you away.
Pure, like scour wind through skeletal hedges
Stark upon a skylined field.  No leaves.
Gone.

Want no shelter.
Want no easy sooth. The words themselves
Are blown: Beside the point. Always
To exasperate by nearness,  not
Quite near enough. So go.

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.

Your red dress sweeps down
Your curves your truthful self
Moving smooth away from
Words.

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.

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.

Hope. We use the word in texts and other
Voices each to each, down vistas of
Our separated days.

Say it! - 'Hope'. A rounded affirmation from
The slightest kiss of breath: intended blessing
For the other's life: a wafted seed, a wish towards,
A wave.

Or see it as a ball that's tossed - 'Here,
Catch!' ...and despite the elves of wind,
You do.!

Wet sting on cupping palms is sudden joy.

So hope returns with outstretched
Hand and smile beside this calming
Softened roar of sea.

And hopes are bedded deep as wells keep rain,
As seedlings grow from legions of themselves
Before. And will again, and will again,
And will again.
___
Envoi -

Sometimes I tread the Higher Country of the Soul -
So fine and bright and clear.

But lesser things are good to see
In all the valleys
Of our lives.

Like Hope.

And Hugs.

And Beer...

Don't try

I'm everything you know
And do not know

Don't try.

Now throw the ball

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.

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

My central reservation, thus: - will our bodywork survive this amorous collision?
My tailgate does not now rise so high.
My global positioning system points towards oblivion
But could we at least give it a try?

Oh please Give Way and let me in
Don't 'No Entry' or hard shoulder my little furry dice.
I've got the jump leads on, and although emissions are a sin..
I think - oh yesss! - I've hit the red line! - that WAS nice.

So long as men find dangerous curves excite, and fossil fuels breathe other sorts of fire -
So long last all the crazy pile ups of middle aged desire.

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.

The easy trees. Deceptive soar to latticed skies
And stretch of trunks to overwhelm: your welcomed trick
To feel the circling of the height. Right here.


I see the gaze your melancholy eyes imply -
Serious with sight, so every image
Is of sorts, a selfie, but also shows us all
How to look up.

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.

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.

I can feel me rushing forwards into night.
Not just a phrase - a horror truth.
The choices made, decades buried now
Exhume themselves with bony fingers, dirt
Under the nails.
And crawl towards my life.

I loved you then, I love you now. But now
The days are speaking consequence of lust,
That no amount of dulling wine can lay.
No thoughtful poems exorcise from night to light.
The shadows of the wrong are on
The windows of my house.

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.

You're still not seeing it
The master began....
I know I said
And shot him dead.
I can I can I can.

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

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.

Your words flowing to the point and to
The furthest reaches of this space.
I am not in this place now but float
To possibilities we have no time no time to meet

The coffee steam entwines an elegant image,
A nuance that swirls the room to life.
And I am made calm and bright with this
Breezy logic that entrances and - truly -

Transforms.



For JM.  March 2008.

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.

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.

Say it   -  "Kayleigh"

~ An upward flight of sound ~

"Kayleigh"

Somehow, chiming free,
And aligning
With dawn fields, seen from this train,
Rumbling towards duller syllables.

'What syllables?
Oh Yes, I get it now
-We're off to London?'

Yes, and - go on - say that too:  

Lon-don.

We are descending stone steps to a dungeon
We are definitely London 'bound'! -

(I know - too obvious a play on words of course
But hey - let's keep it light -
We're just bouncing around, right?)

So - let's bounce back, bound up!
Steps two at a time in a rush to light,
Out of breath, but still thinking of you at the top,
And realise with a little shock:
You can't say ‘Kayleigh’ sadly
Or leave lips pursed or shut!

'Kayleigh' opens!
'Kayleigh' smiles!
Kayleigh is Out There..
That's it - of course! - I see it now!
That name's already on the stage.    
'Kayleigh' looks the fog of doubt away.
So - you see? You see?!
You can see for miles.  

But now, for me, I stare at the ground.
London is the word.
Grey light.
And people, and long platforms.
A shadowed crowd,
Converging on a barrier.
A symbolism almost too obvious  - too trite.  

But, I whisper,
You don't know what power I have inside.
- I can hot wire your dreams -
And now - to confide this just to you -
Years have given me the means.

~ To see and speak the Other's Grand Adventure -
(that superpower only comes with age) -
Of honesty and risk and more -
The truth as far as we can know it, each to each:
The bright flash of contact with the other,
Face to face or on the page, that starts the upward flow.
And so more of me and, as I know
It shall be, more of you.
So, let's dream you, climb you, storm-wind-elate you
To the heights

Of soul ambition
Of your name  

Kayleigh

Let's Go

________


But our little walk together
Now is done.
This is as far as we go.
For we are colleagues, yes?
Nothing more
Nor less
(I would not want it to be less).

It's time.
Enough to be a fellow traveller for the day.  
A chat or two, perhaps, along the way
To confess - I do think we rhyme.  

This is my path,  I turn off here -
The way along the hillside, then the wood
Over the style.
So now, shake hands, maybe a little hug.
I can awkwardly say -
“Thank you for the inspiration of your name.”
“Please accept this gift.”
And turn away.
It was good to know you, Kayleigh.

For a while.  



Postscript


The words won't do what I want them to
They never do.

~ Actually, not true.
Sometimes - out of somewhere, nowhere,  
The little lines align to tell a truth.

Maybe.

At least for now.
At least for you.

This is a laughter love my dear!  
One would not be so much
Without the other.

Please take that to your heart
Or not, in any way you want,
For there are many ways to be a lover.

And the little wistful word of ‘just’
Is always there to help;
We have just a chat, a cuppa - just a natter.

Nor are you ever to be addressed as ‘my’
In these modern, lonely days;
May the lie in self reliance never shatter!

So just to walk with you a pace or two
Is allowed for now I hope,
Before our light-together days
Just scatter.

I lay you down as gently as I know
Uncover all, and all my words
So simply fly away.

No distance now. We are the sunlight
Touch and silent ancient speech of
Leaves and rainy roads that weather back
To sky and fields and streams.

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.

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.

A lifetime would hardly be enough to listen
Long and talk to you, as here we sit
In newly plastered swirling pink
That might look cold, but so not so -
For we are wombed by warmth of voices
Ours, through us - remembered others -
And a ghostly third.