Chattering birds, not colourful
But friendly in their own grey way.
They make a lot of noise,
Not really saying much
But making a big effort
To be understood.
So willing to help
But not to commit,
Each proposal embraced
By a disclaimer; they mean well,
Of course, they do.
Their motivation can’t be faulted,
But there’s need for a psychic, a mind-reader,
For everything’s insinuated, nothing discussed.
So many points pronounced, declared,
Underlined, exclamated but not communicated,
Feeling no empathy, we all put on our coats
Against the cold draft of confusion.
.

Pale shadows of early spring –
a sense of unfolding into fragile hours,
not ours to keep.
White winter days of danger past
and still, that on-going uncertainty.
A word in every drop of crystal breath,
Caught and held a nano-second
and hope running back to a beginning
never found.
A glossy serpent bites its tail
in an endless game repeating itself.
This circle, this oval orb
Empty yet containing all.

Between the butterfly and time
there is a space for bumblebees
to cultivate the clockwise rhythm
of the sky, applying prose that
might provoke a quantum leap
to patches of baroque.

Between chateaus in Spain,
there’s room to contemplate
debris that might design
a whole new attitude toward
storyline.

Carefree, a poet might create
a category quite apart,
a gratifying rhyme
to warm the heart.
Which culinary genius can combine
the bittersweet of artichoke with wine?

When shall the force of fireflies
unite with world to advertise the value
of an enterprise producing wholesale peace
available for sale or for lease?

PARKINSON’S

One slow step follows another
Limbs still bound to earth by
The golden cords of love.
At night, my dream self,
Startled awake, I watch
From my window as one star
Tips the dipper,

My strength has gone
To well-water, frozen  
In winter, convinced
That spring must arrive
By dawn, but hope has
Blown away like the petals
Of late summer roses,

As I watch that silly moth
Circling the candle flame,
Longing to become Buddha,
I wait for the cure, a guest
That may arrive too late.

Endless she blows
Through tough rhizomes of marram grass,
Moving sand, making dunes,
Bringing storm clouds or sun,
She’s mistress of the skies.

Sometimes a temperamental adolescent,
She rattles windows, slams doors.
Sometimes an agile animal, she spins
Invisible nose over tail.
In her world she speaks her own language,
Rolling sounds, inventing strange songs.

No one really knows her
Yet she’s a stranger to no household,
Lifting awnings, skirts and parasols,
Rippling pools and swelling sails.

The Greeks called her Zephyrus
But surely she’s a woman –
Capricious, compassionate, creative,
Cleansing, sometimes invasive,
She’s the artist of dawn and dusk,
In her sweetest mood, soft of touch,
Gentle of spirit, mysterious forever.

Night poet moves the wand of winter moon
Across puddles of angry sky.
Day poet soaks up the dark
With white dregs of frosty grass.
Season’s poet is the cold of now,
And warm’s imagined past,
The rustle of wind in leaves,
Telling secrets of other worlds.
The poet of land masters gravity
Of earth and air.
The poet of sea tests colours and textures,
A seamstress of liquid cloth.
The poet of moods fills hours
With inconstancy like a crow pecking holes
In a discarded b-flat mattress or
A lark perched on a bright cloud,
Overflowing with allegro.
The poet of dreams holds
All the world spellbound
In a theatre of slow motion.
The poet of real things
Makes magic out of socks and onions.
The poet of beauty speaks of what is.
The poet of love speaks of what might be.

To observe the sun’s lightening
Sinking into steel night with laughter,
Browned by age, still clinging to
A treasure of ago.
To feel the dart of time and yet
Refuse regret.
To fold into a cotton peace
Whatever is easy to forget
Yet guard what still exists,
What the heart holds too precious
To escape…  A question?
The comfort of reply may come
In sleep, if in darkness we can find
Our way without craving the return
Of day.

Sick of too much bright?
Dissolve into the velvet night.
Shake out the dust of stars,
Quench the fire, blow in the wind.
Maintain the subtle balance
That silence will allow.
Reflect attack and reimburse
With kindness.
Don’t fight the fading flesh
Nor quarrel with the unexpected present.
Admire the simple, ignore the shame.
Explore that train of light
And with one single backward glance
Consume all the grief that one life
Can contain.

There’s a decisive moment
Between light and dark,
An intermission of clear sight
When movement becomes illusion.

For light does not hold still
But converges to a hundred shapes,
Fields, haystacks, cathedral portals,
A dizzy dervish, constant change,
Finally softened by slithering shadows
Of dusk.

A tempered darkliness folding
Into moon-glow pillow clouds,
Creating their own impressions.

Mistakes are miracle gifts,
An opening of spirit wings
Teaching what might be
Painted on the sky in
Numerous serpentine solutions,
A letting loose of reins.

Just listen to the whisper
Of the mind’s darkest corners
Impossible words joined,
Somehow making sense
Of this life’s chaos.

Let them drift through dreams
Into puddle-muddle messages
In some esoteric language,
Translated from the frenzied scrawl
Of love-letters written to a thankless world.
All poems are exquisite mistakes.

Sudden air full of winged seeds
Blowing froth on the dawn.
Season of simple joy
Wizarding light from the east.
Yellowing grass yawning
In the last of days of dry,
Zippy insect life slowing
To a tumble buzz, heavy
As sleep, just before sepia dreams
Begin to comfort the earth,
Fruit pungency replacing heady miasmas.
It’s like leaving a bright clearing for a forest
Sanctuary, light dimmed by cool shadows,
The gentle change of one life-state
For another.


,

A blink, a squint, a here-gone glimpse,
Sun-freckled, shadow-delicate.
Sudden breeze-breath prints a stream,
Ideograms unknown, passwords undetected
In time’s invisible unravelling, lifespan’s
Capricious memories.
Each freeze-frame re-invents itself
In past, present and future.
And age, a long, orange, tongue-licked sky,
The anteroom to winter solstice,
Guessing an elusive afterlife or
An untouchable emptiness.
Let us, instead, remember summer’s
Endless days, the hours’ extension
When water mirrors sunset,
When, like cool evening, mercy,
The afterthought of passion,
May whisper a prayer and summon
An angel.

It wasn’t sacrifice, no,
It was meant to be invention.
How many times have I climbed
That crumbling edge of cliff,
Confident, fearless of the wide sky,
I stepped into a place where
There was only air.
A hot rush of melting wings
And I felt what it meant to fall…
A broken doll, all twisted limbs,
Bruised flesh, bashed pride.
I had been warned of the sublime
Beyond a mortal’s reach…
A human body is not meant to fly.
I’ve paid dearly for my careless hope
Yet continue to believe there’s a lucky star
Somewhere in my horoscope.

Inspired by E.E. Cummings

This universe –
Timelessly alive
Strictly innumerable
Life’s path laid out
With careful intention.
Then suddenly a blunder
Called death unkindly persuades
Every word echoed in the sky
That it may unspring a poem,
Pitching each metaphor
To senselessness.
Still, it’s the beauty of eachness
That heals immeasurable night,
Restores the silent truth of earth
Where no particle is irrelevant,
Awakens the first sleeping wonders
Of spring’s green gratitude
And transforms dream miracles
Beyond reason into the eagerness
Of possibility.

Daybreak: a sleeve of wind’s voice,
Gentle ululations, then a smear of gold

There’s a shuddering of sequined water
Reflecting ice-veined crags still frozen
In distress.

A living lens snaps the moment
All the way to its vanishing point.
Then, long, slow sepals, slippery
As syllables of a foreign language,
Transmute to a giant bloom,
A silk-red reflection falling upward,
Tumbling over pink-sheep clouds
Interrupting the stillness
Of this blue-grey universe.

There’s a ghost tree in the garden,
Spindly spine, non-branches,
Beginning as last year’s memory,
A stillness becoming a trembling
Of light, of movement,
Still frail but rallying
In its swaying aloneness.

The wind, nostalgic, strikes and dies
Upon the scant reflection of body
In the sky. What looks like leaving
Is an ongoingness of song,
A still-flowering of hope,
An unbreakable pattern
Of the art of renewal.

Against a fire bridge of sunrise,
Blue smoke still under the pines,
A humming bird clings to a sheet of sky,
Light-sensitive paper wings fragile
As spring ice. The eye, messenger
Of flash and shatter, stumbles on
This sudden angle photo.
The inexplicable takes form,
Arranging itself like a watercolour dawn
Opening in slow motion.
The conspirators of dark and cold
Are given short shrift in the moment
The world’s heart stops, touched
By the quick wing beat of April flight.

A small hole widening the giant picture,
One dominant trait diminished,
One altered gene, one missing link.
Iron tree leafless, perfect wing damaged,
Bumble bee caught in the chemistry of death,
Coocoo’s song silenced to a memory,
Acid bath dissolves in soil, lakes opaque
With filament.
Lives that touched and changed each day
Now pushed to the edges of void,
A fatal pause where “is” becomes “was”
And it’s suddenly too late to negotiate.

Could it be that a rose should follow
A tree inside his own haven,
For love, for protection?
I think of myself as a rose
But need to explain who I really am:
Softness, wetness held in a pellicle,
The moisture of my kiss enough
For both of us: my tree and me.

The quiet wilderness my heart
Might be violated, for I’m only
A small plant, holding all
My stillness within. I imagine
The warmth of being held
By those strong branches,
Shadowed in that leafy cool,
My petals protected, wood bark
Softening against my cheek.

Yes, you and I could grow together,
Each giving the other room
To be exactly who we are.

Thick, invisible threads, the spider holds the heart,
The butterfly attending to her flowers,
The bite of the bee – harsh gesture of tenderness,
Bat’s sensitive hearing gear pitched high,
Lizard’s tongue testing for vanilla air,
A love lark singing to a star.

But this is monkey love, dexterity
Of opposable thumbs, naughtiness
Of stolen kisses, sharp claws
Cutting the heart’s cords,
Hungry munching of the skin’s
Softest zones, push and pull
Of sentiments, sometimes upwards
Towards cotton clouds, sometimes
Downwards towards the earth’s
Rocky surface.

And always chattering nonsense,
Understood only by the two of us.

I’ve heard the muezzin’s call at dawn,
Church bells at noon, the gentle twang
Of singing bowls in temples,
The hushed chanting of mantras,
Meditation’s heavy silence.
I’ve heard the waves slapping the beach
Again and again, gull’s protesting.
I’ve heard the earth’s tectonic rumble,
Thunder’s base grumble, thick rain
Falling like window blinds, the wind’s
Subtle ghost whipping through helpless leaves.
I’ve heard magpie’s jabber and crows’ ***** discourse,
The dove’s soft evening prayer.  I’ve heard locusts’
Rhythmic rubbing of skinny stick legs, lizards
Scuttle in dusky corners, unseen things flap
Their wings in the dark. Even the soundless wings
Of butterflies, they say, can change the world.
I’ve heard mountain streams giggling, lazy rivers
Yawning, bubbles of love floating on wet kisses.
There’s no rivalry, no conflict, no violence here
Because all sounds have harmony in common.

If art is a March pigeon,
Spring is a terrace buttressed by hope.
If art is a green brigade,
Winter has finally surrendered.
If art is a spider’s web,
Nature’s an expert designer.
Art must be somewhere between sea salt and sky breath,
Splitting the clouds like feathered arrows.
Art is the magic of abstract,
A question of connecting the dots.
Art is a surreal awakening
From a living dream.
Art is stargazing astonishment, unashamed pleasure,
A reach for the extraordinary.
Art is a rose garden singing celebration.
Art is a religion of invented prayer.
If art is almost grasping the essential,
Leaving the end in suspense,
Then all humans must be artists.

Ever since that afternoon, artichokes,
To me, are creatures of the sea.
They’re a chosen species, daylily stars
With softened points, salt-lipped,
Afloat in olive oil, something
So Mediterranean about them,
Aqua-spirals, flat wings of green-white light,
As if their closed leaves could tie up
Landlocked clouds. Egg-shaped, heart-shaped,
Protective layers overlapping, they speak
In wet kisses, gently caressing the tongue
With a blizzard of soft flavours.
They embrace all wines, distract all meats,
Flirt with bread, politely invite dessert –
Sweetheart vegetables willing to be dressed
In bikinis or burkas, soft-centred lovables,
The most delicate of palettes seduced
By their siren song.

Maybe the bed lies about the garden,
Seeing it from a one-eyed supine pose.
The garden, ***** by winter, stands naked
Outside the window, looking in.
The bed is comfortable, complacent;
It doesn’t much care about ragged orphans
Or abused women.
Perhaps it should remember it’s made of wood,
Same as the trees, though it’s covered with
A springy mattress, happy sheets, cottony quilts.
The garden has known spring abundance
And will know it again. The bed has known
Nightmares, sickness and may even learn
About death. In summer the bed will be stripped,
The garden dressed in luscious fragments
Of leaf and petal, hung in perfect equilibrium.
The bed and the garden, like body and soul,
Each needs to remember their debt to the other.