I want to say:
good morning
in words newly-minted
bright, sharp-edged
with shadows, alight
this June morning.

At my desk
I sit before a still-life
of small things
treasured, some made
by your quiet hands,
others evidence
of our journeying:
precious times of  
smiles and gestures,
delicate long exchanges,
photographs of course.
And in the foreground:
a trio of felted vessels
lined with thread,
my daughter’s tile
of blackbirds on a bough,
and this book in miniature,
rich in marks made
by the tides’ turnings.

A suite of fourteen poems

for Alice, always

I

Cutting for Silage

Seen
on the path close to the field edge
a swathe of green grass cut,
Left
in the wake of the machine
to dry in the hopeful sun,
Rich
in a profusion of grasses,
glimmers of wind flowers,
weeds and tares.

Seen from afar
the cut fields partition this landscape
with stripped overlays
packaging the valley,
dark green rows revealing
the camber and roll of
a naked field shorn,
Dark upon light.

II

Walk to Porth Oer

Where the sand whistles
and windy enough today
for the tinnitus to set in,
we’ll walk the curve of its dry fineness
left untouched by the tide’s daily passage
up and back

before
and along cliff paths,
from the mountain
past secret coves
whose steep descents
put the brake on all
but the determined,
beside shoulders of grasses
bluebelled still in almost June
now hiding under the rising bracken
up and down

we’ll walk to a broad view
of this whispering bay
where below on the sandy shore
dots of children
tempt the slight waves.


III

Cold Mountain

Whether  a large hill
or officially a mountain
it’s cold on this higher place
wrapped in a land-mist,
the sea waiting in breathless calm
where the horizon has no line,
no edge to mark the sky.

Any warmness illusory,
in sight of sun brightening a field
far distant, but not here,
where waiting is the order of the day,
waiting for grass to shine and sparkle,
for bare feet to be comforted
by sweet airs.

Meanwhile the sheep chomp,
the lambs bleat and plead,
the choughs throaty laugh
a shrill punctation, an insistence
that all this is how it is.


IV


China in Wales

In my hermitage
on this sea-slung place,
a full-stop of an island
back-lit illuminated always,
I view the distant mountains,
a chain of three peaks
holding mist to their flanks,
guarding beyond their heights
a gate to a teaming world
I do not care to know.


V


Wales in China

O fy nuw, I thought
my valley only owned such rain,
but here it teams torrential
taking out the paths on this steep
mountain side. Mud
everywhere it shouldn’t be.
Everything I touch damp and dripping.
No promise of pandas here.
And there’s this language like the chatter of birds,
whilst mine is the harsh sibilants of sheep
on the hill, the rasp of rooks on the cliffs.


VI


Boy on the Beach

Heard before seen
the boy on the beach,
a relentless cry
of agrievement, of
being badly done to.
This boy on the beach

following his mother
at a distance
then no further.
‘I hate you, ‘ he screams,
and stops,
turning his back on the sea,
folding his arms,
miserableness unqualified,
no help or comfort
on the horizon he cannot see.
It is attrition by neglect.
He becomes silent, and called
from a distance, relents
and turns.


VII


The Poet

Austere, his mouth
moved so little when he spoke,
you felt his words
were always made in advance,
scripted first
and placed on the auto-cue.
Ask a question: and there’s a long pause

as though there lies
the possibility of multiple answers
and he’s running through the list
before he speaks, his antenna
trained on the human spirit,
full of doubt, doubting even
belief itself.


VIII


A Gathering

Thirty, maybe forty
and not in a lecture room
but a clubhouse for the sailing
look you. And we did,
out of the patio doors
to the sun-flecked sea below us,
here to honour a poet’s life and work
in this village of the parish he served
at the end of the pilgrim’s path .

Pilgrims too, of a kind, we listened  
to the authoritative words
of scholarship where ironing
the rough draft found in the bin,
explaining the portrait above the bed,
balancing the anecdotal against the interview,
reading the books he read
become the tools of understanding.

But the poems, the poems
silence us all, invading the space,
holding our breath like a fist.



IX


In the Garden

He came alone to sit in the garden
and remember the day
when, with the intimacy of his camera,
he took her, deep into himself;
her look of self-possession,
of calmness and confidence,
augmented by butterflies
motionless on the wall-flowers,
and the soft breath of the blue sea,
her soft breath, her dear face,
freckled so, his hand trembling
to hold the focus still.


X


The Couple from Coventry

Young beyond their years
and the house they had acquired
but only to visit at weekends for now,
they drove four hours to open the gate
on a different life, a second home
requiring repairs on the roof
and replastering throughout.

With their dog they were walking
the mountain paths, checking out the views,
returning to the quiet space
their bed filled in an upstairs room
echoing of birth and death:
to experiment further with loving
before the noise and distraction
of children swallowed up their lives.


XI


On Not Going to Meeting

There was an excuse:
a fifteen mile drive
and a wet morning.
He had a book, a journal
that might focus his thoughts
towards that communion of souls:
a silence the meeting of Friends
sought and sometimes gathered.

These experimental words
of a man who felt he knew
‘I had nothing outward
to help me,’ who then, oh then,
heard a voice which said,
‘There is one, even Christ Jesus,
that can speak to my condition
. . .  who has the pre-eminence,
who enlightens and gives grace
and faith and power.’


XII


New Life

From behind its mother
the calf appeared
tottering towards the gate,
but after a second thought,
deeming curiosity inappropriate,
turned back to that source
of nourishment and life.


XIII


A Walk on Treath Pellech

Good to stride out.
Good to feel unencumbered
by the unconfining space
of beach and sea, a shoreline
littered with rocks and shallow pools,
sea birds flocking at the tide’s edge.

Alone he sought her small hand
and wished her there over time and space
so to observe what lay at his feet,
that he might continue to look
into the distance with a far-flung gaze.


XIV


The Owl Box

James put it there.
One of forty
all told but
empty yet.
‘We live in hope,’
he said.

Slung from a bough,
bent and bowed,
on a wind-shaped tree,
a hawthorn blossoming still,
(inhabited by choughs a’nesting)
the box hangs waiting
for its owl, her eggs,
her fledgling young
who are not hatched together
but are staggered as though
to give the mother owl some
pause for thought.

Meanwhile the nesting choughs
tear the air with tiresome croaks,
a bit of rough these black characters,
neighbours soon to the delicate mew,
the cool, downy white of the Athene noctua.

There on the path
she stands,
the evening sun
sculpting her face
with light and shade.

An on-shore wind
has dressed the curls
in her hair and
between expressions
she’s composed,
in charge of herself,

hand on her camera,
almost a smile
on those petalled lips
he loves to brush
and rest his tongue
between and kiss,

and there behind her
a backdrop:
a river
on the ebb,
a shoreline path
of Maytime green,
and a sky of floating
*cumulus mediocris.

Turbulence

As he sat watching the shadows
flicker across the beige carpet
the morning air explored
the room, caressed his unsocked feet.
She appeared, briefly:
to walk to the window
to be reminded of the view.
Turning purposefully,
she sent him a wave of turbulence
out of the folds of her long
patterned-blue skirt.


Wild Swim

Evening,
but not yet dark in the Slad Valley.
Beyond the village they left the road,
and down, down a woodland way walked
into a gentle polyphony of birdsong
that is the evening chorus;
a more considered singing,
an equal music and exchange of song
far from the wild chorusing at dawn.

High above, the delicate traceries
of ash leaves;
at their feet, the chocolate-brown fall
of beech flowers.

His hand sheltered her fingers
lightly placed into his folded palm,
but ready to unslip: to observe, to touch
to wonder at the trackside vegetation.

Down, and further down into the valley,
the setting sun illuminating golden
corridors between the tall trees,
they came upon a presence of water
in the air and before the water seen;
a lake, a rhomboid reflection of sky
and still, sun-stricken pines.

Feeling his body wish the caress
of its earth-coloured water
he walked the lake’s line
gazing down into the opaque stillness
seeking to judge its depth.

He might swim; he would swim;
he would feel the water
kiss his body, his feet discover
a hidden floor of mud,
of stones, of vegetation.
Yes, he would lower his naked self
into that cool texture of fresh,
untroubled water.

He undressed before her,
placing his glasses into her care,
each garment into her arms.
Removing his sandals he stepped
into the water until its cloudy surface
covered his thighs, his ***.
He lowered his body and swam,
a few strokes at a time, stopping
then to test the depth,
for his feet to feel the tangled
floor of the underlake.

He turned,
and still in his depth walked back:
to see her standing bemused on the bank.
Out, and in the evening air, he stroked
his hands over naked flanks,
stomach, arms and ****,
brushing the wet away from his body
until a sense of being dry prevailed.

It had not been cold, he thought;
it had been gently invigorating.
A full freshness enveloped his body.
It would stay this passionate longing
he so often felt when alone in her presence,
and in the unconfining space
of the natural world she loved.
It remained with him until hours later
when, regaining the presence of his body
as it stretched itself in their generous bed,
he slept, dreaming of water’s kiss and touch.


Newark Park*

Turning into the drive
a lake of  buttercups
floated in the blue morning
on islands of grass green
between parkland trees
where peacocks called.

Entering the shallow house
barely two rooms wide
light flooded and warmed
the cold stone flags
of this hunting lodge
saved from ruin
by an itinerant American
who searching on a motorbike
for a manored home found his domain
high on the brink of a limestone
escarpment. With a view to die for,
most certainly to live for,
he was captured, captivated
and later confirmed
to all its Englishness,
its history, and despite
its cold, cold comforts.

Most certainly a man’s abode,
long-ago ladies but not wives
would gather for a grandstand view  
from behind its rooftop balustrades,
there to observe the hunting
in the forest far below
and then to entertain,
be entertained
far away from prying eyes
and wagging tongues.

He had the voice you see,
the timing and the just pause.
He knew how to colour and stretch
a word, just so.
He wrote quiet rhymes:
I’m a winder
(he wrote,
writing as a river).
I love to wander.
Every day I’m different
with stories to tell
of wild otter huntings
and crisp frozen winters.

To hear you had not slept;
to imagine you awake at three am.
followed me around all day.
To feel I could have been the cause;
to think my absence from your bed
might hold you sleepless through the night,

‘till dawn that is,
when the first birds
in the still-dark make
tentative noises-off,

a pre-dawn refrain
before some semblance of day
brings forth the ripieno choir.
Only then you slept.

This companionship we keep
relies on sleep-filled nights
and settled days, stress-free meals,
gentle evenings with our books,
and the occasional walking out
under the Spring moon.

She opened the door of the gallery and there it was, there it lay, before her, nearly perfect: her exhibition. The opening was an hour or so away and there were, naturally, a few adjustments to make, but in essence it was right, and as she walked to the middle of the rectangular space (to survey the full effect ) she felt held by the quiet wonder of it all; that she had made all this and with ‘the quality control of nature’s accidents’. He’d written those words some years previous when a solo show was but a dream she would enter between sleep and wakefulness, when she would think of the west coast of Scotland and the poetry of its seashore, the infinite variety in the seashore strand between sand and sea. It was such natural accidents of form and transformation by nature’s hand that had guided her imagination into rightness and towards this exhibition.

At breakfast that morning she had come to the table dressed to greet her audience, and for the first time as a featured artist in a festival of some repute. She had felt the quiet joy of choosing the right combination of clothes to be the public person she had now become. He had loved the new dress she had bought to clothe her gallery persona. She had been conscious of his eyes following the lines this frock so generously drew around her body’s shape and form, the way the material fell across her *******, lay smoothly on her thighs.  It was a very grownup frock and with the jacket and scarf made her look purposeful, confident. His looking made such confidence possible, his admiration and what she could tell was that coming together of love and passion that, her being dressed in this formal way, so often evoked.

In the gallery she had worried over the lighting, climbed up the metal ladder with the fluffy green glove thoughtfully provided to enable those small adjustments of direction to be made on a hot spotlight. There were four large pieces flanking a corner that had embossed lines running across their surfaces, lines that needed oblique light to reveal the shadowing of this effect of swirls and marks of a retreating tide on sand.  Two smaller pieces needed rearranging; she’d placed them, late the evening before, in the wrong sequence. Poster boards were to be filled with her poster and put outside on the pavement by the gallery entrance. She opened the main door, a very green door with its top and bottom bolts and black-painted handle ring. The street outside was a welcoming mix of 18th and 19th C buildings, hardly one the same, the sort of three storey buildings that had simple plaques prominently placed into the brickwork from a distant past when proud builders would describe a structure’s use or ownership with a title and date. By ten o'clock this one-way street was lined with parked cars, but now there was little traffic. It was a quiet sunny morning in a market town.

‘Don’t mind the dog, ‘ he said. ‘He’s used to coming in here.’ It was a long-haired verging on the side of scruffy sort of dog, used to keeping its own counsel, probably used to being taken to exhibitions. ‘Just popping in,’ he said, this man who, and she couldn’t help noticing this, seemed to hold much in common with his dog; the long, but retreating on the forehead, hair, slightly scruffy from the want of a comb or a good brush (like his dog), he had dressed without much thought (because who dressed thoughtfully to walk a dog?), and that’s what he was doing, walking the dog and, seeing the Gallery open, thought he ought to look in.

Giving him her brightest smile, she embarked on performing the artist’s music of conversation, that score holding gentle melodies and welcoming harmonies. Although she had become quite practised in talking to her audience there was always the challenging inquiry that would catch her off guard.

‘Well, are you finished with the seashore now?’ said the man with the look-alike dog. For a moment a half dozen possible answers seemed possible. ‘Could one ever finish with something so extraordinary and various as that hinterland between land and sea?’ No, that was seemed a mite critical and clever. ‘Oh, I’ve hardly started’ was tempting, but rather smug and too confident by half. ‘I just love the seaside’ would probably do, as no one else was listening. ‘Merleau-Ponty says the complexity of the seashore is a metaphor in the search for self-identity’. She did wonder what he’d make of that, but finally decided on ‘It’s such a rich source of ideas and images I’m sure there’s a lot more I want to do with the subject.’

”It’s all the same colour”. She’d had that one a few times. ‘When I’m on the beach I’m fascinated as much by the texture and shape of what I see  and feel than the colour. I like the subtlety of the colours in the sand. I think my pieces – and she waved her hand towards what she had titled her Sand Marks pieces – show so many of the different shades of colours you find on the seashore.’

Those Sand Marks, a collection of variously dyed and marked two metre plus linen-lengths, dominated one wall of the gallery. They floated a few centimetres from the white wall, and when people moved past them the slight shadows cast by the linen lengths seemed to ripple in the human-made breeze. She could never look at them without thinking how their very accidental making – binding a linen cloth with inner placed objects and using the natural dye of tea – could create such absorbing results. She would follow with her gaze one of the linen-lengths from bottom to top (or top to bottom) and find herself walking on the wet sand of a Scottish beach, overwhelmed by the clear light and space with only the sea sound surrounding. He would tell her, had told her often, how moved, how affected he had been when he first saw them hung. To him, these ‘marks’ carried an essence of this aesthetic she now owned and for which had become recognised.

Even on this, her first day, she had been visited by a small number of admirers and supporters, some travelling distances to see her work with the aura of the original, a truer view than that possible on the back-lit screen of their computer monitors. Ladies who loved textiles, the containment and privacy to sew and stitch secured in their busy lives. These friendly and smiley women (the comfortable side of sixty) understood something of what she was doing here, and perhaps imagined themselves as thirty-somethings walking Scottish beaches free from children and the relentless list-making of house and home and occupation, able to create imaginary worlds of marks and folds, pleats and textures. Full of enthusiasm for the medium, what they perhaps didn’t have was the skill of seeing, a skill she had grown up with, had always owned to some degree: found, fostered, honed, developed into a second-nature activity of always looking.

There would be the occasional brief lull when the gallery was empty or close to empty, as though needing the space to come up for breath after being occupied by people and their movement. She would then walk slowly around the long well-lit room viewing her pieces and her arrangements of pieces from different angles. She would look at his poems placed antiphonally between her work, commissioned for her catalogue, her book of images of the sea shore paired with, incorporating even, her made pieces. She’d chosen a favoured few she’d felt caught the essence of being in the sea’s company, in the sand and shore’s domain. Like everything he did it had been undertaken with the utmost intensity of purpose. She saw him now in her mind’s eye with his notebook sitting against rocks, paddling in the great shallow pools, walking head down along the tide line, those bright days on a Scottish island and before, before on that ellipse of beach by the fishing station.

He would tease out an idea formed from a little motif of words, perhaps like the very music that was his private territory: here, alone, apart we are marked by the tide’s turn. Yes, we are marked by being solitary in such unconfining space, the marks at our feet become the lines, the mounts, the fingers, those interruptions, breaks and blockages found in the tridents, chains and crosses of the art of palmistry. We read the seashore as a psychic oracle reads the hand, hoping, as Kathleen Jamie so rightly says, for the marvellous. And marvellous it so often is.

Standing in this gallery was like being gathered about by the seashore. It was a short jump in the imagination’s miracle to hear the soft breathing of the sea, the wind caressing the face, the warmth of the afternoon sun on the freckled cheek.

See how those we love are transformed
when the sea is their only boundary

a figure stands before a sand bar
in a crescent of water left by the tide
an affecting geometry of solitude
. . .

These words had always stopped her in her perambulating tracks. She thought of her son, far distant on the beach, at rest for once, still, motionless within the confluence of the elements of the beach, at the epicentre of her gaze, all things flowing to and from his tiny, far-away figure.