for Alice on her birthday*

It was a day that
you weren’t there
to share this ford
in the country road
this river-crosser
where I lingered
long that afternoon:
to watch
the gentle water pass
and mirror
the overarching trees
cover the sunken stones

The road fell
into the river’s kiss
immersed for a moment
between its lips
of ripple and flow
and letting go
it rose refreshed
revealed and wet
on the other side
. . . and dried

From the window
pen poised on paper
I watch
a single leaf
fall turn revolve
show both sides of itself
and fall:
to join the carpet of colour
covering the pavement
spilling out across the road.

How perfectly is that fall of a leaf:
the aleatoric moment that nature composes
the twirl and slow revolve in its falling as it turns
into an uneasy moment of rest where quivering
the uniqueness of its fall disappears

That is our love:
that chance moment of falling
the twirl and turn of our limbs
holding the trajectories of our bodies
and your rich beauty as it falls into
the uniqueness of ******
to rest - shuddering
in my grateful arms

Agnes in London*


1

unprepared for this
the tall door opens
and there are the paintings
72in x 72in and full of nothing
the most delicate stripes of colour
‘midst an intricacy of making
nothing else but beauty
and the mystery of life

2

Here’s what’s left of her beginnings
after the landscapes the portraits
the biomorphic forms : abstraction
so very green with loneliness
and the wish to be the solitary self

3

She wanted to be like Picasso
a painter who worked hard
this room is full of that hard work
experimental embroidered forms
beginnings symptomatic of ‘the grid’
set amongst sculptured objects found
roughly brought together
urban : hard-edged

4

Just three compositions
the beaten gold leaf of *Islands
the Chinese go board of Friendship
the nothingness of Grey Stone
you saw the meticulously pencilled
hardly visible lines – hiding

5

More of the same but
noticing the rectangle
set inside the square
the all-important border
and the pin-pricked holes
for a guiding thread?

6

On a clear day
rise and look around you
how it will astound you
that glow of your being
outshining every star
. . . the Streisand song
a clue to expressing
an innocence of mind
or thirty variations
on a simple grid

7

The colour of the rock
at dawn at noon at sunset
Agnes in the desert
a soft brush on acrylic gesso
dividing colour fields
with the graphite pencil
masking tape and metal ruler
subtle irregularities
a liquid pooling of paint
when viewed close to

8

The greyness you loved
and sat transfixed
to view the textures
I could barely grasp
they were floating therein
a reduction of means

9

neither objects nor space
nor time nor anything
there in this silence
of the whispering kind
at the still centre
you told me you saw
a blueness in all this white
these twelve canvases
of acrylic paint
and graphite line

10  

Here her final work
a drawing on paper
rich in the tremor of inconsistency
conveying (the catalogue said)
a sense of optical vibration
art as a realm
of transcendent experience
like nature itself

11

her final canvases
a return to an earlier time
uncomfortably so for me
No longer work
at rest with itself
it reaches out
towards inevitability
and the futility of death
when the painting has to stop

Café for Cats

Take your shoes off
and close the child-gate
we don’t want the cats
out in the street please
thank you : our cats
your pleasure their purrs
together
make for a blissful moment
in a hectic world
on this busy street
don’t leave without
taking a cat on your lap
stroking their pedigree fur
all for you and coffee too


Street Art

Prevalent in these parts
the impromptu sketch
the wildly alternative mark
on arches grand designs on
construction-site hoardings
and take this side of a building
here untouched by windows
a canvas blank of brick where
Gulliver’s sister lies gagged
and bound in a Lilliput house
her knees poking through
the upstairs floor


tokyobike

in pastel-green apricot-pink
a lithe machine of delicate frame
and slim-line wheels
would look well in the hall
and out on the street
if properly socked with
your oh so short skirt
the gym-honed thighs
the custom rucksack
tight on your back


Whirl of Leaves

The breath that blows
these notes across the page
the murmuration of fingers
against those resonant strings
up and down to and fro
on music’s path go
the flute and the harp
pursuing the ground
into the autumn air
chasing the wind
until . . .
at a passing wall
they are stilled
into motionless
their rise and swirl
emptied of breath
no more to blow
or pluck these dancing
murmuring
wind-driven notes
but into fermata’s
grasp    

(where despite
a futile final flurry
a long bar’s rest
takes hold
till Spring)


St Paul’s by Night

From across the river
an unexpected view
not just that gracious dome
but the building below
substantially whole complete
for once not hidden by proximity
or an errant developer’s whim
the progress to the great south door
unimpeded when we walked
the well-tempered bridge
as high on the lofty cranes
bright red stars guided
our journey home


Askam Square

In this London square
the trees hold still
as sculptures in
the nothing air
no breeze to animate
their leaves except
a steady gaze might catch
a gentle oscillation
here and there

La Maison vert foncé

So very green this perfect Hoxton house
it could be in a petite ville Française
incongruous here – but such a treasure
geranium-filled window boxes
lace curtained attic rooms
just-have-to-have-a-look inside and see
the dress-maker’s table the library of books
the posters artists’ prints and all
a purposeful lady sits typing at her desk
costume directions for a Pirandello play


Daughter

Last year she’d bought a boat on the river
this year she’s in New York for the week
Keeping tabs on daughters can be wearisome
you hope for hug and to hear that certain voice
see eyes that haven’t changed their depth
since a child when you marvelled at their colour
so - it seems you won’t be seeing her this time around
but she’ll be in touch when she gets back she says
and ‘we’ll talk’ . . . she says.

Urban Fox**

dogs don’t have such a brush of a tail
a flattened skull or triangle-like ears
one was about to cross our path
thought better of it and retreated
behind a bush content to wait
till we’d passed on by
I
writing just the other day
about the fox of Chinese lore
remembered this celestial dog
had nine tails, four legs and a golden coat
served the Palace of Sun and Moon
transcended both the yin and yang

It is the tipping point
the harvest well begun
its end in sight
an early morning
retreated to past
five on the clock

mist lay on
the meadowed fields
observed the pond
held tight to the trees

walking the empty road
camera in hand
to catch the chill earliness
in the far fields then back
through the uncared-for orchard
past the forked-fingered ash
still quite still -
the night air collapsing
as the sun rose

Darjeeling
in the white bone-china cup
a kiss of milk
comforting this delicate tea

and light everywhere
between three windows
our table her gifts
from the shoreline
shadowed hard-edged
whilst the back-lit screen
blinks and waits for words

my story blended from fact
pestled into fiction
itself a background
to a further fiction
from a past in ancient time
where each image described
takes aim at the resonant heart
of every exquisite moment


Eight Sketches in a Notebook

I

into a western sky
the sun finds cloudspace
to enter and set
well above the sea’s horizon
and for a while its rays
glimmer upward onto shards
holding remnants of the day’s
unreflected light


II

not a hut of straw and rushes
on a far mountain fastness
this a walled stockade all but moated
gardened inside its bounds
a miniature railway said to surround
a six-cornered house facing seaward
and towards a lagoon on whose banks
little terns nest from April to June
a mirror of light upon which
the solitary soul might dwell


III

rock guardian
standing
mid-beach

its debris
spilled
to water’s edge

still as still as
no wind or wave
pools dark depths

further out
the sea shimmers
ablaze with reflections


IV

hiding an anxiety of hair
a headscarf blue
and spotted white
reveals an ear
and below a sturdy neck
on round shoulders
her bare arms fall to quiet hands
next to thighs trousered  
knee-length to gentle calves
falling further onto bare feet
stood standing on course sand
at the sea’s murmuring edge


V

here the rock opens
its lips to a kiss of light
but deep inside remains
a dark sheltering secret
blackness impenetrable
wide enough for a storm’s
intrusion of water and wind
but beyond such darkness
possibly nothing
- a closed door
of rock?


VI

from my canvas chair
on the flags outside
the white French doors
this drawing – from where
the garden gate once was
a gap between
the honey-suckled hedge
and the long low cottage
above an ash tree waving
its fingered branches
in the afternoon breeze
fresh over the hill
from the sea’s shore
hardly a mile away


VII

the land points seaward
to an island light
a mile off-shore

on a shingled beach
sliced by the sea’s knife
cattle wandered yesterday

in the mist-driven rain we
sleeked wet as dogs approached
on the headland’s path


VIII

littered the land lies
with interruptions
interventions of the built

past beside present
ends amongst beginnings

complex histories
to delve deeper into
on this northern shore

If I can’t tell you of your beauty,
I can only tell this page I type.

And so I write
of gazing at you
in the summer evening light,
in that room we shared,
a room where you sat
beside a three-panelled window
of small glass panes,
letting in the presence
of a tree-surrounded garden.
And beyond, beyond
a steep rising of moorland.

The room was heavy
with accumulated light,
a light that lay sculpting
the features of your face
and sitting self. It carved
the very fall of your dress
over your thighs. It caressed
your forearms and your hands
to become a texture like stone,
covering the freckles
close to my gaze when we lie
in love’s tenderness.

I cannot tell you of your beauty
without that shrugging off
you make, as with a comforting shawl
that I might place on your shoulders
with paltry words, uncertain speech.

I hold to that sight of you
in the night time listening
to the rain falling
like a benediction forsaken,
a blessing denied.
We are apart you and I.
And so waking, waking
throughout the long damp night,
to differing degrees of darkness
then the light, and to
the car in the road,
the bird on the roof,
I lie still,
holding memory’s picture,
a photograph brought from
the darkroom’s dull red
light into a bright white day,
and marked by the line of
your loveliness stilled into form.

If I can’t tell you of your beauty,
I can only tell this page I type.