XXII

hooded boy
kite aloft
duned beach
turquoise sea
uncertain wind
hard horizon
variegated rocks
suddenly sunshine

XXIII

clouds sailing away
from a sunset
great banks of reflected
light caressing
the heavens expecting stars
far distant a lighthouse pencil-thin
awaits its first flash into the night



XXIV

on the horizon’s rim
far St Kilda waits
two islands one a ****
of rock basalt-black
a stack bird-coated
sheer with noise perpetual

morning boat slicing
a myriad blue aimed
purposely between the two
faint shapes seaward

XXV

Donald
parish priest
of Bornish
died 1905
30 years of age
3rd year of his
priesthood

his Celtic cross
standing before
three hills
of South Uist
‘next the sea
and the call of birds
a life barely lived
resting in peace

XXVI

after the swim
a warm beach
soft fine sand
between the toes
a steady breeze
off the sea
with a coverlet of light
stretching horizon-ward

XXVIII

six geese
fallen from the sky
in the roughest weather
(more likely shot, he said, and
dumped from a farmer’s sack)
feathers bones and intricate
webs of cartilage lie
on these quiet rocks

XXIX

girl with *****
digs out channel
for the boat to pass
to its winter home
a long task a project
for this late-summer week
she has at home
away from the desk
measuring the silence
in shovelfuls
whilst thinking
of what is and what might
be then and soon

***

sea loch
maze of water
****-mantled
granite holding
the moor-side in place

a low cloud rests
curtain-like
on the heights
where deer lie
ready for the stalking

XXXI

white horses
chomp at the bay’s
bit while the Barra
ferry waits
wind everywhere
this bright morning

XXXII

impossible grasses
jiggle on their slim stems
planted in the immediate sand
before the machair takes control
windy today but sun lightens
the shell detritus lining the beach

so fine these calciated shapes
rendered perfect in fractal forms
tossed and turned but so precise
when seen alone
held in the hand

meanwhile there are wind waves
across the dune-land grass
nodding to the facing sea
as the water  foam-faced
breaks irresponsibly across
the Sound.

While leaves may dance
as the wind visits, passing by
on its way from there to here,
there can be a stillness too
that comes upon itself, falls,
descends even, alighting on
plant or tree and settles, stays
for a moment or maybe a while,
restlessness resting.

In the conservatory
it is time for tea
and the finches flit about
as Lucy opens the door,
brings the tray forward
to the table by the Citrus Sinensis.
A plain girl whose face lights up
as the little birds flutter to her side,
and suddenly bright-eyed,
with grace she kneels
to wait the required moments
for the Lapsang to enfuse
before pouring, before filling
my bone china cup painted
with the quaking aspen leaves
of the Populous Tremuloides
shimmering and fluttering,
quivering like butterflies.

In a slow curve
the beach
touches the sea,
the surf-sifting lace-foamed
grey-morning sea.
Eleven o'clock on the curve
far distant,
a figure separates
becoming
two figures
and dog:
reflections
on the tide's glaze.

He would think of her
and be tempted,
tempted to pick up the mobile
from his ungovernable desk.

Navigating the backlit screens
he would find her name
and press to see her photo
that dialled the number,

and then that wait
for the ringing tone, that
wait while her phone rang
. . . and with a connection

she would say Hello you
And he’d know from
her voice if the time was
right or wrong;

she was busy,
preoccupied or
(and always wonderful
this) happy to hear him . . .

. . . and he would falter.
He really had nothing
to say he could say, so
much to say that he couldn’t,

and so he would witter:
chatter or babble pointlessly
or at unnecessary length.
So the dictionary said.

Such a sad business this.
Better by far to stick
to a letter than witter,
than witter, than witter.

After the words of William Penn 1682*

I will begin  . . .
with the morning
(with the beginning of time)
 
As you wake,
retire your mind
into a pure silence,
from all thoughts
of worldly things,
. . . and wait upon God,
to feel his good presence,
to commit your whole self,
into his blessed care.
 
Then rise . . . (if well)
Immediately,
ever remembering
that God is present,
the overseer
of your thoughts,
your words,
your actions . . .
 
If you have intervals
from those lawful occasions
delight to step home
(within yourself I mean).
Commune with your heart
and be still.
 
I will end . . .
with the evening,
(with the ending of time)
 
The evening comes . . .
Read again the Holy Scripture,
and have your time of retirement
before you close your eyes.
 
(So the Lord may be
the Alpha and Omega
of your life)

Time stretches into this long month
with its longer days moving toward
a forbidding future and
disconcerting present.
Unsure what news will break
now the truce of Christmas
is been, has gone, when only
remnants of that incarnation
remain in the continuing tale
of escape, genocide, return,
and those revelations
at the temple, allowing
Simeon to depart in peace
according to thy word.

This is how it is,
with no going back
to the kitchen candlelight,
to the fragrant scents
of food and friendship.
Whilst yesterday . . .
in a city street
a young woman begged
the cost of a sleeping bag,
hers stolen, and she,
hardly dressed for a cold day,
was gracious in her thanks
for my loose change given
when I had the means:
to see to her needs
in order to survive;
to see to her needs
in order to be human.

Oh this miracle of movement, the bird in flight, its bright all-seeing 180 degree eye, black brown bird against autumn’s revelatory colours, you can feel you’re outside in an October wind, but the leaves are hanging on still, and even a cobweb laces through this morning image (it can only be morning with such clarity of colour). This collaged picture lithographed full to the brim with autumnal shades and that rising up of things despite nature’s time of fall. The bird backlit by a cloud-feathered sun, circled in movement. Berries bright red against the black brown bird and such shades of green, impossible colours though they are everywhere in Bawden, Piper, Nash, those English colourists who remind us how light amplifies what our country’s weather reveals. Not a picture to live in the imagination and ponder at, but to look at, marvel at, and then go outside and look and look at those symmetries and repeats, and such colours that even on the darkest winter’s day are there in a corner of the sky, the crack in a wall, a leaf speckled with frost, a white flash of the magpie. And by all accounts this artist is one himself, magpie by nature, collecting the not properly beautiful but when surprisingly placed becoming more than its sole self could possibly be. Unsophisticated. Playing with tensions of different material. Collage. Improbable museums. Lumber rooms even. No mystery, just things collected as they are, for the sheer joy of it all.

It is quiet and secretive, not telling out its message from the first, but from later on, later in the day. The afternoon was where it usually began, the morningtime being far too bright, except on an autumn day of mist and mellow fruitfulness. Keats knew it, looked out of windows for it, wrote letters full of it for the girl he loved, who was, quite naturally, quite taken by it. Has it to be it? Are we afraid to say this word too regularly in case its quality dilutes?

If one is of a sensitive disposition it can be so easily achieved, this state of grace. He would say it was watching her cross that sun-filled room, early autumn sunlight filtered through damson leaves bathed her quiet figure with shadows falling across a full grey skirt with its deep pockets and camphored hem. She held a bowl of figs in both hands, to place on the blue tablecloth. Better not go there he thought, the touch of fig on the lips, then its open fruit beset with seed. The rest is beyond and far away.

Is there such a music? A composer I know who believes so, and says for him composition consists of the enchantment of the audience through sound. There’s a little song I wrote when hardly out of my teens that conjures up this very state. Carousel it’s called and carousel it does.

A green table,
on it a fan.
Black plays white,
big versus little.
Each with green
gripped by delicate fingers.
Laughing both
the little one wins.
J’ai une maladie.
Yes –the world is for little people.
For children it opens its petals,
for the old they crumple.

Oh yes, for children the world opens its petals. My daughters being cats hiding in boxes, my son his eyes full of stars on a Welsh mountain under a winter’s sky – the memory so quickly fills with the enchantments of children.

And for lovers this word displaces the ordinary and surfaces with the barely credible. Not the first kiss, but on the thousandth brush of lips so light their bodies shuddered, their breath quickened, and there in that moment the perfume of passion enveloped them. In the silent bedroom they emptied themselves into love’s soft shadows and could hardly open their eyes to make sure they were really there and not elsewhere: they had walked from the slow curve of the sheltering beach to the flower-filled pasture, past indifferent cattle and through a tenderness of kissing gates where every embrace of lips gathered momentum towards, finally, that deepest kiss of all; enchantment, more than any loving, wholly and unforgettable.

Beside no temple,
Ornamental bridge or boat,
Over a village pond
It leans.
Its elongated leaves
Of many greens
Rise and fall en masse,
A brush of thin branches
Moved by a noontide breeze.
Painting the water.

In memory of
Patric Standford
1939 - 2014

It looks so insubstantial this score,
its opening notes and rhythms
surrounded by a weight of silences,
empty bars where the players rest,
in anticipation, in limbo, rest,
while their colleagues bow and blow
‘in serene cheerfulnesss’,
or so I imagine Hanslick will write
after the premiere. He will say
it is ‘manly but gentle,
animated by good humour
and reflected seriousness’.
What tosh!

And I will say, when I write
to Fritz my publisher,
- and I shall be ironic of course -
‘It is a work of a darker hue,
meditative rather than tragic,
but full of grace and charm.’

Walking the lakeside
at Pörtschach by the Wörthersee
I think all these words and more,
ahead of the notes I shall write here
in my simple room in the Hauptstraße
where today my piano arrived,
to be miraculously tuned
by Herr Grabner’s daughter,
a shy girl, barely sixteen he says
and blind, to my gruff presence
certainly, her small hands,
barely able to stretch the octave,
play at her father’s behest,
my Wiegenlied.

. . .
Schlaf nun selig und süß,

schau im Traum′s Paradies.*

Ah, that this, indeed, might be so.

He explained to me he was a ghost,
for, as a composer, he had died years before.
He then described something of the trauma of his death.
 
It was good to discover I was not alone,
that it could happen and one might really die
​to this creative life.
 
Shall I describe something of the trauma of my dying?
I don’t think you’ll want to hear this, but I’ll tell you.
 
It’s been six months this dying;
I’m not quite dead.
I am still affected by music,
though it’s no longer my own.
If I think about this dying too much
I become distressed.
I can’t believe it’s happened.
 
The point is - if I try to compose
I am overcome with fatigue.
I can’t keep focused
on the problem of a piece
before fatigue sets in,
interrupts.
 
I should
place a line under what I’ve done.
It’s no little achievement this body of work.
Some days I like to imagine a monograph:
Nigel Morgan 
Metanoia to Sounding the Deep
(1988 – 2013).*
And what is there to say?
What aspect of musical invention
will the writer investigate and critically present?
I was once told I had
an experimental edge.
Well, what does it mean?
I’ve mined that seam;
I’ve been convinced; I’ve held the faith,
believed in what I did, the way I did it.
But faith has run its course
and every day that passes
the future retreats.
There is no music waiting in the wings.
I am tired, tired of it, tired with it all.

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

IV

Pizzicato pianissimo
its sound gestured into resonance
a slight plosive of winds sustained
Arco – a lament in falling thirds
whispering towards an upward leap and a hold
crescendo  decrescendo
Imagine his imagining in nature’s realm
(that patient catalyst for the solitary maker’s mind)
now guarding here its assembly in a sounding out
Adagio – in a three-fold telling
A measured preliminary to the music’s soon-to-dance theme
before rising scales and emphatic chords – Allegro Vivace

V

Words on the rise
bricks on the going
then in the hall on the wall
A poem you simply have to read so
crouch close to the Suffolk brick
don’t mind those  descending shoes
The verse is laced with words of sound
breaker march cry rumble clap
cueing memory into remembrance
And why why here
where formal musicking lives and rules
are we noised down steps by a boiling kettle?

VI

As the water holds its breath
so a dense cloudscape
forms and floats
Inverted
mirrored
wholly still
it replaces the water
with horizonless sky
and extended reflections of grass
But as water exhales
clouds coalesce
a right perspective restores

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.

VII

This is my end
surely this is
the end of it all
all I know is here
and though I am
young this is the end
of life as I know it
now and soon I will
see my home no more
for this is my end
here where I shelter
from all I cannot
think beyond this ending
surely the end of all
I know is here
and will be gone

(after a cine still from 1930 of a St Kllda woman)

XVIIIa

house above the hut
of shadows holds itself
against the relentless wind
on so open a shore
islands and inlets beyond
reasonable number stand
before its policies
its promontory land
Up on the third floor
light fills every corner
expelling its shadows
to the hut held
within its sight

XVIIIb

slowly the darkness
reveals less than
a shadow thrown
against a plastered wall
inside silenced from the wind
an image grows as the eyes
succumb to less than light
used to looking Suggestion
and the memory of outside
supply the rest

(two poems connected by Chris Drury’s Hut of Shadows on North Uist)


XIX

following footsteps
crisp in the sand
hour-fresh from tide-fall
now the shadows form
in the weight of press
the imprint mark
different with every
fall of limb and claw
the 3-pronged bird-foot
the sandaled human
step singular one
before another after
another until perspective
conceals and merges
into distant sand

**

silence suddenly
the ringed plovers
hold their breath
then chorus
a chirping as they wade
together in their own
reflections
the water like glass
at their feet
mirroring
movement that light
hop for a few steps onto
a slight but sturdy island

tweet then terweet
inflected upwards
a questioning call
terweet?

XX1

the taste of salt sea
in the mouth
the touch of water
thick sea-water
on the legs between toes
the sharp cold plunge
immersion envelopment

sunlight throws a cascade
of bright steps across the sea
gradually merging into a band of light
ablaze on the horizon
at the base of distant Monarchs
a silhouette of massed rock
rises from the sea crowned
by static clouds decorating the sky
gentle white ermine-soft

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

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.

I’ve reached the point where I start
to make sense of things. I think.

I’m trying hard at my desk
this dull June day
with its pencil-grey sky
promising rain.

But I know in the fields
the whitest wild campion
has come into flower.
And the vase that used to stand
on the bedroom mantlepiece
dropping jasmined petals
into your shoes is now filled
afresh by your careful hand.

Oh to be better at where I am
rather than where I might be.
And to think beautifully,
each and every moments’ minute.

The afternoon is golden.
It has that light
only September
holds when
the angle of the sun
casts shadows
of a softer hue.
. . . and seeing you
in silhouette,
your back to the light,
(across this busy room)
there is a hint of a smile
as,
caught in talk,
your gaze attends
to the fielding of questions
. . .
So the while
I read your voice’s music.
Sketch the while
those gestures
I already know.

Inversion of twilight
before-dawnness
a lightening of sky
giving shape and substance
to the guessed-at
in the dark

Snow
this morning
though

so the chestnut trees
curving across the hillside

usually opaque
in the park pre-dawn

now magically revealed
by still precipitous air

a first fall on silver
drawings of branches

A silence too
of sorts: a deadening
the tentative movement of cars
where a hiss of the tyre
is now compressed
to a thuck of the wheel

Two dark dogs paw-deep
slalom down the hillside
sending up the snow-spray
like puppies they are not

XXXIII

swinging at her mooring
the Albatross sits out the squall
rain driving down the loch
its crew ready to launch
the tender to greet dry land
At last ! (said *****)

XXXIV

Reading Ransome
(before sleep takes over)
celebrates this northern clime
Diver or no Diver preoccupied ****
leaves the shore party to find
adventure above the secret cove
where Captain Flint and the scrubbers
make the Sea Bear fit for Old Mac
. .  . but I am seduced
(until she comes to bed)
with Ms Jamie’s Sabbath Day
on Collinsay finding nothing
more necessary to write than
Sea, Birds, Wind

XXXX

Yesterday it rained all day
so the museum beckoned
and we became enthralled
by the artefacts of daily life,
images of times within
the memory -  just. The things
of living mostly at home and
further from the world we know
and somehow cope with stand
testament to a way of life
now passed now gone.
Between bench and stove,
dresser and wheel,
the chest and personal
things, their short distances
collect in memory.


XXXV

sky blue
clouds grey and white
hills green and brown and purple
rocks grey and black
sea green and turquoise
tide brown
sand khaki
all the colours come together
on this afternoon beach
where the tide rising
dogs the footstep

(Chorus)
There is a pale bird
In the blue night
It stays awake
Beneath my window.
It does not sing.
It has no call,
And in the morning
It is gone.
 
(Verse I)
Life so rich.
Thoughts so full.
Intentions mainly
Good and strong.
My children sleep.
And I at peace,
My husband’s arms
Surround all foes and fears
 
(Verse 2)
Oh palest bird,
With moon and stars
Your only friends
You keep this vigil long.
Sing in my heart
A silent song
To reach beyond
The curtain of my doubts and dreams
 
(Verse 3)
And then one night
I’ll sense you’ve gone.
Oh pale bird taken
From its garden home.
What will I do?
Where shall I go?
The door now closed
On tenderness in sight and sound.

One another’s best
we two sat by a bank
where the wild violet grew,
holding hands, holding
each other’s gaze,
we thread a double skein
of pictures propagated
by our eyes
whilst inner thoughts
(our souls perhaps?)
negotiate, as we like statues
still, say nothing.

If someone standing near
could hear our silent speech
a pure concoction they would
take away, of you and I,
of ecstasy unperplexed
telling how we love, (not ***)
but all that makes both one,
each this and that.
Just as the violet redoubles still
and multiplies, our love with
one another interanimates;
we know of what we’re made:
we are intelligences,
and our bodies simply spheres.
We owe them thanks because
they thus did us, to us
at first convey.

And so we sit
our fingers knitted
into that subtle knot
which makes us man
and woman, but one to all
who look upon our love revealed.
Love's mysteries grow in our thoughts
but the body is where it lives.
We’ve heard this dialogue of one
and know it belongs in our bodies too.

Surrounded by the written word
I am you are we do together share
its purpose and its joy to bring
a sense to what we try to say

The call to prayer in words
that Jesus prayed and loved
fall soft between our lips
antiphonally spoken
righteous intoned
is it enough to speak
and yet not understand?

Later at my desk this page
of code describes a music
only I can hear a parametric
lexicon of formal language
I correct adjust compile

Thankfully soon I'll turn to
Thursday’s word-day
joy of weaving threads
not words in silence
but for beater’s slap
And treddles' clatter

Tea arrives and time
for music’s measure
afore a final task
takes hold: a blog
to write of she for whom
I’ve worded more than
any soul in rightful mind

‘Tis only love I say
and search my wordscape
waiting far beyond this keyboard’s
reach to click for something new
to compass all and more
and ever now she is Amen

*For Alice - on National Poetry Day

The light has already cast itself into the dark corners
of this shameful story: a man who was despised
and fell towards death, only for his presence to remain.

Is it such a hard lesson to learn that it is over,
and two millennia past? And yet we mortify ourselves
with holy guilt when we could enjoy these spring days

bursting with the budding leaf, the floating blossom.
Is there really a need for this re-enactment of selfishness
and death?  Are we such poor dumb souls that we observe

a Friday to remind us how it was? There is a presence
in our midst: the Eternal Christ who lives among us,
an incarnate being continually blessing us with love.

one single sound
one chosen image
one  memory forever
one infinite tenderness
one kindness to cherish
one taste to remember
one unforgettable touch
one necessary word*
 
your sleeping breath
the porcelain cobweb
lunch at the Garden Museum
your gentle hand
that kiss to quell tears
the salad from your garden
fingers brushing against my arm
thank-you

We could say the obvious
about a leaf,
typically flat and thin,
terminologically rich:
an angiosperm
with petiole, lamina
and stipules (lots of these).

But enough for now
because I want to be
poetic about the leaf
and its collective:
leaves.

As the haiku goes
Leaves lose trees
And trees lose leaves
Who can walk without
Dancing on windfalls
As crisp as these.

It is their dance,
their dancing,
(these veined forms),
that bring me
gentle reader,
to the page.
It is the wind’s doing:
rustling and rubbing in
summer airs,
turning and falling
in September’s gales,
path-bound then
leaves leap and glide,
twist and scatter
in the winter winds.
In spring they are like
babes in the womb,
attached, full of life,
hidden in the bud.

Star**

Viewed from the pilgrims’ path  
As it turns inland
Fields of stars cross
The heavens, a roof
above the chequered pasture
from Anelog to Rhiw.
 
Such cloud-depths
of constellations
pulsating into infinity.
 
The eyes wide-open
shut in the biting wind,
fill with tears of wonder.

Orange in spring,
pinkish-brown,
yellow into deep green
through summer,
and finally to crimson
in autumn when they fall,
these leaves of the acer griseum,
the Chinese paperbark maple.

On the tree its leaves are opposite,
not alternate, two leafstalks arising
from the same point on the twig.
This is how it must be, she thought.

She had waited for the first frost
and, gathered in a fold of her cloak,
let seven leaves fall
to scatter on her desk.
One leaf holds her gaze;
her fingers touch,
and turning it over
she places it ready
in the hand’s left palm,

Picking up her finest brush,
with sad and slight but heavy
emphasis required, she inscribes
the subtle downward strokes of
the kanji characters for crimson -
makka, the blood’s red,
the true essence of life.

crimson leaves
fallen now scattered
one is chosen.
my heart longs for love

So to the garden stream
she goes, and kneeling
beside its moving water
launches this leaf
from her cupped hand.

IV

Dear Frank,

My father, who was the wisest man I ever knew,
thought it the duty of every man, young & old,
to keep an account of his money;
& I very unwillingly obeyed him;
for I was not always so bothersome
an old fellow as I daresay I appear to you. . . .

My dear Father,

I have sent cheque to a repeated bill from Griffin.
A thermometer has come from Kew,
For which I have also paid.

I go on maundering about the pulvinus,
& from what I have seen roughly
in the petioles of the Cotyledons of oxalis,
I conclude that a pulvinus
must be developed from ordinary cells.

I have tried watering Porliera out of doors,
I gave four small cans full in the day
& next morning it was wide open
though for several days before it had been shut.
The ***-plant is very unhealthy I am afraid
As its leaves are dropping off at the stalk.

I was very glad to find that Sachs is dead
against all the people that find
the Descendenz theory in
Ray, Lamarck, Goethe &c.;
Sachs says that he believes some ferns
of the family Marratiaceae sleep . . .

Dear F,

I have finished the long chapter on Sleeping Plants
& sent it to Mr Norman to copy & diagrams to Mr
Cooper.

I am now looking over piles of notes on Heliotropism.
I am more perplexed than ever about life of Dr. D:
Hen thinks it very dull, & wants it much shortened &
otherwise arranged. Erasmus likes it.
Your mother wants parts shortened.
I shall take it on Aug. 1st to the Lakes
& finish it there.

I am tired— Ever yours
C. Darwin

For a moment
he held her in his arms,
and it still thrilled him
to feel the familiar places
on which his love for her
had moved, had been comforted.
And yet, she had moved away;
she had something else to do,
her mind far from the pleasure
of an embrace.

Retreating, he felt his body
in a different place
enmeshed with the length of her,
the cool loveliness of her skin
and, after much care and dedication
to the business of touch and stimulation,
she would become unto herself,
unto her body’s own desire.
But , it was not to be,
and he turned to his book,
to page 99.

His mind’s eye saw her
wander the garden, still
the moon faintly distant
in the morning sky
above the trees.

She was folding the past
into a small linen cloth
to place in her wooden box
of treasures kept from
teenage years, and after.

So she might know
he shared this loss,
yet far away
he held her firm
in love’s embrace.

Though new life stirred
in every corner bright
she would not sketch
its birth, or paint its fruit,
nor print its leaves.

But she would let
this green shade
gather under her gaze
for just one more day.
Only then, farewell.

He had declared previously
that he would only write
the shortest poems of love,
his affections, of her beauty
and loveliness in all things.
But here, as he watched the shadows
cast the late afternoon across
this still and textured dale,
he had second thoughts.
There was really still so much to say -
as every hour she came closer
and dearer and more precious
to what he knew to be his
consciousness, that being alive
to the wonder of it all.

As the light dies
I pace the field edge
to the square pond
enclosed, hedged and treed.
The water,
once revealed,
lies cold
in the still air.
 
At its bank,
solitary,
I let my thoughts of you
float on the surface.
And like two boats
moored abreast
at the season’s end,
our reflections merge
in one dark form.

Sometimes I think
I must be done with singing,
singing you this rich song,
this song of what
the poets call love unbound
(unhinged more like
as it brings me apart
at the seams) and there,
in an undressed state, it
blows through me and I know
I am neither myself nor
what I might recognize
as myself : instead this solitary man
waiting on her next word,
her favoured look, a light
touch to the shoulder,
which says there is this
flowing between us, a passion
for that detail, those small things
able to make big things possible,
obtainable.

And so this singing can never be done
because it can only be like this now,
never done with, always more waiting
as for a future wind, no matter how well
it might be forecast, we’ll rediscover it
afresh and laugh and smile bigger
smiles than we did at its first breath.

This is what love does to friendship
and the knowledge of the other,
always more to learn,
always more to see and know,
a cascade, yes a cascading
from one to the other
as sand in the hand
to a lower hand
and then reversed.
And so what we see
as morning greets us
severally, but so often apart
and from different windows,
is a coming together
in a joined thought – our morning
is this, or this, or this even.
and so we hold morningness
out to each other like the gift it is,
until later when, reassured that
we are really, really
in each other’s arms,
we feel the truth of it
deep in ourselves.

The hill
beckons
willing feet,
take firm steps
on steep slopes.
Rising quickly,
a first view.

Thereafter,
and steeper still,
rocks replace grass,
boots slide on lichened stone.

As mist falls
a sudden chill.
Silence.

Sightless of distance
each 'summit' brings
yet one more.

When all is said and done
with the day we lie
as one form splayed on our bed:
poetry’s slaves here shackled
fast to the word.
Now beaten, now caressed,
perplexed and often
moved by rhythm’s rhyme
to tears and more -
if there’s a sweeter gift this side
of love’s kiss it waits upon another page,
which we may turn one night,
and finding fall into pleasure’s pain.

a presence here nearly palpable
where the always carefully accurate hand
has arranged this accidental meeting
of stilled nature
of fused extruded sand

the shadows oh the shadows
oblique shading of refracted light
imprint almost of seed heads’
satellites exploding towards
a once sun
a past sight

the rough shading of the wooden shelf
the slight join of the papered wall
the gathered impurities
of dust against the edge of shelf
and wall a desolation
brim full of loneliness
hard to fathom here its depth
so very very hard to bare . . .
and those final words rising
out of this morning’s tenderness
and a naked self
of shadows oh its shadows

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.

I was asked today
after the reading,
(you know that time
for question and comment
poets either love or dread)
‘If you had only read
one poem, what would it be
I wonder, what would it be?’
‘Now?' I said,
‘Yes, now,’ she said,
being a tall woman,
in a silk-blue frock,
glasses pushed well back
into golden hair flecked grey.

I didn’t think.
I knew, and
as it was one
I knew by heart,
I dived right in.

I was ill
convalescing in fact
when I read this book
On Poetry
. . .

Does that surprise you?

I had no qualms,
no fears at all,
it was only when
those final words began
to disappear across the hall,
that hall of banners floating
in a fan-fuelled breeze,
I knew no right way
to say those final
italicised words:

Poetry forms in the face of time
you master form you master time

You see that couplet
wasn’t mine.
I’d only borrowed it
to make a point,
a point I could not make
in my poor words.

‘Nice to be quoted,’ he said later
as he brought his tea to my table.
‘I know exactly what you mean:
Christmas cake, penquins and the moon . . .
Hmm, just so,’ he said, and smiled.
‘Oh, I did like your poem
about the parrot on the beach.
I’ll read it to my girls when I get home.’

Living in the city
It's difficult to tell
A plane from a star
 
You look up
At a twinkling
And it moves
 
In another place
There is a dark
So dark you cannot
 
See your feet on the
The path you have to
Feel your way
 
To a mountain top
Where high above
Beyond a panoramic sea
 
The stars roll out
From horizon's glow
Until they seem to stand
 
Above your head
In depths so deep
They merge as clouds
 
Their twinkle blurred
A cosmic steam of stars
Vaporizing into light

Here’s a man
Arms outstretched,
Legs apart,
Staring up to heaven.
He’s big this man.

This is woman
Arms outstretched,
Her legs are crossed.
She has a secret
And a mouth.

If she turns around
To face the man
(and crosses her legs
over the man’s)
They become a pair.
They might (even) be in love.

Love needs a heart,
A heart of four chambers.

A heart to love
Needs a flow of blood.

The man and woman
Carry their loving heart
Of four chambers
On their heads.

To keep the heart warm
They need a roof.

And for good luck
The man and the woman
Put a tiger’s claw
On the roof .

This is love.

after the words of Isaac Penington 1659*

And Oh, How sweet
and pleasant to the
truly spiritual eye
to see several forms in the School of Christ.
Everyone learning their own lesson,
and knowing, owning, loving
one another in their several places.
 
To feel the same spirit and life,
To walk in our own order.
Knowing what it is to receive truth.
 
For this is the true ground
of love and unity.
 
Beware haste,
not pressing knowledge and practice,
but waiting patiently
till the Lord fits such to be received.
 
Leave conscience to its full liberty.
Preserve it single and entire,
Seek unity in the Light
Walking together.

The Shepherds**
 
There’s a lot of standing about
and shouting at dogs.
Meg and I tried it once
with ****, young and impetuous,
though trained since a puppy.
 
December
in the pale sunshine of
Carrig’s fields,
One shepherd, two dogs,
sort and partition
their multi-coloured flock.
 
**** can’t help himself.
He knows his role
and plays it way back
in the outfield.
Deep extra cover.

Dead thing
dismembered
prone on the sand
beyond the tide's line,
a torso of tree
amputated
of branches,
limb-free,
lying helpless
at the mercy
of the sea's reach.

it was as if every day
might be the last
he would wake in the night
with help me on his lips
but too late he thought
too late

I am beyond help
because I have selfishly ignored
both reason and right
and now I must take this life
apart

he was surprised at the calm
this realisation engendered
he would carry on from day to day
attempting small acts of kindness
being patient with his wife
his children his few friends

to the woman he loved
out of all mind he had only
admiration felt only tenderness
and hoped she would know this
to be true despite what he knew
he had to do

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

Visitors**

Coming together as friends
we usher ourselves into his presence.
He’s waiting there, ready for us
in stillness and silence:
to place our lives, our gloves
our car keys, under the chair
and face him;
a baby,
a child in the temple,
a young adult at the river’s edge,
a thirty-something who cared;
for those who’d failed,
and had been failed.
Failing in our so different ways
we come as visitors to tell him so.

Grey slivers of water,
turn blue as the lake appears

and being just spring
the still-leafless trees
at the water’s edge
allow sight of wind-filled
sails, a boat tacks too and fro
in the silent distance.

From the Professor’s Garden,
from the shared bench
within earshot of a stream
falling in chaotic music
of water on stone,
a further view takes hold:

of woodland’s gathered green
rising to a moor stained with rocks,
and higher still the rust-brown fell.
Beyond and above all becomes sky,
its processions of clouds
shadowing this laked land.

this garden
touches me
like no other

it haunts
my dreams
with its
still rich
forms and colours

sunlight is
playing patterns
on the dewed grass

the nearby river
the echoing birds
the braying cattle
my slight breath
this pen’s touch
such wonders
of stillness