By any normally accepted standard
three words are scarcely sufficient
to be considered a poem.
The Japanese, who have a gift for conciseness,
might be sympathetic.
(Haiku, after all,
    at seventeen syllables,
       are pretty compact.)
But three words! It's not so much concise as,
to put it bluntly, short.
If I say that, when I try to write a poem for you,
"I love you" is all I can think of,
that is no excuse.
And the fact that my meaning is new and unique
(for me and for you)
makes no difference either.
If only there were some way out of my difficulty.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
There, that's nine words.
Will that do?

I love my little garden, even though it takes me hours
to mow the lawn and prune the trees and **** around the flowers.
I love the bees and butterflies, and I wouldn't mind the snails
if they'd leave my runner beans alone and not go off the rails.

I like to watch the badgers as they amble 'cross the lawn
very early in the morning, in the hour before the dawn,
and if Mister Fox comes passing through, it's really quite exciting
- though I find the smell he leaves behind is somewhat less inviting.

I like the worms - they're useful and they don't do any harm,
but the badgers think my garden's their own private worm farm.
So I rather like the idea of a wild-life community,
Except the badgers messing up the lawn with such impunity.

Yes, I like to keep my garden like a small nature reserve,
but creatures sometimes do things that I really don't deserve,
like badgers digging worms up!  Though I really wouldn't mind it
if they'd just re-fill the holes, and leave my garden as they find it!

Take a group of chimpanzees
used to swinging through the trees,
and sit them down at keyboards in a row;
lots of paper, lots of ink,
lots and lots of time, I think,
and what the theory says I’m sure you know.

Yes, along with all the junk,
all the gibberish and bunk,
somewhere there’d be the full works of the Bard:
As You Like It, Cymbeline,
Richards 2 and 3, the Dream,
though Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, might be hard.

But I’m sure the little blighters
would get on fine with Titus
Andronicus, The Taming of the Shrew,
The Moor of Venice (that’s Othello),
the other Merchant fellow,
and Antony and Cleopatra too.

The Winter’s Tale would hold no terrors,
nor The Comedy of Errors,
and Verona’s Gentlemen would turn out right;
Love’s Labour might be Lost,
or it might be Tempest-tossed,
but All’s Well That Ends Well, even on Twelfth Night.

Lear, King John, and Much Ado,
Henry 4, parts 1 and 2,
Henry 5, and 6 (in three parts), Henry 8,
Troilus, Timon, Measure for Measure,
Pericles (a neglected treasure)
and how Romeo and Juliet met their fate;

all the Sonnets, and the ****
of Lucrece (typed by an ape!)
and if they worked for ever and a day
they could fit in Julius Caesar,
that Coriolanus geezer,
the Wives of Windsor, and the Scottish play.

I grew more and more excited –
even thought I might be knighted
if I could be the one to make it work.
But to realise my dream
I had to try a pilot scheme,
to prove I wasn’t just a reckless berk.

I bought one chimp from the zoo -
didn't have the cash for two -
and gave him a typewriter, just to try
for a short while. Well, a fortnight
was the time-scale that I thought right.
You see, I’m quite an optimistic guy.

Now everyone who heard
of my project said, “Absurd!”
when I told them of my striking new departure.
“Get a chimpanzee to type
the works of Shakespeare? Oh, what tripe!”
Still … he did produce the works of Jeffrey Archer.

We named you Daisy
for your white fur, because
we liked to name our cats after flowers.
But you were not only a white cat;
you were "odd-eyed white",
one orange and one blue.
Everyone loved your beautiful quirkiness.

You lived as our other cats did,
tame house-cat in the day,
but free to come and go;
half-wild at night,
following your instincts,
even if they were dangerous at times.

Then, one sunny morning,
I saw you from the bedroom window,
running back home, across the road,
and that time it really was dangerous,
as a car came past, exceeding the speed limit,
because in a race between speeding car
and running cat,
in the event of a tie,
the cat loses.

I ran downstairs and found you
by the gate,
warm, unmarked,
but unmoving, unbreathing

Carrying you gently to the back garden,
I laid you on the ground,
preparing to dig your grave,
as Marmaduke, our tomcat, came by.
Not the father of any kittens,
but surrogate to all our females.
After a birth
he knew what to do.
He would visit briefly,
sniff the mother, sniff the kittens,
walk off, apparently unconcerned,
and a day or two later
return with a mouse for mother.
That’s what father cats do,
even surrogates.

Only that day there was no birth,
no kittens,
and this time
he sniffed at you,
sniffed at the hole I had started digging,
and walked off
in complete puzzlement.
This time he did not know what to do.

-1-
Consider the Paradoxical Frog,
so named because it is several times smaller
than its p h e n o m e n a l l y huge tadpole.
(But then, look at people,
whose achievements often fail to match
the promise they once showed.)

-2-
The Second law of Thermodynamics
Out of winter, spring,
out of spring, summer,
then autumn, winter,
and out of winter, spring,
always the same.
Out of the bud, growth,
out of the flower, seed,
out of death, life.
Entropy always increases.

-3-
Once you were within my reach.
Suddenly you became a
g l i t
  t e r
    i n g
damselfly.
Just wait, I thought, I can change too.
Why did I have to turn into a frog?

I have been aware of your presence close by me in a crowd
I have seen your smile
I have felt the soft touch of your hair on my cheek
        I have known what it is to be enchanted

I have felt the pressure of your hand replying to mine
I have felt your body melt when I surrounded you with my arms
I have felt your lips brush against mine like leaves in the wind
        I have known wishes come true

I have heard your voice tell what your words could not say
I have tasted the longing in your heart
I have seen the tears behind your eyes
        I have known tenderness I have not had to earn.

I  went into the kitchen and made sure to wash my hands,
then looked inside the cupboards and took out the pots and pans.
I sorted out my sharpest knives and laid them carefully
beside the wooden chopping-board I'd brought home from Capri,
a wine-glass, and a bottle of a cheeky Spanish red  
(another happy souvenir of my travels to the Med).
I thought I'd  better have some herbs to flavour up my lunch,  
so I went into the garden and picked myself a bunch
of parsley, sage and rosemary, then poured myself a drink
– a drop of wine should help me in my labours round the sink.
Then I peeled and chopped an onion, which I sautéed golden brown
in extra-****** olive oil.  There was no time to sit down
while I scrubbed some new potatoes and put them on to boil,
so I had another glass of wine to help me through my toil.
Some Italian vine tomatoes and some peppers, red and green,
I sliced up on my chopping-board – no need for a machine,  
and I always think that slicing veg is somehow that bit kinder –
then I sprinkled them with sea-salt and some pepper from the grinder.  
By now my glass was empty, so I poured another drop in
to replenish all that energy I'd used up in the chopping,
and started on the vegetables, some pak-choi and mangetout,
from the local Farmers' Market, though they cost a bob or two.
I got the steak out ready, a lovely bit of fillet,
and lit the gas to heat the pan, my well loved cast-iron skillet.
It wouldn't need that long to cook; I didn't need to think
too hard about it, so I poured another little drink.
“That's really rather good,” I thought, but noted, broken-hearted,
that I'd finished off the bottle – and I thought I'd hardly started.
Still, I laid the steak into the pan.  I left it there to fry
and uncorked a second bottle. “Here's to me. Mud in my eye.”
I don't know why at this stage I was feeling less than fine,
but the cure was very obvious – another glass of wine.
My attention must have wandered then, if only for a minute,
for I saw the pan was smoking, and the steak that I'd left in it
was going up in flames, and so, although I knew I'd rue it,
I emptied out the bottle – it grieved me sore to do it.
The potatoes were so overcooked they'd  boiled completely dry,
and were rather badly scorched; I wish I knew the reason why.
Still, I rescued what I could, and laid it sadly on my plate,
and I know you won't believe it, but I thought it tasted great.
So when relations come to dine, perhaps on Christmas day,
I'll serve my speciality – I call it …. Steak Brulé.

(Alternative last line, for American readers :
  I'll serve them up my specialty – I call it …. Steak Brulé.)

[introductory note: This is not a conversation. Alternate segments are A/ statements made by a Spanish teacher in a lesson, and B/ the reaction of a young man listening but interpreting in a different way as he is entranced by a girl in the class]

As far as actions in the past are concerned,
if you give the matter your attention,
you will recall various tenses:
the Past Continuous, the Past Definite,
the Imperfect, the Perfect, and the Pluperfect,
which we might call the more-than-Perfect;
we need not concern ourselves at the moment
with the Past Anterior.

I, at the moment, am not concerned with the past at all,
for you are very much Present, and your action
of brushing the hair from your cheek
requires all my attention.

Take, for example, this sentence –
“I was looking for a word, and found it
in a dictionary which I had.” You will notice
the action of looking for the word
extends over a period of time, and is Continuous.

What I notice is the luminosity of your skin
where the sunlight strikes your shoulder, for in my case
the action of looking at you is Continuous.

The action of finding the word is complete
and fixed in time,
and requires the Past Definite...

And I observe how beautifully complete you are,
and I am fixed in this moment
which is now and forever.

...while the action of possessing a dictionary,
in this sense, has no beginning and no end,
leading us to the Past Imperfect.

Your eyes, at which I continue to gaze,
are more than Perfect, having depths in them
which seem to lead towards an Indefinite Future.
And the Past Anterior and the rest of them
do not concern me at all,
for you see me looking at you,
and the corners of your eyes crinkle
as you smile at me, and in my case
the action of being in love with you
has no beginning and no end.

I didn't take a photograph of the statue of Robert Burns.
His sightless eyes were looking out over Dunedin,
the most Scottish town in the southern hemisphere,
and there was a seagull, not a pigeon, standing on his head.
I would have called it "Robbie Burns and Friend."

And I didn't take a picture of the bus shelter
painted all over with jungle foliage and a tiger
peeping out over the simulated signature of Henri Rousseau.
The title would have been "This Bus Shelter is a Forgery."

Neither did I photograph another painted wall,
one round a cemetery full of ornate and sombre tombs,
with a large and skilfully executed advertisement -
Renta Sanitarios Mobiles (Hire Mobile Toilets).
It would have been called "Is there no Respect for the Dead?"

I didn't take the photo of a Fijian policeman.
A pity, for he had such a practical uniform,
very smart and cool,
in a tasteful shade of policeman-blue,
based on the traditional sulu
with a striking zigzag hem.
The title would have been "A Policeman in a Skirt?!"

I couldn't take a photograph of sunset over Popocatépetl
– although the sun was setting in a red and golden haze,
and the most romantically named mountain is just
what you imagine a perfect volcano should be,
even to the wisp of steam at the peak
– because the sun was actually setting over Ixtaccíhuatl
and "Sunset over Ixtaccíhuatl" doesn't have quite the right ring
The shape of the mountain is not very picturesque either.
Yes, I would have called that one "Sunset over Popocatépetl"
– if I could have taken it.

My camera wouldn't focus on the crescent moon
hanging over the Egyptian skyline,
horns pointing up, so close to the Equator,
and the evening star (Venus or some more ancient goddess)
just above and almost between the points.
If that one had worked it would have been called "Islamic Moon."

I couldn't possibly have taken a photograph
that would do any justice to the young piano student
in a Hungarian castle
hammering out Liszt as if the hounds of hell were after her,
but if I could, I would have had to call it "Apassionata."

And I didn't even have time to get my camera out
to take a picture of the wild humming bird
darting green and unconcerned
among dilapidated tenements in the heart of Mexico City.
But that living jewel shines bright in my memory,
even without a photo.
I don't know what I would have called that one,
and I'm sure it doesn't matter.

A hundred people, having known our girl,
who knew her love, and loved her in return,
came to her funeral, and there were others,
too distant, too fragile,
or too old to understand,
who would have come as well.
You were not with us, families and friends,
to see her coffin go stately to the fire;
you were not there to see us spread her ashes
on hillside and seashore, say a last goodbye.
But you, who never knew of her in life,
you also wept when you heard of her sudden death
from haemorrhage in the brain,
aged thirty-six and pregnant,
as if the facts,
the words alone, were tragic. You were touched
by the death of one whom you had never known.
You shared our loss.

There were four of us that day.
We all lost our virginity at the same time.
. . . well, more or less the same time,
there were a few minutes between.

All that fuss she made,
you’d have thought we were killing her.
She told the police she didn’t want to lose hers,
but we said she did,
and there were three of us
to back each other up.
We said she was hot for it,
and they believed us.

There were bruises, of course,
but we were all pretty excited, her as well,
and it got rather active.
The police agreed
it wasn’t all that unusual,
but they took photos,
in case they needed evidence.

I wish they’d given us copies.
They’d have made a good souvenir
of our first time.
The other lads would have had a good laugh.

What did she lose anyway?
Her self-respect?
Well, self-respect's cheap enough,
and when you consider it,
if it had gone the other way,
we could have had a criminal record
and lost our freedom.
So, all in all,
it was a pretty good result.

Pity about the photos, though.
That would have been the icing on the cake.

.
we may be neighbours
or separated by continents and oceans
close in age
or generations apart
brought up each in our own culture
speaking our own language
we have had different experiences
different lives
we are all individuals
each of us unique

but we are all human
we all breathe the same recycled oxygen
passing from one to another
across the face of the earth
we have known love and joy
loss and loneliness
hope and despair
turmoil and peace

we do not have different hearts

You came too soon, the four of you,
into this world.  Your mother,
recognising the feeling,
did what she had to do
to give birth to you,
cleaned you,
disposed of the afterbirth
in nature's economical way.
But you had no experience,
no knowledge of how to be kittens.
Almost still foetuses,
furless, unmoving, cold,
you did not stimulate
her maternal instinct.
She did not recognise you
as her babies. Lying against her belly,
you did not know how to suckle,
and she, not ready to feed you,
walked off.
You had no future.

A bucket of water, I thought, would speed
your departure from the life
you had barely started.
But you, recognising the element
you had so lately left,
were at home in it,
swam untroubled under the surface
like tiny, pink sea creatures.

Unwilling to watch longer,
I gave you a quicker end.
Your mother, unlike me,
resumed her life
as if nothing had changed.

Ready to unfold from dawn's cold grey mist,
She'll know to follow nature's sweet path,
To reveal the beauty that only she hath,
Accepting the light that she cannot resist.

She opens with colours that call tender touch,
A spiral of petals that twist from the core,
Silky pages that open in her moment, not before.
Who knew that a rose could hold so much?

Come close and breathe the sweet perfume she holds,
The promise of nectar hidden inside,
The honey she gives, her treasure, her prize,
More fragrant than incense, more precious than gold.

Her petals now open, but the bud always there,
Holding her strong, yet so fragile and fair.

just as when looking into the sun
i am dazzled by pure light
which is invisible
and i only see what is lit
by the paler reflections of its rays

or when my mind refusing to hear a perfect silence
creates its own thundering echo
of that silence
so that i may more nearly understand
the incomprehensible

your absence also is absolute
and leaves a void in me
i cannot come to terms with
until it is filled
by a memory

What is this feeling,
overwhelming, new, yet somehow
half remembered,
uncomfortable, ferocious,
and where even fear is not unknown?
Is it the same when I look deep inside you?
when I touch your hand?
when I know you want me to be there
(even though you do not speak or look at me)?
when you struggle for the words to tell me
what you want to say?

My heart races, I want to shout, laugh,
cry, hold you, be still with you.
I have known happiness,
but this goes much further.
Happiness belongs to the world;
like the things of the world it can fade.
Joy is of the spirit;
it exists of itself, intense, in the spirit,
yearning and fulfilment in one,
and it will not let me go.

I threw a pair of socks away today,
an old Fathers' Day present,
with a design of a comical animal
and "You're the best Dad".
But they were old, the socks,
certainly over ten years,
and though I hadn't worn them much,
the years take their toll on the fabric.
Only an old pair of socks
with a big hole in the heel,
but another link to the daughter
who died ten years ago,
and the love she gave.

Why does the right hand get all the good jobs,
like greeting visiting dignitaries
(such a pleasure) ,
or blowing farewell kisses to the one you love
(such sweet sorrow) ,
or playing the melody while the left
has to oompah along in the bass?
Right-handers get the best adjectives too.
I mean, we’d all like to be
adroit (as the French have it) .
So why do we poor southpaws have to be
gauche or, while we’re about it, gawky?
Tactless, without grace, ungainly, awkward,
physically and socially inept, that’s us.
And Latin’s no better.
We’d like to be dextrous too.
What makes us
sinister? Was Dracula
left-handed, or something?

Even when we can hammer
or saw or paint or drive a *****
with either hand equally,
or cut the nails on both sets of fingers,
they only say we are ambi-
dextrous, which is a bit of a left-handed
compliment, treating the left
as if it were an honorary right,
as if it had no right
to be skilful
in its own right.

I suppose my left hand ought to be grateful
(in this respect) that I was not born
into a tradition where it is laid down
what each hand can do. It could have been
condemned to a lifetime
of bottom-wiping and not much else,
and becoming cack-
handed in more ways than one.

Two curly brackets
with an apostrophe each
for eyes
like two faces
looking at each other
with noses
– or lips –
almost touching
and between the faces
a small letter x
denoting
(you guessed it)
a small kiss.

The faces are so anonymous
they could be anyone
but one is me
and the other
can represent any one
of my lady poet friends
or should that be
"my poet lady-friends"?

So if any of my poet friends
who are ladies
think they might like a small friendly gesture
of affection
from me
please take it as that.

We are after all
so far away
that it could never come to more
but like a small birthday present
it's the thought that counts.

Isn't it?

Andrew was a rather dreamy 8-year-old boy of average intelligence.  I had explained what syllables are, and given examples, then asked the kids to write a short poem with 1,2,3,4,5,4,3,2,1 syllables, to make a diamond shape.  Several of them didn't get it, and counted words instead, or just made the lines look the right shape.  This was Andrew's effort.

Please
little man
sing me a song
the sweetest song
that has ever been
with a harp
or a fiddle.
Sing a song
about the beautiful princess
or the sad puppet
or the thunder giant.
Sing me a song.

Would any of you have told him he had it wrong?  He had started off with an idea of the shape, but then the poetry had taken over.  I told him it was a brilliant poem - because it was - and not to worry about the syllables.

If my words had power

to tell my feelings for you my love

they might seem illogical.

So too the extravagant nightingale

singing to the summer midnight.

(rondeau redoublé)

This lived-in face has seen the years go by
at such a wild and unforgiving pace.
My powers are weak, though my aims may be high,
and troubles are all bound to leave their trace.

And while I always feel the need to brace
myself against life's storms, I know that I
can never win. Death always plays his ace.
This lived-in face has seen the years go by.

It's little help to know the rules apply
to every member of the human race.
Dark clouds are growing in my evening sky
at such a wild and unforgiving pace.

In this vast universe I have my place,
but can my thoughts outlast me when I die?
or speak to those in other time or space?
My powers are weak, though my aims may be high,

Yet while dark thoughts of gloom may multiply,
to let them win would be a sad disgrace,
though many things may make me want to cry,
and troubles are all bound to leave their trace.

Yes, my mortality I must embrace,
not waste my time in always asking why,
or fearing not to do things "just in case."
I'll dry those tears. There's no point to deny
this lived-in face.

If you read somebody’s poem and it makes you want to say,
“I think this piece is wonderful; it really made my day,”
just go ahead and say it – feedback like this is good,
but saying why you like it will please them (well, it should).

If someone that you don’t know says, “Please comment on my writing,”
and you look at it, and find it … let’s say, rather unexciting,
then don’t forget – be tactful, find something good to say
before you start on finding fault – don’t ruin someone’s day.

And if you think it’s terrible, be careful how you speak.
Some people write as therapy; their life may be quite bleak.
Don’t be too harshly critical and leave them feeling worse,
but simply go to look elsewhere, and just ignore their verse.

Some poems, though, may leave you with a puzzle or a question,
or even make you want to give some tentative suggestion.
There’s nothing wrong with doing this – just get it off your chest,
but don’t think your ideas are necessarily the best.

With members, though, who claim they are God’s gift to Poesy,
(if there’s nothing to commend them as far as you can see)
you can state your own opinion – of course you have the right –
but don’t forget the golden rule: *be honest but polite.

Such a wind today! The air
seems almost solid. Impossible
to go out in it.

Swifts invoking anti-gravity
lean on the air with sickle wings,
slice upward through it;
hang weightless at the peak,
then accepting the pull of earth,
hurtle downhill on kamikaze ski-run,
a mutual slalom, each avoiding
a hundred twisting obstacles;
alter their angle to the air, and rise again
up invisible gradients,
a swooping, soaring ballet with the wind,
its complex choreography
conceived in the tiny brains
of a hundred separate birds.

One pair, suddenly detached,
wings fluttering, wheel and plunge,
circle each other in an aerial
ice-dance pas de deux,
stunt kites without strings;
return to the flock, and are replaced
by another, and another, virtuoso couple.
The whole etherial stage is full
of improvisational star turns.

Such a wind! Impossible
for this earthbound human
to go out in it.
I'll stay and watch the show.

Today it is snowing,
and redwings are in the holly tree.

Yesterday it snowed
a soft, wet snow
that clung to the bare twigs
of the trees in the park
turning them into mounds
of silver filigree.
The holly tree in my garden,
scarlet berries, dark green leaves,
and branches covered in white
was a picture fit for a Christmas card.

Today also it is snowing,
and redwings are in the holly tree.
They come to my garden
in hard winters
looking for food,
and the berried twigs I would have cut
to decorate the house
will not last long.
A score of beautiful Scandinavian thrushes,
flashing their red underwings
as they flutter in the branches,
will finish the harvest today.

It may not snow tomorrow,
but the frost will preserve the snow
that lies on the trees and gardens.
The redwings will find food for a few days more
from the crab-apples in the back garden
before they move on,
looking for their next meal.
Sorry as I am to lose my holly berries
– for I shall have none to decorate the house –
I shall be sorrier to lose my lovely visitors.
But today it is snowing,
and redwings are in the holly tree.

Yesterday
I saw you
everywhere
all the time
and I wasn't even looking for you.
It was a good day.

Today
I was looking for you
all the time
everywhere
but I didn't see you,
not even once.
Life can be so cruel.

----------

Hier
je te voyais
partout
tout le temps
sans même t'avoir cherchée.
C'était un beau jour.

Aujourd'hui
je t'ai cherchée
tout le temps
partout
mais je ne t'ai pas vue
une seule fois.
La vie peut être si cruelle.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
                              But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
                        Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

(The ******)
My lord,
you trouble me
with your weighty message.
I am but a humble ******.
Why me?

(The Angel)
Lady,
Mother of God,
I do as I am told,
prostrated before you.
Why me?

(The Son)
*Father,
who knowest all,
I am your only son.
Am I to bear all the world's sins?
Why me?

A site I used to post to had a somewhat unhelpful, not to say discouraging,  line when you had posted a poem and nobody had commented it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“There is no comment submitted by members.”
Nobody bothers; nobody cares;
nobody gives a hoot how my work fares
– or they mean to say something, but no-one remembers.

The fire of my passion is reduced to grey embers;
the most piercing of glances just meet with dull stares.
There is no comment submitted by members.
Nobody bothers; nobody cares.

Like summers of hope fading into Septembers,
or flowers I’ve grown being smothered with tares,
I search and I search but, despite all my prayers,
I read once again, with a chill like December’s,
“There is no comment submitted by members.”

The love of a mother for her child
is not the same as the child's love for his mother.
The love of a man for a woman changes
after they are married
from what it was before,
and her love does not correspond in all points with his.
Love between man and woman
is different from the love of boy and girl.

Love can be permanent as the tides, regular, unquestioned,
with no end and no recognisable beginning.
It can come suddenly,
violently,
as a thunderstorm in summer breaks
upon the thirsty earth,
short-lived
except in the memory.

But under any one of these emotions
what is there for us to say?
Only, I love you.

Thoughts can be subdivided, classified, clothed with words.
Words fit feelings only approximately,
and our deepest feelings must often go unclothed.
So when I say I love you
I cannot analyse what I mean.
I only know that I do love you
and hope you understand.

(homage to Ogden Nash)

See the buzzard soar, the swallow skim a lake, the kestrel hover;
observe the skylark pouring his little heart out in the sky;
admire the flapwing, lapwing flight of a flock of plover;
what birds do is fly.

At least they oughter,
because once birds get onto the water
they can't help looking absurd
– except the swan, for which nobody I know has an unkind word,
or, mostly, seagulls,
who fly with almost the grace of eagulls,
and in their silvery-white uniforms are impeccably neat,
even if my admiration for their manners is incomplete –
but, shucks,
look at ducks.

And for something really silly,
shaggy-winged, fluffy-headed, and disproportionately
                                                                ­                   neck-and-bill-y,
consider the pelican, for heaven's sake.
Surely Nature made a mistake,
or left the designing of it to a particularly inept committee,
it's so unpretty.
But once in the air he can soar like a buzzard, though maybe lower,
and skim over the waves with more perfect control
                                                                ­        than a swallow, and slower,
and dive for a fish like a living javelin, that clumsy pelican.
By helican!

No, for a shapeless, hapless caricature, created to be comical,
the epitome of what a bird shouldn't be, the penguin
                                                             must be the most epitomical.
As he does his impression of a Charlie Chaplin waiter,
you know he'll fall off the ice sooner or later.
But before a warning can escape your lips
he trips
(and slips).
Then, as he slides beneath the waves, ah! See the happy penguin fly,
A graceful bird in his greenblue underwater sky.

The love of a mother for her child
is not the same as the child's love for his mother.
The love of a man for a woman changes
after they are married
from what it was before,
and her love does not correspond in all points with his.
Love between man and woman
is different from the love of boy and girl.

Love can be permanent as the tides, regular, unquestioned,
with no end and no recognisable beginning.
It can come suddenly,
violently,
as a thunderstorm in summer breaks
upon the thirsty earth,
short-lived
except in the memory.

But under any one of these emotions
what is there for us to say?
Only, I love you.

Thoughts can be subdivided, classified, clothed with words.
Words fit feelings only approximately,
and our deepest feelings must often go unclothed.
So when I say I love you
I cannot analyse what I mean.
I only know that I do love you
and hope you understand.

Your ashes
unburied
dispersed in the sea
dissolved in salt water
mixed with sand
find a quicker way
to nature's recycling.
You are not gone
simply absent from life
and I cannot pull you back.
I can only wait
helpless as you are.

He saw one evening a young woman in a red dress, and he remembered being in Luxor, sitting on a hotel balcony, looking out over the Nile, watching all day as the shadows shifted on the cliffs above the opposite bank, as the colours changed from ochre to gold, from pink to violet, and how he had felt so completely at peace. And seeing the girl in her red dress, with her hair up showing the curve of her neck and throat, with her easy, natural smile and her confident air of self-possession, he knew the same feeling; he could have sat and looked at her for hours and asked for nothing more to make the evening perfect.

These children
round-eyed
absorbing what the world offers them
or silently wandering in their own
imagination
must lose their innocence and grow
older but not necessarily wiser.

There are journeys from which (for all practical purposes)
it is not possible to arrive anywhere,
except perhaps, after considerable stress,
the place that you started from.
Come with me. It is only
the setting out that is difficult.
Put your hand in mine and we will begin
our journey together. It may be long,
it may be hazardous, but the value of the journey
is not related to its length,
nor to the hazards overcome,
nor to the places we may visit, though they be many.
It lies rather in the fact of having set out
in the hopeless hope of discovering
something at the end of it all.
At least we can try - the value is in the trying.
Put your hand in mine. It is only
the setting out that is difficult.

Sometimes in summer
when roots find no water
leaves wither, fade, and fall,
but with the rain
new buds, new leaves appear.

Sometimes after a forest fire
fresh green will push out of charred wood,
the ash of the old leaves
fertilising the new.

Sometimes in the thick of winter,
sudden mildness may stir the sap.
Precocious leaves may not resist frost's return,
but another spring will come.

Sometimes there is no hope
until spring comes.
Sometimes there is hope
despite everything.
Sometimes spring comes
more than once.

(Or, It takes all sorts to make a world)

About half the world is female, while the rest of us are male,
and some of us are rather young, while others are quite a bit older.
Some people are emotional, and wear their heart on their sleeve,
and others, from the outside, may appear to be rather colder.
Some writers are extremely careful to obey all the rules,
while others in their attitude are very much bolder.
Some may be quite tolerant and easy-going,
but others seem to have some kind of chip on their shoulder.
In fact, from what I have observed over the years,
in some cases it's not so much a chip as a boulder.

Oh yes. By the way, please write this down
and store it very carefully in your poetry folder —
It is most definitely not a definition of "well-balanced"
if you are carrying a chip on both the left and the right shoulder.

Words have power.
We all know this.

Verbs have power
because without verbs
we can neither laugh nor cry,
neither run nor walk;
we cannot breathe,
nor even be,
without a verb.
A noun too has power
because with it we have, in a sense,
mastery of the object, the person, or the feeling
that we name.
Even an adjective has power,
for it qualifies the noun,
fleshes it out,
makes it more our possession.
A conjunction,
small, insignificant,
you might think
without power,
but ....

All words have power.
We know this,
or we would not be writing poetry.

My mother was the tenth
of eleven children,
all born, on average,
two years apart.
So her mother,
- my grandmother -
was, as far as I was concerned,
always old.

She had pink, wrinkly cheeks,
like an apple that’s been kept too long,
and, to go with the apple cheeks,
she smiled a lot.

I had heard of Granny Smith apples,
and assumed they were like my gran,
pink and wrinkled,
but when I found out
they were shiny
and green,
I was deeply shocked.

Fair enough,
green was her favourite colour,
so that wasn't too bad,
but . . . shiny!
I never really got over the shock,
and, however long ago it was,
I still can't quite forgive them for that.

The function of a violet is to grow
out of dead leaves,
turning decay
into itself.
A poem too builds a little sense
from the rubble of life (what branches grow
out of this stony *******?). One and the other
flower according to their nature,
seen by those
who know what they are looking for.

A violet is not a poem,
but the message is the same.

You young girls whose faces
if I try hard alone of a night
I can recall
though your names
are more difficult
exist so to speak
in the parallel universe of my mind
and I
as I once was
or as you would have liked me to be
perhaps live on in yours
but as we are now
there is no crossing those frontiers
and even if the possibility should arise
in that other world
the people we have become
would be strangers.

To repay you all the love you've shown,
what can I say to give you peace
from all the troubles you have known?
What can I do to bring release?

What can I say to give you peace
during the day and through the night?
What can I do to bring release
from all the horrors in your sight?

During the day and through the night
I want to shield you with my love
from all the horrors in your sight,
my darling girl, my rose, my dove.

I want to shield you with my love
from all the troubles you have known,
my darling girl, my rose, my dove,
to repay you all the love you've shown.

I received a message from you
but when I clicked on Reply
my predictive text
trying to be helpful
offered me a choice
of three words
to start with

I  You  The

not an impressive option
you might think
but on reflection
"I"
had "You"
in the centre of my mind
and for a robot
guessing
what I wanted to say
two out of three wasn’t bad

Aquella noche
la playa era llena de hogueras,
y las olas entraban misteriosas,
cargadas de espuma,
de los paísos antiguos.
Y en la playa
llena de hogueras y magia
quemamos nuestros deseos de papel,
porque esta noche tal vez se podrían realizar.
Entonces, poco dispuestos a esperar, corrimos
unos minutos antes de la medianoche
en la mar misteriosa, antigua, pagana,
y nos sumergimos en la espuma.
Surgisteis vosotras,
gritando en las olas
con la alegría de esta noche.
Cuando subieron fuegos en el cielo,
y algunos, cayendo en la mar,
estallaron de nuevo allí,
entre las olas mismas,
saltasteis tambien, gritando
con la energía de esta noche mágica.
Y más tarde, cuando éramos casi
los últimos quedando en la mar,
salimos a la playa
llena de hogueras y amor.

Newly arrived at the edge
of the rainforest,
I explore the camp,
our temporary home.
Under a shelter there is movement.
I go to investigate
and there you are.
You turn to me
and our eyes meet.
Impulsive, I reach out
to stroke your long, pale blonde hair,
and you, equally impulsive,
encircle me with your arms,
your soft hair brushing my cheek.
I am filled with a strange,
yet familiar feeling,
in love at first sight
with a woolly monkey.

That night
the beach was full of fires,
and the waves rolled in mysterious,
foam-laden,
from the ancient lands.
And on the beach
full of fires and magic
we burned our paper wishes,
for that night they might even come true.
Then, because we were unwilling to wait
the last few minutes, we ran
a little before midnight
into the mysterious, ancient, pagan sea
and submerged ourselves in the foam.
You rose up,
shouting amid the waves
with the joy of that night.
When fireworks shot into the sky,
and some, falling to the sea,
exploded there again
to shoot from the very waves,
you also leapt up, shouting
with the energy of that magic night.
And later, when we were almost
the last remaining in the sea,
we went up onto the beach
full of fires and love.

Born on Boxing Day
she lived a hundred and one years
- all through the Great War
that failed to end all wars,
the social revolution of the twenties,
and the great depression,
before marrying at the age of twenty-five.
And even then she had to declare
her father’s occupation
on the marriage certificate
as if "father : ostler" defined her.
The marriage took place on Christmas Day
to save the expense of another family gathering.
She never went out to work after that,
no longer just her father’s daughter
but proud to be a wife and mother,
first in rented rooms with a shared outside privy,
then to a modern house “like a palace”
with a refrigerator
and a washing machine
and a garden
where her husband could grow things.
She always loved babies and children
and even at the last,
after years of advancing dementia,
with eyesight, hearing, mobility, and memory failing,
she would always come to life
in their company,
everything forgotten except how much she loved them.
We finally said goodbye, knowing
that although she had little to give
except love,
she gave it to the end.

From the earth the stars
look like they could reach out to one another
and hold hands,
link fiery arms,
and share burning kisses.

But I imagine they're lonely,
just minute blinking lights to one another,
fires extinguished,
in a single breath,
flames dulled to nothing,
like pinched candles.

Can you feel what they do,
As they watch each brother die?
Not close enough to know,
not close enough to hold,
not close enough to save?

I can.