the song of an unseen bird

across the wet road

among tall pines

a melodic three note lilt

rings leaf-strewn light

through the trees



over the hill rushes the road

under cloud-marbled sky

Old, abandoned wooden hulks,
They lie, keeled over, on coarse grass,
Left to sleep on the estuary flats.

These brute barges, timbers strong
As the men who worked them, masterless,
Rise on no tide, rest heavy and decay.

From one, still upright, a mooring rope
Hangs in an arc, like the downward curve
Of its great, oaken, rusty-hinged rudder;

Tied to the mud where older keel spines die.

on a dark road
below a black hill
headlamped vision
gritty verge littered
with insect road ****
husk moth bodies
beetle shell   mud
defiled ox-eye daisy
dumb weight tramping
the treadmill night
day-shot with the memory
of those lapwing hundreds
wheeling in ascent to fall
on folded wing and again
gyre up to the brink
of abandonment
green silent fields away
as when in advent there
the hills rose up before me
and the thirst for their
awesome green

loth to return
to that vortex drawn
down ice-pocket ruts  
my city captive goes

Faced back before the field space overrun
of runway's end, rusted spikes of flower'd
dock, the field left empty there.  World's
airport flatlined beyond and down the sky
ride planes on turbined mist.  The stack's
descent, each air-braked glide to tarmac
draws another on and down the day
I slip off into, drive away
along the curve of it.  Before

Haslemere, where a tight hedged bend turns up
to the town, is a roe deer, struck dead against
a van.  The driver, in descent,
appalled before the long, spread body
of this two year buck, its twin-tined head
laid to ground, a trickle of blood at the mouth.

It fell to this elegant pose
athwart the van's front width,
white neck flopped from the withers;

Crash landed in a sudden grace of death.

Who are who look
Through gazed window
Attention glazed whom
        None knew who steal
        Care sought answer
Who mute at window move

Slight shadow
Droplet tears
Lost city ghost

Who forensic wonder
Who cutaway found
Uncertain broken ground
Cloud circling shark

Shards of thought
Diamond scratch the glass
Weekend wilted grass view
Litter blown listless below

The weighted cloth
The china clog
The fireplace tiles
Cold as dead stars.



dec 2009

as you woke walking and the path
wound up ahead where pearly snails trailed
moon-shine and the trees like tall elegant
women high over fretted twinkle stars

what had it meant, the day?  The wind
was a silken scarf that wrapped your eyes
so you tottered on the cobbles, laughed.
A friend waved across the town square
somewhere, a child's toy in the gutter
as the sweet rain sprinkled your face
and hair fanned out in an ocean of breath

but the dark gathers and the trees give wild
voice, your toiling feet groan for rest, refuge
of starlight cottage

Is the lover there?  Will the tall trees shelter
you, star gems gleam in safe seclusion
on the mantel spread scarf
and your eyes dream the warm night?

Under the spread hazel's winter
umbrella hung with pale catkins
pulling at a black bin liner rubble
spilled, a little toad tumbles free
from under in turmoil of warty limbs.

A toad in this garden where is no pond
found a moist pocket of plastic pleats
and a larder of wood lice in the rotted
pile sits on my palm calm as a buddha
thoughtless, yellow-eyed, unidentified.

Later, returning for forgotten secateurs
he drifts down in the water *** I let in
to the ground, trailing a bubble stream,
an olive green indifferent nature god.
The lordly stars sustain his crawlspace.