Can someone tell me
What it is
to live?
Dying seems easy,
An every-day event
And like weddings,
or birth,
adorned with flowers,
gifts like love, respect,
and memories,
so many silver spoonfuls
of memories.

Now I have seen it
so many times,
the old,
the young,
the kin,
the stranger...
In war
And peace,
In feast
And famine.
With duty,
with a duty of care,
an onlooker
full of compassion...
every-way
imaginable.

In places undreamed,
In inevitable areas...

In the family pews
On rainy dismal days,
And on the faraway ghats
Before a hot afternoon;
each experience
leaving a feeling
that one shouldn't be there.

Now everyone has packed
and shuffled,
And I have wrung my hands
for the last time,
I tell myself
unconvinced.

Now that everyone
has left me
In this landscape,
I look around
And recognise
nothing.

Age does not matter,
each one
an orphan,
each telling themselves
that it is for the last time...

Lead me away
from that funereal path
where they all are
and are not,
simultaneously;
something else
awaits me, down this byway,
across a different track,
In a different part of the mountain.

We don’t really understand

How atoms behave;

Or infinity;

Or how winds carry the seasons -

Like ‘Olde April ‘ with it’s 'showers sweet' !

Yes, I’ve felt them...



The clean stinging scent of rain

Scratching at the earth,

Pelting aromatic plants,

Condensing the smells of seas, winds, continents;

Infusing the sum of all these aromas in its perfumery,

Marketing it: April, again.



And Eliot said,

There be April,

'The cruellest month'.

Oh my (!)

Appealing April, with its sunny flavours,

Cascades of cats & dogs,

And dead-eye jack,

Firing frosts that just might spend the tender herb.



It was snowing in April,

And Easter was early, that year

When I took Schrödinger’s cat walking

On a leash, And April was still new,

And capable of shocking...



Now any month - could bring pitiless ruin.

The year annually

Out of step with migratory designs,

Throwing epithets out of its greenstick pram,

Its months in disarray ,

No-one knows what’s going on...





The drunkard earth sups up it’s own tears,

Reeling in its spin,

Until,

Saturated,

It can drink no more,

And every dip fills,

Every meadow spills,

Banks overflowing,

Its resolve drowning,

Questions washing

Up like a tide of interrogative curiosity.



OK – so I am really hiding in my acres...

At least I can tell - it’s April !



Enquiring lily-of-the-valley,

Puts up green periscopes.

Peering through the sodden grass,

The remnants of last year’s soggy leaves,

Cosset primrose & ramsons.

Daffodils are past their best, but soldier on

Like hungover squaddies,

Snowdrops have fat capsules where white drops shone,

Hellebores have been up since the crack of time -

Good movers - they could dance all spring!

Dingles are glinting green with native bluebell leaves,

And their mophead mates have muscled in the garden,

Quiet violets lounge on the field’s chaise long,

Coy, understated,

How British!

Oxlips and cowslips join the brave primroses

Who have been on the razzle for weeks.

White & purple lilac in green cassocks,

Will soon burst out

Like kiss-o-grams.

Boughs hung with clematis,

Still tiny shoots like birds on wires.



I am giving a prize for the first celandine on my patch;

Each little celandine - Rannunculus ficaria - is

A miniature sun uttering: Oi! You up there, old currant bun!

Here’s the template for a perfect summer sky !

Oh Jonnie you’d rather espies

Needles in your eyes

Than be asked...

Don’t hassle me man ! you decry ,

As the fur begins to fly

And she tells you to ‘get a life’;

Now you said all there is to be said

Once you said it, citing something you read,

No point in saying it twice;

Though you turned down all offers of choice

You still speak of having no voice,

What a paradox in electric socks,

Now you’re starting to climb right out of your box,

But though Jonnie, I hardly knew you,

I saw through you, not a great view,

Poor you, poor you, poor you!

Wish I would, perhaps I should, if only I could.

But I can’t;

There’s a war on, and the milk’s gone

Off, and... oh... always something else that’s wrong

All the time, everywhere,

With that guy that you met on the stair

Who definitely wasn’t all there,

And most of the people don’t care

Enough; And the time speeds by, for the mob and I,

Though change will come, when you can add up the sum,

And the answer you find

When you peel back the rind,

You’re guaranteed not to like it,

No, no, no.. You won’t like it...

To reminisce, while all the world is pride,
I sit it out (remembering the flood),
I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.

Look west, sharp swallows sweep the sun aside,
Tomorrow’s hurt quakes within the mind; odd
To reminisce, while all the world is pride.

In moments lost, instances regretted,
The whirligig of time spins out some mood,
(I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.)

The evening light’s remorseful spendthrift tide
Gleamed gold, for just a moment, like a god
(To reminisce, while all the world is pride)

Shining just enough to halt some sad slide,
Clouds clear away before there’s time to brood,
(I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.)


To come full circle, reach home port, and hide
Each painful loss through trial, trust or blood.
To reminisce, while all the world is pride,
I sometimes felt that hope had all but died.

I long to go now...

To where sunlight sifts its happy golden rays
Through leafy limbs that stroke the riverbanks;
To where the wafting wind
Winnows summer’s ripe-corn light,
Broad-casts, along lush, lithe folds,
And the hollows of the hills;


To where skies gently breathe above,
And all afloat
Clouds unfurl their mainsails & their jibs,
To tack along a doggerel day.

To wander towards hope,
That feather in a fool’s cap,
And find a morning rainbow bright,
A brief cool kiss of rain,
All to excite skin, then lend lean shadows again,
Oh! how one curls, unfolds,

Under the polar sun,
Like a magic fish,
Flapping on a spread palm,
Or hydraulically smooth,
A giant clam’s lifting shell.

Come now, warm airs, **** vegetable scents,
And full sun after noon,
To expiate the sins
Of replica monsoon.