A makeshift camp of hardy souls,
the air is cold but we are free
and hold to our common causes.
Little is said. There's much quiet thought.

The crackling fire makes it all
real, fans our fellowship of feelings,
casting shadows of mysterious
creatures . The flames flay our faces red.

Limbs stiffen, ache, but only eyes move
for fear of breaking our charmed circle.
Minds are moving fast over unknown
futures, over people from the past.

We are progressing upstream, no sighting yet.
Their gods are letting us pass unmolested.
Even the sun beckons us up these blue waters,
but the cliffs are closing in, scarved with the icy
torrents of waterfalls spilling their glacial flux.

In the distance is a great broad path, paved
in crazy glazing, glinting in the sun.
There's no escaping this snare's enchantment.

Surely, they don't take us for their pirate
longboat returning to digorge its stolen treasures.

Somewhere Thor's hammer is at work. We pray
we will be spared his unforgiving anvil,
for we come only with our tourist tribute.

There's something special about a named train,
the Mallard, the Royal Scot,
more romantic than a mere number.
Ours was the Red Rose, pride of LMS.

The London-Liverpool express
flahing North, four-thirty on the dot,
a sight not to be missed, exciting
street players of jacks and hopscotch.

She thundered through the blue brick tunnel,
erupted into the grass-lined cutting,
swallowed our footbridge in smog and sulphur.
The we loyal fans ran home to eat our spam.

Sunday - the weekend's tombstone,
burying the worst of last week.
The silent ringing of church bells,
best suit coffined in my wardrobe.

I see proud parents pushing prams,
grandads toddling after toddlers,
but no young couples promenade,
as we did when teenagers.

Some sought their compensation
in sensational Sunday press.
It's surely generational.
We were schooled for Sunday rest.

Their boat turned in towards us
ready to board our vessel
to take us to their island,
a fastness, craggy, bleak, treeless.

To winter peat fires, gales, darkness,
weird northern tales of gods and trolls,
black nights seared by bright light curtains,
a violent Viking heritage.

A place where cold sea and ocean
overturn the crippled sea stacks,
our lives in the boarding party's
hands and our skilful Shetland pilot.

She's down and all on board are lost
in a country full of hate.
Unnamed bodies lie and rot,
victims of collateral shame.

Like blackbirds pulling worms from lawns,
they pick possessions over,
voiding evidence, spoiling, looting,
while dead voices scream dishonour.

The freedom to fight for your side
or just to fight another tribe.
Fingers pointing, picking fault,
while expert pickers are deterred.
Newsmen gather every word.

He's marching out of step, our poet.
You can see it in their eyes and hear
it in their sighs. They whisper 'snob'.
But he's always gone beyond the norm,
hiding thoughts, hiding loves, faith denied.

Duty to art, duty to country,
duty to comrades bind and confound.
Few try to understand poetic
powers. Few seek the truth inside the man.

He set out to face the slaughter, knowing
death's colours, sounds and smells, writing of waste.
His end a poet's wreath matted red. His last
trench a French canal. His pen impatient