.
A wet kiss is better than a dry kipper.

The instincts born
in margins mutable now lost
corrected by experience
as in the convalescing heart
circadian rhythms  manifest
and in unspoken  consequence
by factoids winnowed
from the chaff
assurance nurtures joy.

.
Beneath umbrageous canopies
the contiguity of growth
forms adamantine barriers
where brambles arc in underwood.

There lost  in damp obscurity
and muffled by the quaggy moss,
a stolid land with sounds unheard
in supernatural silences.

And in the grey of leaden dawn
the chilling tones of slate blue skies
reflect  in drops of cold wet dew;
in lands where no men tread.

.

But little modified by time,
beyond  a sea of rare constraint
and far removed from shore and heather,
lay the slopes and wooded hills
where labourers toiled in distant fields
through sleet and snow and sun and rain.

Set deep within this vista’s folds
a simple house of slate and stone,
declared by upright pointing stack
where curling smoke reached out
and punctuated hedge and vale
to touch a sheeted sky.

His home beneath the mossy slate,
blind circumstances led him there,
In congregations high esteem
a man of opaque piety
who never trod the stony path
which leads to fortunes door.

Seen through ***** window panes
from sandstone floors once swept of dust
beneath thin veils of peeling cloud
the breezes filter through the trees
and whisper indistinctively.

With contiguity of growth
the spectral arms of distant boughs
point far beyond the rutted tracks
long chiselled deep by labouring wheels
on summer nights like these.

And in those far remoter scenes
lie lands where rainbow dreams reside
and lost souls live in calm content
as worries fade in drifting tides
of slumbers reassurance.

.

told
once
their tales
in wild dreams
by the breezes borne  
across the wild mystic byways
covered there in faery dust their ghost in spectres floats  
across the wild mystic byways
by the breezes borne
in wild dreams
their tales
once
told

Yet sleep alone abstracts design
of supernatural agencies
the transit of their ghost like forms
their flowing frills and furbelows.



Yet sleep alone abstracts design
when daylight falters ending day
and reason exercises sense
in ruminating silences.

.
For those travelling to London we will arrive
before it gets dark at 4.30.

For those travelling to March I’m sorry to say
you’ll get there a  month too early.

A fact that’s often misconceived
as many an angler will confirm
it’s not the depth at which you fish
it’s how you wiggle your worm.

The burning  light of summer sun
its  fire-light fingers  reach between
the shed door slats and delve the dark
where  knots of matted web are spun
unseen by sun blind eyes.

Deserted now no more the sounds
of men in sheds
who cared the grounds
and left behind the roses.