Spring it’s great to see you
so glad you came my dear
it hardly seems a moment
since you were here last year,
we’ve had enough of grey skies
slush and wind and snow
if winter keeps you talking
say you have to go

Cool winds of winter
blow but soft upon the land
not stronger
let sparks of Autumn
last a little longer
don't huff so hard
they lose their amber apple glow
hold in your icy breath
we do not want to see them go

I slipped
through a crack in the world
rolled down the bank
and lost myself
among the bottles
and discarded papers
you, a collector of trash
found me
and made me useful again

The roots of art
are often buried deep in childhood pain
every flower needs a little rain

Tennis racket
lost along with your skis
like falling leaves
blown into the cupboard
they stayed for 90 years
waiting for Anthony to finish the game
but he never came

Three hundred million years
to them we are nothing
mere children
a whisper on the breeze
echoes of a song, that started long ago
it has no lyric, for it is older than words
the sound of sky and water
tall green trees and waving grass
they sang it to the dinosaurs
when the world was new
in turn, our time will pass
as all things do
but they will carry on
unchanging and unconcerned
humming the tune
of their endless dragonfly summer

Almost a year of low level stress
a summer and winter of trying to guess
will it be over, can we progress
the urge to cheer up and get on has expired
not sure about you
but my God I am tired!

Grief is an empty place
a dark and silent painful space
with the hardest plastic chair
you wait until a flicker of light
shines under a door
you never knew was there

Flowers spread happy
Wanting little in return
It's a rare talent!

My old cat
asleep in the sun
he knows his summer
is almost done

A pause for thought in sunlight
observe the flight of bees and busy nesting birds
hear the whispered words of a sighing breeze
smell the green of fragrant singing trees
today I cannot write, no drop of ink will flow
not a single solitary minim scratched across a waiting line
it is a feeling difficult to define, and not as I would have it go
no matter how much I would want it so
spring has stilled my pen

Winter
is a monochrome beast,
with freezing paws, an icy purr
and bits of autumn stuck in his fur

I was a cutting
the empty shell
of what was always meant to flower
my somewhat withered roots
those tangled thorny barbs
were beaten,
crushed to powder
by the grinding heels
which pound life's highway
yet come the spring of middle age
I claimed the time anew,
and flourished strong
no longer swamped by rain
which fell upon my dusty head
it washed me from the drain
where life had placed my weary self
I found rebirth in lost but still familiar tracks
and a writer grew between the pavement cracks

Bequeath to me sleep in your will
let me lay, all silent and unknowing
leave me this as your parting gift
for only the dead can ever know true peace
I may dream of you, and never want to wake
we can waltz together to music never-ending
a sweet sad tune we both know full and well
hold me tight, I will not fear the night
knowing you are waiting,
just as you promised, just like you said
in the candlelit ballroom
that lives in my head

So dies the day
In chilly silence with a promise broken
falling night, drinks the light
and pulls the curtains on our words unspoken

In the slammer

Doing stir

Eating porridge

Do your time

Does the punishment

Fit the crime

Is this the act of a civilised nation?

Revenge or rehabilitation

If we send someone away

On a governmental holiday

Slamming shut that big grey door

Should we question a little more

What the hell are we doing it for?

I never thought I was the only one

A single ripple among a thousand more

Breaking the surface of the ocean

Not the brightest star to grace the sky

Where millions try to shine

I never thought I was the only one

But I had no idea that there were quite so many fish

Swimming in a crowded pool of words!

How long?

Four years maybe five

Still alive

Survivor of a storm

At least it's warm

And fairly flat

Except for the hill

Which I still

Climb every day

It's the only way

You could see a sail

I have to believe

That I will leave

My sandy jail

Do I need to explain

It's the way I keep sane

The thought that there might

Be a touch of white

Sailing the blue

Is what gets me through

Yet another day

As a castaway

The past is a smell of gently frying bacon
in a house with a green front door
you were too young to remember much
except a dog named Sandy or Rex
it licked up the ice cream you dropped
and someone kind
that you cannot bring to mind
wiped away the tears
from your sticky infant fingers
the memory is gone
but the perfume lingers

Love is a peach,
a sweet and luscious fruit
set high upon a garden wall,
we climb, we taste
we scrape our knees and then we fall,
then through burning embers
one remembers
it was worth it after all

Farewell Samhain
Celtic custom to honour the dead
****** for profit and greed instead
drowned in sugar
until all that remains
is a Jack-O-Lantern rotting in rain

To change
to fundamentally rearrange
what you are,
or to alter the fit
just a tiny little bit

On a velvet night,
so silent and heavy
that the breath of life itself seemed an intrusion,
Vincent smiled and bid the world goodbye,
he closed his eyes
and left to join the landscape of his paintings

Sing like a bird in a tree
Without the rage
Of a bird in a cage

A mashed banana car crash of a morning

Messy and awkward

Words won't heal

Actions are not enough

To **** the silence

Anger heats the room

To a cold simmer

Resentment boils away below the surface

Occasionally something will bubble to the top

The elephant in the room

Lurks, as you dance around him

The clock ticks

Showing it is way too soon

For the building blocks of memory

To start their slow repairs

For now it's just a band aid

On an open wound

So deep you could drive a bus through it

The smashed embers of words that hang unsaid

And the ones you should never have used

It will settle but never leave

Someone will bring it out

Like that ugly Christmas china you always hated

Sad

But you will all learn to live with it

Eventually!

Time to turn the pages

Leave the book open

Scribble what you want to say

Then draw a line

Put down the Pencil

Make space for a new beginning

A fresh hand can start their story

You wrote a chapter or two

When someone moved over for you

Now do the same

Let the music fade

The lights go down

Time to leave the stage with grace

It is done

Goodbye

Fair or foul
we sail together
the breeze my captain
and I his willing servant
travelling where he wishes
escaped from the tree
but no free spirit
a happy captive
of the wind

Take the love that dare not speak its name
reduce your thoughts to memories,
lock them deep
hide them in the silent vault that is your heart
smother the singing bird you want to be
snap its feathered neck, quick smart
smother any signs of life
poor wounded thing,
better it was never born,
if it cannot fly, then it should never be
kinder dead than never, to fledge and leave the tree
smash your heel and end it now,
for it cannot be set free

A torrent of rain
flick end of a storm,
we danced to kitchen jazz
safe and dry and warm,
wolves came to listen
more than one or two,
circular howling
maybe they were dancing too

I blame the rain

It has a ceaseless patter

A rhythm on the window and in my head

It stalls my words

Drowning them with sound

Stones that sink that great grey whale of my thoughts

Stilling his song into empty silence

No poems today

I blame it on the rain

Ice on fire

Burning desire

Of melted heart

And flame

No shame or blame

We  both knew the game

Before we started

And now we have parted

So it didn't last

But we had a blast

All the same

Blood within my skin
liver pluck and lights
appendix to beating heart,
every part, wants you
needs you to know
I am ready for us to begin,
it is only my tongue
a restless useless thing
which cannot tell you so

What am I ?
not wind nor rain
nor endless rolling sky,
I am not sea
or green and falling land
not trees nor beach
nor endless shifting sand,
not sun, not moon, not stars
so help me now,
to understand
if am fish or beast,
or calling bird which sings
which part am I
or maybe I am all these things,
as for why I came to be
or when or what or even how
I do not know
but call me nature
just for now

There’s a long long trail a-winding
to the sound of marching feet
worn smooth by shadowed footsteps
their time on earth complete
although a poignant sad reminding
no one’s listening so it seems
there’s a long long trail a-winding
to the land of broken dreams
where that nightingale keeps singing
because that’s what she is for
to welcome home the fallen
from each successive war

I am the wind
the rain which pelts and blows full in the face of adversity
and the silent sound of a million damp and aching feet
I am friendships that will never come again
and the voice of doomed youth
I am memories in old age
the scarlet smell of crushed poppies
and the iron tang of spilled blood  and rusty wire
I am hope and loss
dignity in duty
and outright defiance in the face of defeat
I am all these things
I am remembrance

Sunlight bathes the sleeping leaves
in shades of green and gold
this was always winter wood
without your hand to hold
now it fills with music
a bird in every tree
your dappled sunlit kisses
a breath of spring to me

If your vocabulary is small
you can grow it like a plant in a ***
day by day water it with words
one at a time until it blooms
into dictionary flowers

The thin bare bones of a silence that was

Shattered calm, a mirror cracked

Snapped underfoot like a plastic toy

Smashed, a fragile thing destroyed

Beauty broken by a careless word!

Fall is theatre

Sondheim of the seasons

One last extravagant show of dazzling firework shades

Daring and carefree, fiesta in scarlet and orange

A deranged Harlequin running riot, dancing with the wind

Raising Cain, a mad finale of colourful conspicuous excess

Refusing to leave the stage or even take a bow

Cool charm stills the orchestra  bringing down the curtain on a  riotous charade

Winter packs away the props and switches off the lights

Party over for another year