Sunset lends its many shades
as a dying day begins to fade
the whites of clouds
and parrotfish blues
replaced by glorious fiery hues
colours dance in the sky's cotillion
of melting golds and sweet vermillion

you took the swan road
your kimono hangs quiet
both of us empty

Through grass grown brown
in sweet air's chill
Summer heart
please love me still
when swallows leave
all wild geese flown
say you'll stay to be my own

Spring grass to pierce my bones
Moss will stitch my winding sheet
Sweet death of winter

Summer's queen no longer fair
wears yellowed leaves in tangled hair
silver spider webs adorn, her faded harvest crown
the living green, now sadly tinged with spots of bramble brown
she wears a faded perfume the fragrance of last year
it smells of sweet foreboding
that Autumn may be here

Sweet undercover moon
silence has wrapped you in a velvet bag
so soft and heavy it drinks the light
shakes the glass which holds the night
and makes a cocktail of the stars

Come visit us sweet rain
fall gentle on my head
do not pound me, dance instead
step you light around my ears
be not heavy with your tears
spread great joy among the flowers
be a good guest,
do not stay for hours

Talk to me in Spring
of bright and coming things
a butterfly wing of words

Talk to me
in drowsy tones of endless Summer haze
fill the lengthening days

Talk to me
in woodsmoke Autumn,
when the nights close in, begin

Talk to me
wrapped in a cloak of Winter
melt the cold within

Talk to me
walk with me thoughout the year
speak and I will hear

I see you
Laird of Tanera Mòr
shaded scotsman
misty on the dock
I hear your skirling pipes
threading salted air
silent sound which cuts
and tops each bouncing wave
music on the bridge
between the living and the grave

My cathartic heart
threw away the finished leaves of bitter autumn's burning
I brewed myself a loving cup, made sweeter by my learning
tansy, bay with chamomile, bright meadow flowers to sip
tastes better  than the poison to be found upon your lip

Time is a thief of youth and love,
undoer of locks and breaker of promises,
she is the rushing wind
sweeping all before
a restless boiling sea
crashing on an unknown shore

If the sky should fall

And leave the brittle bones of our living

Shattered

Like teeth in the blackened angry mouth

Of a hag

What then?

Do we weep salt tears

For that which is lost and cannot be found

Raise a fist in anger to a savage God

Who will not hear our cries

As we wander through our ruined lives

Looking for salvation.

Do we bend our backs?

Put stone on stone on stone and build a wall

Make it strong

To foil the ravening wolves

Of fear and cruel self doubt

A solid moat to keep them out

And us within

While we begin

Again!

Winters frozen earth my tomb below a shadowed frosty mothers face, a working boot with rusted nails that pushed me deep beyond the freeze to where I came upon another place, a womb of warmth within the soil

The fallen leaves which flew me to my doom, became a broth to speed me into verdant life.  I cannot say how long I lay within my room, growing fat among the worms which chewed my infant food and burrowing things all shiny on their backs like glass which passed and took me to the sun and light and air.

My growing place I knew not where, was ploughed and ready land where I so small could barely see above the plants which grew around me as a coat and shield from spring and summer heat.

For so it came to pass upon my second year and more when I did chance to see the floor the grass and daisies at my feet for I had grown so tall that they were hardly there at all.

A mighty oak I stand through changes to the times which seem to work though some mysterious and unknown hand. I heard the ***** of soldiers in their passing off to war and heard returning feet of some I heard before.

And when my limbs became so heavy and then thickened to  a width beyond what eyes could see, they changed the name upon my trunk and I became the famous hanging tree, it was not right, it was a man who pulled the rope and took a fearful struggling life, not me.

The seasons came and went and all around me in my view, began to build and change from what I always saw and knew to be my place, tall buildings sprang from what had been a lonely space, of solitude and wind that whipped my leaves and brought my children to the ground, as that surround which I had long held dear began to fade and slowly disappear replaced by traffic ever near.

I cast my green and shaded eyes upon grass and daisys once again, an old and fallen victim of the rain, now I with scurrying creatures lie upon my back to see the sky, so once I grew and now I die, to sink beneath the soil from whence my acorn came, I lived the life which all of us man beast or tree have only temporary claim.

Grace of skies,
wind blown high,
fine figured, soft and fair
tease the wondrous yellow hair
of autumn

Frosty morning air
Winter's white haired terrier
Nips at your fingers

A stiff breeze

The ribbon bends

The world turns

Your world

My world

Our  world

Turns

The rope twists

This way

That way

The world turns

A strong wind

Blows the cord

Side to side

Up and down

The world turns

A strong wind

Blows the cord

Side to side

Up and down

The world turns

Flat calm

After the storm

Battered apple

Bruised to the core

Spinning

On a slender thread

To the metronome tick

Of time passing

The world turns

On a spiders web of glass

Your world

My world

Our world

Still hanging

Still turning

Still spinning

The apple of the mind starts small

A tiny bud without form

Flowering in the spring of our lives

Full of hopeful promise

Blooming

Summer sweet

Red and juicy

Or crunchy and full of bite

Some are windfalls

Cast aside

Before their time

Others become *****

Hidden maggots in the heart

Ripeness gently falls to autumn decay

We wither and we die

Returning to earth when we have cast our seeds

Leaving younger fruit to take our place

On the tree of life

Sometime
onetime
anytime
does it ever feel
like sanity is dripping
slowly slipping
like an eel
gushing from the tap
of the world
and you can't get a grip
on the handle of the bucket
to pour it back in

A diver looks at a whale
he marvels at the mighty beast
so vast he cannot see around
and kicks his tiny swimming legs
to see what he has found
he navigates the monstrous mouth
the wrinkled eye,
which sees him floating tailwards
an insect in his view
and then it will ignore him
whales have better things to do

Vandalism
an angry lens
a prism
focusing
on
an eruption
of mindless
destruction

Letters returned to sender

My heart in the blender

Fingers burned

Lesson learned

There is a place, It has no name
Easy to get to just the same
Everyone has one, a room of despair
You can knock on the door
If you no longer care
It's the end, I have had it
I’m glad that it’s done
Can’t be bothered to fight
And nobody won
Battled ourselves to the bitterest end
If anything’s left
You can keep it my friend
You keep on talking
But I am walking
Today
Get out of my life
Get out of my face
Apologise to an empty space!

Freedom
a gift that is seldom free
freedom to say I just want to be me
freedom of thought
freedom of expression
freedom from any kind of oppression
freedom to say you can all go to hell
because blood puts the polish on the liberty bell!

Faded linen
which smells of straw,
and a shift of corn
in the back of a drawer,
is all that is left
of the girl next door,
she stayed a while
from June to September,
and left fresh berries
to help us remember

Leaving is not hard

Staying is hard

Tonight when all the fight is gone

I have no strength to carry on

Leaving is not hard

Goodbye is hard

Your life has years to run

But I am almost done

Leave me

Let me sleep

But take a memory to keep

A tiny trickle of sand
passing through
the fingers of your hand
that's an hour
just a shower
of amber grains
what remains
of a once mighty boulder
much older than time
it has heard midnight chime
many times
the tick tick tock
of the clock of eternity
and now it embraces modernity
slowly wearing away
day by day
hour by hour
as a shower of sand
in the palm of your hand

No one asked for this year

For universal fear

Or tears for those lost

There is no division

When every home becomes a prison

We are all scared

By what we have shared

We were in it together

Whatever the weather

Now we need a jump start

A shock to the heart

To get the world turning,

New life and learning after the burning

Fresh seed from the ashes of clashes

Will grow

If we want it to be so

Take the trail,

footsteps in the mist of a thousand misheard voices

follow the singing memories as they fade around each corner

time has left you on this journey through the mountains of your life

you go ahead, rest for a bit

enjoy the breeze and the pretty yellow childhood flowers

for you the walking is done

Hey I'm new around here
but I can see that you guys have plans for me
let me find my office, get a coffee
put up my wall charts and arrange my pencils
then I will look at what can be done
there's a lot of pressure being January 2021!

I wait for a bit

Watching my legs as they dangle

Bare feet

Not cold

I wonder

Try to talk myself out of it

Should I

Shouldn't I

My head is cloudy

I need to think

What's to lose?

Not much

What's to gain?

Brief pain

And then release

Peace

Hey that's a rhyme

It tickles me a final time

Should I try again

Be braver

Go back in and make it work

Sirens cut my thoughts into a thousand pieces

A smashed bottle on the sidewalk

They cluster below me

Ants around the leavings of a picnic

I'm here I call

But nobody is looking up

Because I already jumped

My glass is shattered

What's left is here

Roosting with the windswept pigeons

And the tiny plants that grow in the settlement cracks

Filling the voids in the building

And the one in me!

When velvet night

Gives way

Before the light of dawn is day

And lights the  eastern sky

With soft and painted grey

To chase the stars away

Cobwebs hang white on the frosty air as digging begins

A lone bird on a bush makes its high call,

sharp as the wind through a broken window

a toothpick of noise

bouncing off damp bricks, that look as though they might fall softly
to the wet grass below

and lay hidden by tears

Is there anything more profound

than the mournful sound

of a shovelling ***** as it fills in a grave

and closes the ground

There must have been a time
When the world was quiet
just the moving trees and the breeze
and the waving meadow grass
When did that moment pass?
Now and again away from the din
a little stillness creeps back in
Maybe it’s been there all along
With its peaceful non-existent song
Perhaps we just forgot how to listen
to the silence!

The reason I write
to **** the banality
of reality

There is a time
for hoping
for praying if you wish
for watching and for waiting
but when that time has passed
there comes a time for bitter realisation
a time to stop the clock
a crying time
and a time to say goodbye

There are times when life’s knitting unravels
a major diversion in the direction of travel,
not a dropped stitch, or some existential glitch,
but a ****** awful tangle
a wrestle, a fist fight,
a complicated wrangle
a long overdue appointment with fate,
when we can do nothing but sit back and wait
let it run, see it through
think about anything that we can do
to find the loose ends
pick up the pieces
and start to make amends

Birds have no shape,
they are everything
and they are nothing
wind and rain and trees
the scent of the breeze
tall dried grass
seeds which land
on full and fallow ground
an ocean heart that beats within us all
the sound of nature’s call
whatever the future holds
when shadows fall
and footsteps are dust
there will be birds

The shapes of sleep

Day smoke that flows throughout our waking hours
released to tease and twist our darkling thoughts to landscapes, cities of the quiet mind

Shadow towers defined by nothing more than fancy and a little fact
the unassuming act of pressing day on night

Unconscious distant learning stoked by fear to feed and keep its belly still, and a little yearning when we need it

Our treasures taken from that mental box we keep

unlocked, explored and plundered deep

The grey and somewhat shop - worn curtains, covering the shapes of sleep

Flowers will bloom in battlefield mud
amid army boots and battlefield blood
a robin will chirp on a battlefield wire
joined by others in a battlefield choir
except for the camps
where no bird will sing
the silence of ugly is a terrible thing

Everything bends to the singing wind

Frozen trees brittle and dark

Stark

Naked on hard and barren fields

All is sleeping

Resting in the cold

Fences crack

Rabbits nibble at freezing grass

Breaths frost the crystal air in hope of thaw

Silence rings

A cracking twig

Splits the purity a little

A pistol shot of noise

On a winter afternoon

The sins of nightingales are always forgiven
as pardon for their music,
that sweet song which brightens the world

Peacocks should never be absolved
their cry is harsh and their beauty skin deep
they believe they do no sin at all

The sock undid me
just a little thing
soft and yellow and drowning in a puddle
I suppose it fell off when the soldiers came
and they ran for it
I wonder where the other one is
perhaps it is clinging to a tiny wriggling foot somewhere
I hope so

Moonlight slivers

Tear the sky of frozen grey

Shattering the ocean

A thousand sea glass fragments

That pitch and yaw and roll together

Long lost sailors raised from the deep

The concrete mixer chorus

Of roaring bells and gulls and ****

That shrieks of mermaid voices raised in  song

A never ending chant

No banshee wail could ever hope to drown

The  symphony of the sea

Creatures of the mind

Searching for freedom

In  the misty space between dreams

They don't hunt

They farm

Sewing fear

Harvesting panic

Do not fret the climbing shadows on your wall

There are darker shadows in your head

And they are real

Winters bite

has teeth of ice and steel

polished sharp when chill winds blow

burnished white by gently drifting snow

We hunger when the grey doubt wolves are prowling around our doors, sniffing at the latches as we crouch inside

Our ears are stuffed with hopeful thoughts because their song is one of want and we cannot ignore their dreadful music

The newly  ******, searching for a light that won't be found

Chasing every spark, in search of faint salvation for our fragile shrunken world but mostly for ourselves

Stitched with good time memories and thoughts of better days to come

Thrown shadows, lit large on walls that once we thought were strong have lost their charm and turned from fortress into prison where we hold the keys to melted locks

Ravening, for days not so long passed when we were free to live in this tattered world of haves and have nots, when all are hungry the howling begins

The little knot
you know the one
it's tied
deep inside
been there for about a year
made up from fear
sometimes you hardly feel it
other times we can't help but reveal it
hard to hide
it's a gradual downward slide
to living with the constant stress
and listlessness
that boredom brings
when our wings
have been stilled
and we are constantly filled
with hope for a time that may never come again
and yet we remain
sane but still tied
by that little knot inside

A writer is
A farmer of words
We sow the page
And harvest
Stories