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Tim Deere-Jones Apr 2021
A roof in its building is a cage in the air,
enclosing aspiration
with timber bars that are gold in the sun.

Seen from inside
it’s a web made by men for their own capture
who clamber carefully across it
clinging against blue
where buzzards hang and seagulls call.

Slowly we close it with battens and felt,
hammer blows ring in the place below.

Strip by strip and section by section we darken the space
enclosing eventually nothing but gloom
wherein lives only an echo
which they will **** when they bring in possessions.

Finally the grey slates, the blue and the purple
sealing a tomb through which will not move
the scents and the sounds of the wandering wind.
Thus it is bound, that place.
Cut off forever and lost to the world.
Tim Deere-Jones Apr 2021
When he’d resisted
he thought he’d laid his claim upon it
forever and secure.

Not this alone
but also that he’d made a judgement for them both.

Imagine then his horror
when she ate the fruit he had refused, chewed up that flesh,
drank of that dripping juice, devoured the skin
and swallowed all the seed within.

Yet worse was to come!
for some time around dusk, when the light was unsure
and he waited for lightning to strike her,
he saw she’d become a tree too,
many branched, complexed with blossom,
growing tall and bearing rich fruit of her own.
Tim Deere-Jones Apr 2021
In the wind from the sea
my house was a singing throat last night.
Bass drone in chimney flue and round the gable end
and those vibrating window panes,
thin wandering harmonics
between the doors and frames.

Percussion of unseen things
a-rolling and a-roiling in the world outside.
A troop of intermittent gallopers trampling through the dark  
musketry of rain upon the roof
cracking of wind’s whip.

Waking to the morning, exhausted from the listening
it is as if the wild hunt had past us gone
overrode us as we cowering sought for sleep
laid waste our garden’s order
broken down the daffodils and snowdrops
that we’d cherished as the harbingers of spring.
Kicked flowerpots and water cans around and flattened fences
made the hedges look as if they had been backwards dragged

Carefully I prised my front door open
pushed aside the debris that had been cast upon my threshold
but they had gone and all was calm
one robin in the silver birch sang clear and sweet and unconcerned
a film of salt, dried tears, upon the window’s glass.
Tim Deere-Jones Apr 2021
Hawthorn in the spring
mayflowers becomes **** thorn
rimed with the frost of her blossom.

Promiscuous with bees
hawthorn grows fast in the summer
straining for sky and full of life
green leaf abundance
and sap surging strong for the sun
quick as opposed to dead

Quick thorn in autumn
scatters her largesse of leaf fall
embers the hedgerows
with blood drops
seed store mouse nibble
food for redwing and fieldfare

Quick thorn in winter stripped of her green
stands naked but strong
combing cold winds
(which you can hear sing through her teeth)
her branches armed and spiky fingers
flung up in derision at the north and darkness
for nothing keeps her down
she will keep coming.
Tim Deere-Jones Feb 2021
Cresting the swell
as drops from the paddle blade
draw spirals and knotwork
where sea herd’s shoulders
force through the narrows
and turbulence and overfalls
ferment the sea
which bubbles and  fizzes

Canoeing on champagne
with fish leaping up from it,
gulls planing down
in a white double helix for fry,
I ride the flood,
past the Priest’s Nose
and into the Bay!
here's one about sea canoeing.. which I do in an open canadian with a single bladed paddle:  one of the most wonderful and exciting things  know.. you feel so incredibly in touch with the environment! I hope this evokes that experiance!
Tim Deere-Jones Feb 2021
Up’s down in the cold cwm
Where corries calm lake
Mirrors cloud piercing peak



Bright moon and star stud sky
one fox calls through frost still night
no answer comes


Wind gifts bloom blizzard
petal storms blackthorn flower
Short shrifts shard shower
some reflections of my home region of PENFRO in the far west of Wales: and it IS spring here now at last...after a long covid winter the sun is shining today and the flowers are blooming and the birdsong has been amazing!
Tim Deere-Jones Feb 2021
I climb great Moelfre, the old Broad Hill
and pass that house they called Golgotha,
the place of skulls abandoned
in some migration mania of centuries gone by.

A blasted house, skull pan of roof blown away,
windows out to make those hollow sockets
where the wind goes through
and up beyond those last and sheltered walls,
where only wire trawls the wind,
sets net and barbs to hold the shot dog flung across,
makes catch and food for flights of crows
who rise and curse my coming to their feast.

That last trek was trial indeed.
Why take a sullen soul up there for solace?
Ruts in the track were rivers which would sweep me down,
knuckles of rain in my face forced humble genuflection
to the wind and storm.

A Bronze Age cairn upon the crown.
That place of dead with wet grey stones,                                            
its white crystal blocks
where grinning teeth ****** out of mud.
Its entombed death more permanent than life,
but yet, I felt that wind and rain, my heart was pumping,
my face was raw, my shoes were soaked,
I had a thousand feet of earth beneath my feet and I knew it!
I was still here!!
seeking to escape myself: .............. a walk in wild wind western Wales
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