They fall . . . gold ,

         bronze . . . copper . . . and brass

Jeweled like glass

         'n emerald . . . ambered . . . and rubied

The days of my life

         fall autumned . . .

               sudden . . . and fast

A GARLAND FOR NATIONAL POETRY DAY 2014

My Once and Only Garden

It’s no longer mine
But I pass it
Nearly every morning.
It’s untended,
Overgrown, autumned,
The camellia needs a prune,
The irises have gone;
The garden needs
A good seeing to.
A sad garden to pass
Nearly every morning.



The Chestnut Avenue

I came back to fallen chestnut
Shells, conkers, everywhere,
But the leaves are still
Thinking about falling.
No wind you see.
On other trees I pass,
The lime,the white-beam,
There’s a crinkly brownness
Scattered across the path.
So dry, no wind,
September sun.
The chestnut avenue
Has some way to go.
Wind, rain, frost perhaps
And the leaves will fall.


******* a Boat

There’s this girl,
A young woman really,
On a boat.
Not living on it yet
But plans are afoot,
Along with essential repairs.
It’s not ‘Offshore’
Like Penelope Fitzgerald’s
Boat on the Thames.
But in a quiet and placid mooring
On the River Lea instead.
I thought of sending her this book,
But it’s all about liminality,
People somewhere in between,
People who don’t belong on land or sea
. . . And the boat (eventually) sinks.


Still Waiting

We sat on the seat
Under a bower of roses
In the herb garden
And she talked in that singing
Way of talking that she does;
Such a tessitura she commands
Between the high and the low
With a falling off portamento
Glide - from the high to the low.
Her hair stills falls
Across serious freckles, auburn hair,
Gold with a touch of red
Like her mother’s only softer,
Like mine once was, and my mother’s too.
She has a slighter frame though,
and is still waiting, waiting
For a real life, a woman’s life.


Cyclamen Restored

I went away and left it
On a saucer, watered,
In a north light
Near a window sill.
Its pink flowers were *****
And nodded a little
When I moved about the room.

On my return it had drooped,
Its leaves yellowed.
There were tiny pink petals
Scattered on the floor.
I put the plant in the sink
For half an hour.
It revived,
And the next day
Seemed quite restored.


Driving South

Driving south through
Dalton, Shoreditch,
Hackney and Hoxteth,
The Hasidic community
Garnished the Sunday street.
Driving down the A10
South towards the city:
The Gleaming Gerkin,
the Walkie Talkie,
and further still,
a Misty Shard.

As a child, the buildings here
Were so much slighter
And a grimy black;
The highest then, the spires
Of Wren’s city churches.

Sundays to sing at ‘Temple’,
With lunch at the BBC,
Driving south from New Barnet
In my Great Uncle’s Morris,
Great Aunt Violet dozing in the back.


Gallery

Small but beautifully right
For her London show,
Good to see her surrounded
By tide marks from the shore,
Those neutral surfaces,
Colours of sand and stone,
Rust (of course) from the beaches
Treasured trove, metal
Waiting to become wet
And stain those marks with colour.


Ascemic Sewing

Having no semantic content
These ‘words’ appear on the back
Of a chequered cloth of leaves
Backed all black
Stitched white,
A script of a garden
Receding into
Trans-linguistical memory.


September Dreaming

Facing the morning
Above a barrier of trees,
Oaked, foxed, hardly birded,
I would  wonder while she slept
About the richness of her dreams,
Dreams she had spoken of
(Yesterday, and out of the blue)
And, for the first time, in all
These precious but frustrating
years we’d slept together,
shared together.
I had always thought her dreamless;
Too fast asleep to experience
Envisioned images,
Sounds and sensations.


Think of a Poem

She told me in a text about
Think of a Poem
On National Poetry Day
Just a week away.
That’s easy, I thought,
There’s always that poem
Safe and sure in my memory store
Once spoken nervously,
under a rose garden walk,
but there, there
for evermore . . .

Who says it’s by my desire
This separation, this living so far from you. . .


Missing Music

Today I read a poem
Called The Lute: a Rhapsody.
‘From the days of my youth
I have loved music,
So have practised it ever since,’
Says Xi Kung.

In his exquisite language
He then describes its mysterious virtues,
And all the materials from which it’s made.

How I miss my lute, its music,
And the voice that once sang to its song.


Drawing

I wonder if she’s drawn today,
And what? I wonder.
John Berger says:
Drawing goes on every day.
It is that rare thing
That gives you a chance
Of a very close identification
With something, or somebody
Who is not you.
I wonder if she’s drawn today,
And what? I wonder.

Was there a time before the skin fell off of courage,
And these dish rag hands?
Was there a time before
We made pastel pictures from every reprimand?
Brushed up well, Igloo Annie,
"Push came to shove"
Shove came to fall.

Breathing out balloons and blue bubbles;
Can't keep that girl high for long.

Wait for a green light,
Waited a lifetime now.
Wait to be Autumned away.

Once in a while
All the honest soldiers say what you mean to say.
The space in between you and your reflection
Seems too far away.
Oh, where's you voice gone, Annie?
The harder the road, the broader the smile.

Breathing in you and your double...
Can't keep that girl from her song

Wait for a green light,
Waited a lifetime now.
Wait to be Autumned away.

I taste like rolled cigarettes and chocolate.
My fingertips are torched
a bittersweet burnt that comes
from a night of music and
thought-plagued action.
Oil and acne plot my hairline
as I stare through the orange
of the streetlamps to the
stars barely visible above,
tapping my feet to
the tune weaving in-and-out
of our arms and toes
as we cool on the autumned stoop.

Black putouts mark the sidewalk
where we wish to tread like
animal trackers, hunting the next
place for us to eat, to belong,
nomads of the land without true bearings.
Clear sight of the skymap eludes our
grasp, with our hands reaching out
against the never-ending heavens,
searching for real, and its contrast
against real.

And then it hits me:
What a ******* fraud I am.
So much so, that I become
vehemently sick to my stomach.
I ***** the remains of our ****
on the concrete table, and watch
as the deer circle us to applaud
our next musical movement
as we dance to their ancient
hove-stomped rhythm.

1

At Lunch

West Midlands Wendy
dining out, alone
at St Peter’s on
their Saturday special
of salad and quiche.
Just a few hours
from the hotel weekend
(with a show), and you have to go
in half an hour’s time.
Page-boy cut
your hair once fair now grey,
you're slim, but slight
though pleasantly breasted,
pigeon-feet on the upper lip,
a thick gold band on those
careful hands steering knife and fork
to clean the plate of coleslaw.
Then, with darting eyes,
a few experimental words,
you’re gone. Oh, Wendy.
Such a solitary soul;
your shy smile haunts me still.

2

A Montepelier Moment

After tea at Betty’s
this woman of my heart,
fresh from a talk
to embroidery ladies,
and now replete
on jasmine tea
and a chocolate bombe,
braves the shop
with clothes of her dreams
hanging on rails  - a SALE no less.
Her eyes alight with possibility:
‘. . . there might be something.’

There is . . .

Gingerly from the curtained cubicle
this grey frock appears
wearing her beauty. Exactly.
Before the full-length mirror
we saw this slight miracle of linen,
scooped neck, gathered waist,
storm grey (with those necessary pockets
for phone and hanky). Perfect.
Just as she was then, as she is now;
this woman of my heart.


3

Before a Watercolour by Arthur Rackham

As individual as trees . . .
Perhaps we are
anthropomorphic -
as in Rackham’s painting
here on the gallery wall
two stand, proud and tall
against a fair-weather sky,
lately autumned in a
London park.
Leaves present,
but on the fall.

Mother and school-child,
he capped, she cloched, they
hurry below these trees
as others, be-pramed, dog-led,
unlingering, cross and pass
homeward; to spear a crumpet
or two ‘next an open fire,
a time before television’s
constant noise and flicker
took away the tick
from the parlour clock.


4

Before a Portrait of Suki by Tom Wood

There you were
as I remember
short red hair,
the forward-falling mop
over brow, not gaunt
like that unclothed self,
but rich in line of living
for the next word,
the better phrase,
an almost sentence
nearly right, a stanza
just just so, but . . .
without nakedness
(her daily dress)
this model shows
an arresting face,
deep eyes,
bold cheeks,
firm mouth.
A portrait stilled into life.

Two summers felt like forever,
Cold nights,
Dry afternoons,
Rainy mornings,
Hot days

Those times,
I swear I care for you,
I swear I think about you,
I swear I love you,
I loved you

Unfortunately,
Our 'summer' 'autumned' nowhere
then became 'winter'

In that small over-heated compartment
she touched his face tenderly
looked into his eyes, those deep-set dark eyes
that she saw even in sleep
and saw in his smile the promise of love
that she knew that she would forever keep
there in her heart, all through the moments, hours
days, weeks, months, stretching into years
that they might be apart

In that small, icy compartment
she blew on fingers numb and cold
struggling, eyes blurred
finding it difficult to hold the rain-smudged page
from which his name, that one beloved name
leaped out at her to blur her eyes
to fuel her sadness and her inner rage

In that crowded compartment
static amid the autumned trees of green and gold
his stiff fingers struggled to form the words
the all-important signature
from the black ink that sluggishly flowed

In that empty compartment
the headlines barely visible in the dim evening light
the crumpled newspaper lay
proclaiming
“Hostilities have ceased
on this the eleventh moment
of the eleventh hour
of the eleventh day