This page contains topical poems or those which have a momentary theme or feel.
INDIAN SUMMER
The heat lies like a gift on my still pond,
frogs, thinking about winter, pop their eyes,
bulbous, bewildered, through the surface skin
of wrapping water while the midges spin
their patterns near the cypress. Goldfish rise
and water-boatmen scull. The world beyond
this grateful garden, closes down ... until
I hear the phone record a sudden death:
somewhere, quite unacknowledged by the bees,
the sun no longer shines. But here my trees
shed regular leaves and I draw ripened breath -
then bury bulbs of flaunting daffodils.
DROUGHT
This summer has forgotten how to rain,
my pond turns greener than the sallow grass
and shrinks down in its liner. Goldfish rise
greedy for oxygen; dim, bulbous eyes
of frogs glare at my sandals as I pass.
Nothing can move the brutal weathervane.
Harsh blue has governed since the coup of Spring,
the take-over by April's sudden heat,
flaming and burning earth and careless skin.
Small clouds wave their white flags to underpin
the sun's dictatorship. I hear a bleat
of distant sheep greeting the golden king.
Alone I dream of grey relief and think
of evening showers with their quickening drops,
of falling mercury and low, damp air,
a rainbow saving minnows from despair.
I almost hear intoxicated plops
as toads jump back. Now let the lilies drink!
JUNE 30th
It feels as though the summer's still to come
as heat spreads through the house and weights the air.
Schoolchildren watch thin sunbeams dance with dust
and cities wait for holidays elsewhere;
expectancy beats like a muster drum.
But calendars and diaries deceive:
these thirty days have held an equinox;
Midsummer's Eve has gone and wanderlust
hangs on the cheating of our kitchen clocks.
They sing of golden hours and we believe.
The gardener knows better as he bends
to snip dead roses. His hands sense swift time
passing to seed: his hardened fingers trust
flowers to tell him when they're past their prime
and some are speaking now of distant ends.
FOLK LONGING
It's April: Chaucer's showers are bathing roots
in liquid power and, like a Disney still,
we see caught action in the exploding leaf;
each warming bird-breast is a leitmotif,
a kind of linking theme; each opened bill
chirrups an overture to hopeful fruit.
Where are the pilgrims? Where do palmers wend
on secular roads that spray from roundabouts
in sprinkled whirlings with no distant shrines?
I see a traffic jam of Philistines
but, in their own new way, just as devout,
impelled, fixated on their journey's end.
Even in Canterbury, it's B & Q
they seek, to worship blossom-painted pots
of gloss, nails like small seedlings in the pack,
the time is ripe now in the almanac
of D-I-Y. Don't knock it: there are lots
of poor lost Easter souls - like me and you.
SEPTEMBER EQUINOX
A temporary truce when day and night
lay down their hours of equal black and white
in autumn armistice,
a balance in the skies: darkness and light
are poised in friendliness as if they might
suspend themselves like this.
But peace is always somewhat hit-and-miss,
there's no eternal hug or endless kiss.
Too soon the waiting shade,
held for a moment in paralysis,
will make a move. No human artifice
can make it feint or fade.
Winter must win and march its chill parade
of leafless, figured trees and ponds inlaid
by frost. But now the sight
of dew not ice on every resting blade
sheathed in the lawn (and midges unafraid)
postpones the flight-or-fight.
The form of this poem is the virelai ancien.
SLEEPING
Beneath our floorboards, biros, paperclips,
a picnic spoon, still dirty, lie in wait.
A rabble of lost plastic sulks: one day
they'll get together, rise and infiltrate
our ordered rooms, our neat relationships.
And so will little words we've dropped, the blips
in half-forgotten discourses: 'I hate ... '
'you are too ... ' 'never', now in disarray,
could plan an ambush, charge and liberate
you head and mine from laundered pilowslip
GARDEN CENTRE
Dreamlessly wandering down labelled aisles
the couples - always couples - reach and show
each other baby alpines, heathers, smile
to see the trolley fill up, swell and grow.
He adds a fern; she chooses camomile.
The colours pierce the mesh; the clematis
strikes upwards on its cane; the white rose shoots
its arrowed scent; the lilac damages
their eyes with purple. Stumbling over roots,
they fall, as couples do, her hand in his.
TAKE OFF
Tomorrow night I'll fly: till then they're furled,
my feathered arms with their new elbows, bent
for lift and strong propulsion. Muscles deep
inside my breast have thickened: when I leap
forwards and upwards, they will beat assent
to my dark voyage round the tilting world.
Who am I that my sleep has sculpted wings,
pinions and aerofoils, geometry
to vary with the air? You find me strange,
old friend, I've lost you on the winds of change.
We are all different now and nobody
stays grounded after years of moonlighting.
DOING THEIR STUFF
Between the wars, the painted 'Shilling Sicks,'
those fussy Channel steamers, ferried troupes
of families, with pork pies, beer and sticks
of rock, to France, briefly, in raucous groups
on mini-holidays. They came and went,
folksy and risible like fish and chips,
yet, on a bright June day, the "Maid of Kent"
and "Gracie Fields" were royal among ships.
June 1940 glared down from the sky
but yachts, tugs, shrimpers crossed the sea by moon,
rations don't stretch to beer or a pork pie,
the troops are waiting at Dunkirk - and soon
the Shilling Sicks arrive, chug to and fro
for silent men with nowhere else to go.
To return to the Home Page click here
INDIAN SUMMER
The heat lies like a gift on my still pond,
frogs, thinking about winter, pop their eyes,
bulbous, bewildered, through the surface skin
of wrapping water while the midges spin
their patterns near the cypress. Goldfish rise
and water-boatmen scull. The world beyond
this grateful garden, closes down ... until
I hear the phone record a sudden death:
somewhere, quite unacknowledged by the bees,
the sun no longer shines. But here my trees
shed regular leaves and I draw ripened breath -
then bury bulbs of flaunting daffodils.
DROUGHT
This summer has forgotten how to rain,
my pond turns greener than the sallow grass
and shrinks down in its liner. Goldfish rise
greedy for oxygen; dim, bulbous eyes
of frogs glare at my sandals as I pass.
Nothing can move the brutal weathervane.
Harsh blue has governed since the coup of Spring,
the take-over by April's sudden heat,
flaming and burning earth and careless skin.
Small clouds wave their white flags to underpin
the sun's dictatorship. I hear a bleat
of distant sheep greeting the golden king.
Alone I dream of grey relief and think
of evening showers with their quickening drops,
of falling mercury and low, damp air,
a rainbow saving minnows from despair.
I almost hear intoxicated plops
as toads jump back. Now let the lilies drink!
JUNE 30th
It feels as though the summer's still to come
as heat spreads through the house and weights the air.
Schoolchildren watch thin sunbeams dance with dust
and cities wait for holidays elsewhere;
expectancy beats like a muster drum.
But calendars and diaries deceive:
these thirty days have held an equinox;
Midsummer's Eve has gone and wanderlust
hangs on the cheating of our kitchen clocks.
They sing of golden hours and we believe.
The gardener knows better as he bends
to snip dead roses. His hands sense swift time
passing to seed: his hardened fingers trust
flowers to tell him when they're past their prime
and some are speaking now of distant ends.
FOLK LONGING
It's April: Chaucer's showers are bathing roots
in liquid power and, like a Disney still,
we see caught action in the exploding leaf;
each warming bird-breast is a leitmotif,
a kind of linking theme; each opened bill
chirrups an overture to hopeful fruit.
Where are the pilgrims? Where do palmers wend
on secular roads that spray from roundabouts
in sprinkled whirlings with no distant shrines?
I see a traffic jam of Philistines
but, in their own new way, just as devout,
impelled, fixated on their journey's end.
Even in Canterbury, it's B & Q
they seek, to worship blossom-painted pots
of gloss, nails like small seedlings in the pack,
the time is ripe now in the almanac
of D-I-Y. Don't knock it: there are lots
of poor lost Easter souls - like me and you.
SEPTEMBER EQUINOX
A temporary truce when day and night
lay down their hours of equal black and white
in autumn armistice,
a balance in the skies: darkness and light
are poised in friendliness as if they might
suspend themselves like this.
But peace is always somewhat hit-and-miss,
there's no eternal hug or endless kiss.
Too soon the waiting shade,
held for a moment in paralysis,
will make a move. No human artifice
can make it feint or fade.
Winter must win and march its chill parade
of leafless, figured trees and ponds inlaid
by frost. But now the sight
of dew not ice on every resting blade
sheathed in the lawn (and midges unafraid)
postpones the flight-or-fight.
The form of this poem is the virelai ancien.
SLEEPING
Beneath our floorboards, biros, paperclips,
a picnic spoon, still dirty, lie in wait.
A rabble of lost plastic sulks: one day
they'll get together, rise and infiltrate
our ordered rooms, our neat relationships.
And so will little words we've dropped, the blips
in half-forgotten discourses: 'I hate ... '
'you are too ... ' 'never', now in disarray,
could plan an ambush, charge and liberate
you head and mine from laundered pilowslip
GARDEN CENTRE
Dreamlessly wandering down labelled aisles
the couples - always couples - reach and show
each other baby alpines, heathers, smile
to see the trolley fill up, swell and grow.
He adds a fern; she chooses camomile.
The colours pierce the mesh; the clematis
strikes upwards on its cane; the white rose shoots
its arrowed scent; the lilac damages
their eyes with purple. Stumbling over roots,
they fall, as couples do, her hand in his.
TAKE OFF
Tomorrow night I'll fly: till then they're furled,
my feathered arms with their new elbows, bent
for lift and strong propulsion. Muscles deep
inside my breast have thickened: when I leap
forwards and upwards, they will beat assent
to my dark voyage round the tilting world.
Who am I that my sleep has sculpted wings,
pinions and aerofoils, geometry
to vary with the air? You find me strange,
old friend, I've lost you on the winds of change.
We are all different now and nobody
stays grounded after years of moonlighting.
DOING THEIR STUFF
Between the wars, the painted 'Shilling Sicks,'
those fussy Channel steamers, ferried troupes
of families, with pork pies, beer and sticks
of rock, to France, briefly, in raucous groups
on mini-holidays. They came and went,
folksy and risible like fish and chips,
yet, on a bright June day, the "Maid of Kent"
and "Gracie Fields" were royal among ships.
June 1940 glared down from the sky
but yachts, tugs, shrimpers crossed the sea by moon,
rations don't stretch to beer or a pork pie,
the troops are waiting at Dunkirk - and soon
the Shilling Sicks arrive, chug to and fro
for silent men with nowhere else to go.
To return to the Home Page click here
