Is there a metaphor?

Is there a metaphor?

So is it the rain that falls like mist
Light as a cobweb touch
Or runs in the roads and streams
Washes and gushes, blurs the pane
Trickle and river again and again
Or wind in the leaves, autumn skitter
Scatter and crunch, patter and pitter
Or softest of sighs, not much of a breath
Kaleidoscope tumble and shake
Or yet again holler and howl
Wolves in a chimney, pack?
Metaphors glitter all hung on a thread
Dew in the morning light
Though maybe it’s sun, or moon, or star
Bright and the darkness, phase and turn
Watery winter or summer burn
Should colour and clothe the abstract thought
Share it from heart to heart
Answer the question
What of love?
Could it conjure from deep to soaring heights
The gamut and rainbow run
All of the range from gentle to fierce?
Oh how will we hold the ineffable down
Capture the mystery
Is there a metaphor, power of words
Can picture for poetry’s sake
Love, the abstraction
Sweetest thing
Hold it and make it sing?

5th December 2011, Brighton, at ZTs with Luca

Patina

Patina

Birds together strokes of pen
Flew in a purposeful arc
Crossing the Sunday sky
Low lit the beautiful blue
Burnt umber/ amber leaves still, not fallen
Back-dropped our day
Cambridge ever the film-set

Scene one the Chop House
Crush and clatter, wine
And chatter, family resumés
Births and death, dear father now gone home

Scene two dark Dutch interiors
Plain and protestant
Sun shaft through windows
White on lace, women at their work
A silence sweetly sung

Same chiaroscuro, trick of light
King’s college chapel by candle glow
White robes moving, soaring song
Ritual and liturgy, perfect show

Flicker, shadow, weight of time
Polished Henry’s seat
So redolence and patina
History’s gifts
To our shared forty years, our friendship
Made to shine

30th November 2011, Brighton, for the friends with love

Enchanted by the dance

Enchanted by the dance

Degas sat and watched and drew
Enchanted by the dance
In charcoal/chalk, in pastel/ pen
He seized the moving line
Pliés, arabesques, the dancers fly,
Twirl and whirl
Or perfect poise on points
Moments as they pass
Pinned on the page
Degas drew and drew and drew
Captured like a dream
Surpassing beauty on the move
Enchantment of the dance

17th November 2011, Brighton, with thanks to Jill H

France in her autumn glory glowed

France in her autumn glory glowed

Yesterday’s weave had the warp and the weft
Rustic and strong
Song of the falling, fire of the year
South to north the land ablaze
France in her autumn glory glowed
Leaf on tree on bush in woods
In copse and forest licked and lit
Tapestry woven wild
Carmine to claret dashed and splashed
Cardinal nacarat rose
Dot and daub, speckle, freckle
Every orange zing and zest
Burnt and brassy
Round the rainbow, red to palest ochre
Golden shower and shimmer
South to north
Toulouse to channel port
France in her autumn glory glowed
Sang her sweet song
Wove it in warp and weft
From sun-come-up to sudden setting
Through all the waking hours
Bold unrolled her technicolor tapestry
Season’s show sublime
Then for her final flourish, curtain call and bow
Out of the swift and dropping dark
She conjured a magical moon

14th November 2011, Brighton

I saw the moon

I saw the moon

I saw the moon a golden breve
Set upon the wires
It floated in a purple sky
From pink to indigo
C to E to F to G
It rose across the stave
As silent music filled the sky
Hypnotic in a trance
I saw the moon a golden breve
Singing its perfect song

16th October 2011, Hounoux

Dear me

Dear me

Dear me

The once-was child long grown, my self my own

You think you crystal-ball and see

Ahead the years, oh yes the tears

The bitter grief and rage rage

Does no one care?

So ranting-roar, NOT FAIR!

This one the one the all, my everything

Mood swing

Rock and roll/ spin and tip

Dear me, dear you

If visible from here my view

Just a blip

Hardly showing on the graph

The ups and downs, eroded flat

Soaring passions/ slough despair

Look there-

Not unalloyed all joy and bliss

Not happy-ever-after story this

But listen look, a biographical book

My fretful alter ego insecure

I can report from decades hence

A vision in the future tense

I bid you brave and learn to chill

For much ahead is good not ill

I've a secret ours to share

Woven through your story threads

Are light- strung diamonds in the air

Breath of life or daily bread

All along the path you’ll find

There will be love of every kind

For and from, each to other

As wife and lover, friend and mother

Yours not a rocky scree slope path

Always a struggle pitfalls dark

Nor yet blue-sky and endless days

Sunlit skipping through the park

But nonetheless so much to treasure

More than rubies, beyond measure

In spite of all our childish fears

Of failure fatness lost-love jeers

From maths exams to life alone

Insults worse than stick or stone

I counsel down the sound-proof years

Don’t waste our time in vale of tears

Feel your strength and lift your head

Much more to relish than to dread

For down the decades bright, untold

A lovely story, ours, unfolds

15th October 2011, Hounoux

Druids once we were

Druids once we were

You say now

Reaching back

From later years, become a bard

So bound to search for spirit-life

And fairies, apparently, lambent lurking

Every tree or wayside flower

You see now

Reaching back

Where playground plants in cracks

Coped with tarmac, tiny plot

For pineapple Mayweed creeping

Playthings we thought, threading head to tail
Like daisy chains and plantain catapults

Nought else grew

Except behind the school a scrubby lane

We walked controlled in crocodiles

And sticky buds were there

Miss cut them for the classroom

Nature table

And elsewhere land was waste or common

Wilderness in parcels

Before the roads and houses tentacled and spread

So even with a mother quick to fret

Yet long-rope rambles were allowed

Excursions unsupervised

In search of (seasonally) sticklebacks, tadpoles

Rose hips, blackberries, conkers, crabs

Grass to whistle, shells

So we remarked the months

Their provender, ‘bread and cheese' hawthorn leaves

And best of all, for me, catkins

Lambs’ tails

Signalling the spring

You know now

You see how

Relatively long-rope , we, wandering free

Knew those fairy spirits everywhere

Daily friends

You talked to birds

Still do, encourage geckos

Respond to tree-frogs

Make your hand a bridge

For cricket floundering in the pool

I see

Your straight hair, bright

Centre-parted

Fixed with grips

Brown legs in ankle-socks

Running

And into focus, sharply, from the blur

Me too, like you

Nature’s children, druids

Once we were

18th September 2011, Hounoux, for Clare with love

This day, today

This day, today

If I could paint this day, today
Or sing it in a song, bind it
In a book between the covers
Or on film, in photograph
Model it in clay
Stitch it onto fabric
Dance it, write a symphony
This day, today
I would
The still, the sun
Sweet scent of smoke
White wires across the blue
Sky lit luminous
The still, just one
Pale rose, low whisper
Breeze, unbending cypress trees
Martins’ sudden swoosh
Faint across the foothills
Tractor harvesting
And me the frog mechanical
Languid in the pool
Lovely liquid dappled blue golds green
Luscious sheen

From deep red dawning day, today
It bursts and brims
As laughter lights the soul
Gilded gift
Ephemeral Mayfly one-day fly
Perfection come this day

14th September 2011, Hounoux

Danced in the spaces

Danced in the spaces

This this she said

The  dart and the  dip and the dive

Swift and swallow  streaming, look, arrived

Or the sudden swirl in the sky

Bee-eater fly-past churr-churr, on high

Or patter and bob, small wren

Two steps  stop then, ear-cocked

This this the jizz she said

A very essence imprint, how to be

From hatchling all life long

Their song

Their going with the flow, glorious

Their thing, jizz and jing, spread wide the wing

So watch and wait

The dancer tiptoe, still

Then flown

Unleashed the artist lost in oils, transcending

Or guitarist, magic on the strings,

Jizz and jing

Watch and wait, danced in the spaces

Swum in the sky

The wonder and secret, song of the soul

Binding and winding, making us whole

Very essence jizz,  dazzled bling

Yearned for, sweetest, glorious thing

6th September 2011, Hounoux,

Egg brown boy

Egg brown boy

All over sun-skin egg brown boy
Summer child wild, breeze-free
Lost among raspberries peas and beans
Picking and pottering
A long-day dream
You wander and wonder at tree frogs and bees
Lizards basking on walls
You’re brave as a merboy bobbed on the waves
Dazed in the moment, dear lord of your dance
And spinning and weaving
With effortless grace
You bind us all in your spell
Oh sweetest enchantment, beloved enchantment
Beautiful egg brown boy

30th August, 2011, Hounoux

Shimmer dance smile

Shimmer dance smile

And so this summer’s sun-baked
Memories in moments
Shimmer dance smile
Small bodies perfect, squeal and splash
A tiny beetle glows golden
Old friends fore-gathered, wedding guests
Who’ve lent an ear, a hand to help
A precious girl turned teenager
Over and over beds filled, re-filled
Endless the washing drying on the line
Ottolenghi’s best suggestions, eagerly devoured
Coming and going, airport runs,
Wild clematis shining silver rampant on the fence
Field flowers, lavender twisted, twined
With gentian blue
And small roses, dusky pink
All of us here, family, friends
Come for the moment
Suspended in sunshine, surely
Stepped from a dream?
The bride in her loveliness, happiest of days
Bridesmaids and page boys
Too beautiful
Poems and love songs, vows turning to tears
Times to remember indelibly etched
All down the years
Churr of the bee-eaters bright in the blue
This summer’s sun-baked forever memories
Shimmer dance smile

22nd August 2011, Hounoux

Love Song

Love Song

Today you asked me to write you a poem, custom-made
To read at your wedding
Of course! I replied, thinking
Just you try and stop me!
This request, coming right after ‘Would you like to come shopping for my dress?’
And ‘Could I try and help you with some needles?’
And biggest and best of all ‘ Would you be with us at the birth?’
So you see the pattern here emerging
The giving in your asking
Our special girl, for both of us, such consolation
A gift after grief
Good news after sad
So glad we posted you in the Guardian
Big-eyed baby who learned (six months no more I swear)
To pull a face and make me laugh
Before 5, to write me billet-doux
Love letters ‘I love you mummy’
Signed Rosie Whittingham
What else can I tell you
Stories you know, oft repeated
The four changes of outfit, minimum
Strewn on your bed, before school
Which custom, Jay says, survives to this day
Telling us perhaps you never have known
Understood, how beautiful you are
Our special girl, daughter and sister
Friend, partner and mum
A gift to us all
If you want someone to lean on, listen
Stand by you in the dark
Then Rosie is your girl
Though perhaps we have to say-
For all the evidence points this way-
She’s Jay’s now, and Luca’s too of course
Fate and chance and previous dire misfortune
Having hurled them together one night, just before Christmas
Drink and music and partying possibly
Having their role to play
And we who loved her always
Had hoped her luck would change
Sighed collectively, relief profound
Finding Jay not only easy on the eye
But decent in his soul
As kind and loving as her dad
-No higher complement Jay-
Together the two of you, the best a boy could want
Creating a home and a life
Full of love
My mother’s wish for all of you
Rosie, Jay, Luca and siblings yet to come
Is taken from a song
Though panic not, you’re spared
No singing on this day
Just heartfelt words I’ll say with love
A prayer from us all

May the long time sun shine on you
All love surround you
And the pure light within you
Guide your way on

August 2010, read at Rosie's wedding to Jay on 6th August 2011, Gayda.

Oh I have put the moon in a box

Oh I have put the moon in a box

Oh I have put the moon in a box
Along with the swoosh of the sea
Yes I have sealed the moon with a lock
And hidden the silver key

I hauled it in on the brightest night
With a lasso made of silk
It traced a path of the whitest light
And all the world was gilt

Tomorrow in vain to yearn for tide
No more the magic pull
Beyond the horizon far and wide
Nowhere the moon is full

Oh I have put the moon in a box
Too beautiful to see
I tied it up to make it stay
Queen by night and ghost by day
Yes I have sealed the moon with a lock
To keep it just for me

26th July 2011, Hounoux and Brighton

Here is the wonder

Here is the wonder

In the toss and the turn

The deep of the night, churn

Of the unquiet brain

Fretting in furrows back and forth

Over again over again

When solace of sleep’s in slippery slide

Ever-evasive, far and wide

Will not be coaxed to rest and stay

But jitters and jumps and darts away

Then in the starless dreamless dark

Pacing the hiss of silence, hark!

Pattern of chimes to tell the hours

Strung like a chain of hedgerow flowers

A necklace of notes to punctuate

Almost a lullaby, wait oh wait

Picture the mountain scene at dawn

Meadows of daisies danced this morn

Bright in the sunlight foxglove splash

A chasing of swallows swoop and dash

In the toss and the turning, deep of night

The creep of the hours from dark till light

The ravel of cares that won’t be smoothed

Fretful as fever left un-soothed

Here is the wonder, come instead

A movie reel inside my head

And keeping in step with chiming bell

A poem forms

and

all

is

well.

Newnham on Severn, 3a.m 4th July 2011

A part of each other's design

A part of each other’s design

If you and I instead
Of tears and tantrums, laughter
Highs and lows
The sunny uplands and the dark despond
A tale told by an idiot
Wielding a wizard’s wand
If you and I instead
Were warp and weft
Of silk and multi-coloured thread
Part of a whole unknowable
Forming on the frame
As shuttle and bobbin
Click and clack
Three rows forward, three rows back
Then here, down the years
Ourselves new mothers, tantrums, fears
When you and I were daily
Frequent friends
Touching and interwoven
A part of each other’s design
How lovely the colours and texture
Rich and deep, splash and sparkle
Dance together twirl and twine
Yours and mine
Intermingled lives and threads
Forever
A part of each other’s design

14th June 2011, Hounoux, for Linda T with love

As lizards bake on brick

As lizards bake on brick

All the hot and blue sky day
As lizards bake on brick
And busy birds are in and out of crack and cranny
Creeper, on parenting imperative
Chick-chick the noisy chorus ceaseless
Dawn to dusk
All the hot and blue sky day
The bee-loud butterfly
Flutter by, dip and dancing day
Too hot for a dog day
I hide inside
Shade and shutter
Brush and paint on paper poised
As careful petals curl
Unfurl one upon the other
Blossoms blooming on the page
A splash of rose in scarlet,
Leaves, the sun-baked stone
Fragment torn, weather-worn
A poem on a wall.

May 29th 2011, Hounoux, for Gill and the enchanted Bordebasse, with thanks

Dancing with Mr Blue

Dancing with Mr Blue

In the glory of the sunrise
Will you walk a while with me
Will we fly across the spider’s web
And never break a thread
Or drink the scent of roses
With the bee on honey quest
Will we catch the pulse and rhythm
Of the jasmine in the breeze
Dip and dazzle in the sunlight
As the butterflies show dance
In kaleidoscopic sunrise
Will we wander hand in hand
Take the magic of the moment
As we feel the planet turn
Tilt our faces with the sunflowers
To the newly-minted day
And be glad we shared the secret
Glimpse of heaven, rainbow’s end?

18th May 2011, Hounoux. 'Eternity is not in the future but in those bits of the present which make like worth living' Rabbi Lionel Blue

Yesterday we studied stones

Yesterday we studied stones

Today we came the slow way home
Our journey took a while
For we’d to stop at every downpipe
Every terraced house
To consider Incy Wincy’s climb
And his subsequent descent, in rainy downpour
Would he hurt himself at the final,
Falling, or come out smiling?
You wondered aloud, gauging each waterspout
The climbing up and the washing out
From a weary spider’s viewpoint, stance
You squatting on your haunches, peering
To assess

Similarly yesterday we studied stones
For there are many specimens
Heaped on the Brighton shore
To be dug and poured into buckets
Selected for size or colour, roundness
Piled into rock castles
Smoothed and rubbed and plopped
One by one, in the sea

How glad I am to slow and stop
To amble at your pace
To stand in a three -year -old’s shoes
To wonder why it is Tuesday
And whether a bee can smile
Poet and scientist, lost in the now
The what granny, why granny, how?

26th April 2007, Hanover, Brighton, for my little Luca with love

And oh indeed

And oh indeed

And oh indeed the poet's perfect bliss

To be in England now

That April's awesome here

With scent of Spring new-mown

And blackbird dawn till dusk

In rinse and ring exuberant

As froth and bubble cherry blossom

Pink pink against the utter blue

And cloudless

Lime-green the leafing curls unfurl

Their poignant poetry

Free verse a paeon sung,

Far-flung in praise

A carillon a peal

Sing ring the sunlit days

The world is on the wing

For nothing is, nor could be, ever

More beautiful than Spring

20th April 2011, Starbucks Brighton N Lanes

How lovely the legend

How lovely the legend

Somehow, though I'd known of the obvious myths

Involving Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White

And this long while

Resisted

Today in the aftermath, shockingly, it's clear

Another somehow

Has persisted

Not bold to the rescue, the lover the prince

Driven by beauty and lust

But fierce as a tiger

The power of the sun

From day of conception, surrender to none

The roar and the rage and the life-giving must

Surely the love of the mother's a spell

Magic omnipotent

All, all will be well?

Oh wishful and wanted and would it were so

The might of the mother to right all the wrong

To cradle, protect, indestructibly strong

How lovely the legend, the story, the myth

In spite of all reason, that haunts

And persists

10th February 2011, Bondi

Somewhere the sun forever

Somewhere the sun forever

Flying westward into sunset

Above the wing in silhouette

Is inky prussian washed

Below the stretching endless

Horizontal line

Crimson, aubergine burnt orange

Gorgeous spectrum spread

Butter lemon-drops and eau de nil

To palest duck-egg blue

Sunlight's fabulous refraction

Scattering, protracted

Somewhere the sun forever setting

Flying westward

2nd/ 3rd April, 2011, flying home British Airways, Sydney to Singapore

Cataclysmic, tiger leapt

Cataclysmic, tiger leapt

Far below and unsuspected

Earth is cracking, shifting shell

On the fault-line, half forgotten

Clash of titans, gates of hell

Plates tectonic crash and splinter

Earth is cracking, shift and quake

On the fault-line fathoms under

Seismic giant stirs and wakes

Then the wall of water rising

Fierce the force unstoppable

Making matchsticks, shattered, scattered

All before it, swallowed

Swept

Mighty wave tsunami rising

Cataclysmic,

Tiger leapt

Fear the cracks the fault

Kept hidden

Far below the egg-smooth shell

‘Ware the fissure’s power

Engulfing

In a heartbeat

Gone to hell

15th March 2011, Adelaide

On the night of the luminous moon

On the night of the luminous moon

There’s barely a breath at Wayamba
In a spell, bound, the land is stilled
Wood smoke’s a ramrod rising
Thwack thwacking a whipbird woops
Only a space in the wild wood
Clearing but gently tamed
Where softly the human footfalls
Cricket hypnosis thrums
At the end of the track at Wayamba
The humming, the drumming the spell
Bound in a lunar enchantment
On the night of the luminous moon

20th March 2011, Wayamba, for Don and Rosie with much love

Graffiti girl

Graffiti girl

Here now, sudden

Comes the sun

And every shade of blue

Is in the sea and sky

Highlight bright white

Hopper’s buildings, surf and spray

Switch thrown

Technicolour filter floods

Graffiti girl

Beloved Chloe, laughing

Frangipani in her hair

Bali RIP

Someone’s sunshine now

Forever in eclipse

And her, switch thrown

Forever young

6th March 2011, Bondi beach cafe

Do you remember Tamarama?

Do you remember Tamarama?

Do you remember Tamarama
Sky of the deepest blue
Brightest of white where the breakers crash
Flash of the planes coming in
A place for a poem
Blown on the wind
Dreaming a longing for words
Orange and yellow, the artist’s daubs
Iris and lily grown wild
Borne on the breeze, swooshed in the waves
Like Prospero’s magical airs
Do you remember Tamarama
A poem a dreaming come true?

3rd March 2011, Tamarama Beach, NSW

Fair Go the lorikeets!

>

Fair Go the lorikeets!

Someone perhaps
Could tell the lorikeets
To cool it, cut the cackle
Consider the Fair Go
For their way,
Each one screech one
Louder, all at once
But not in harmony
Cacophony
Flap and flash of far-from-subtle
Lurid red blue green
Such egotistic squawking
Talking?
Is hardly the democratic way
You’d think it was Mardi Gras daily
The brashest and gayest of Pride
Yes someone should tell the lorikeets
To consider their place in the ‘hood
It can’t be just me
It’s clear as can be
Their behaviour’s just frankly not on
Can’t they give us a break
For sanity’s sake
The gorgeous, the garish
The neighbours, exotic, from hell

March 1st 2011, Bondi

Frangipani flowers free fall

Frangipani flowers free fall

Frangipani flowers
Free
Fall
Fragrant shower
Stars in the gutter
Five-pointed flutter
Wax-white
Drifting, summer snow
Urban pavement tread and trample
Glimpse of heaven
Scorned neglected
Quite rejected
Frangipani flowers
Free
Fall

27th February 2011, Bondi

The gift of a frappé

The gift of a frappé

The heat in here is Indian

Just before the rains

Alas no whirring fan

The coolest place? Tomorrow

Our cheery waiter quips

Waving of menus desultory

Dab where the sweat river drips

What bliss the gift of a frappé

Freezing in the throat

With strings on wings

The lovely Ella soars and dives

Major to minor, no love song finer

Sunday morning communion

Bondi breakfasting folk

20th February 2011, Bondi Trattoria, for the waiter who gave me the gift

Boy on a scooter

Boy on a scooter

See you fast forward fearlessly

Face to the future

Twenty-first century boy

Projection

A dream of all our possibilities,

Tomorrow's tomorrows

See your small feet

Modelled on my own, my mother's too

Genetic after-life and fast forward

Fearlessly

Twenty-first century boy

19th February, 2011, Bondi

Bondi gulls

Bondi gulls

Enacted on the canvas canopy

A show in shadow

Black starfish feet are dancing

Soft shoe shuffle

Seagulls in silhouette

But on the grass, in prose

( Not poetry)

They dart and skitter, flat on fingered webs

Pursued by boys with glee

Cinematic cliche

The silent movie chase

18th February 2011, Bondi

Will you little Bondi boy?

Will you little Bondi boy?

Will you little Bondi boy

Yearn for southern sun

Sound of the surf

Ever an ear, subconscious

For the fall and the rise

The cries unholy

Cockatoo and lorikeet?

Will you little Bondi boy

Seek the Southern Cross

By night, the sun-bleached days

The deep unbounded blue

Wish for the wind in the shoreline trees

For the gasp of an ocean pool

Hot sand

A land where a boy runs free?

13th February 2011,Bondi NSW, for Zachy with love

Perhaps we all were sleeping

Perhaps we all were sleeping

You ask, confused,
What sense there is
To pay one person millions
An annual salary, weekly
For someone with a simple skill
A talent in his feet
In hope of certain goals to come
Team victories, corporate riches

See here’s a case to ponder
Questions begged
A toddler’s stamped ‘Not fair!’
As millionaires evade their tax
Fail to condemn the fattest cats
All glossy coats and sleekness
But will not rest, will do their best
To trap those welfare scroungers

When did the scales of justice tip
Or was it always thus?
Now licence lent, unfettered
To monstrous grasping greed
No need to fret for poorer folk
An undeserving class
When was the fight for fairness skewed
Our value system twisted?

You ask, confused,
What sense there is
Perhaps we all were sleeping
When selfishness became the norm
And caring just a cause for scorn
So superficial matters most
And thin is good or thinner best
And winner takes it all

So pity then our populace
And all our blessed planet
If no one cares
For equal shares
And all our world’s distorted

February 2nd 2011, Brighton, for Jude, who asked, confused

WeightWatching

WeightWatching

Early Tuesday morning, right after ten
I’m standing in the judgment line, nervous again
I’ve run from the bus stop, been to have a pee
Now it’s time to face the weighing scales fear-less-ly
I’ve tracked every mouthful, logged all I’ve eaten
Those three extra stones of fat, have to be beaten
What about the glass of wine, the sticky toffee pud
Italian at Carluccio’s, maybe not so good?
The weekly assignation, moment with the data
Will it show on the dial that I scarfed those roast potata?
All along the queue we’re skinny sorts and fatter
All of us anxious, chat chat chatter
I’ve inched my way forward to the front, with miss
What’ll be the verdict, despair or bliss?
I’ve taken off my watch and shoes, worn my lightest things
Now I’m praying for a good result, to give me wings
Tread very lightly, softly on the scale
In the battle of the bulge, lord, don’t let me fail
So this is the lot of the WeightWatching crew
Tuesdays at ten o’clock, how will we do?

January 27th 2010, Brighton

You two stood waving

You two stood waving

You two stood
Waving
And I lurched from the slow train
Stop stop stopping
Head full of buzz in a seethe of mad drones
My chest in a vice
For I had been long hours locked
Blasted in an information-overload
( My Saturday newspaper of choice )
I was battleground and fierce the fires burned

Can you hear the people sing
Singing the song of angry men
Where the hell to put the outrage
Should we build the barricades?

You two stood
Laughing
Seized my luggage, took my hands
And I counted all my blessings
As your loving held my heart

24th January, Brighton, for Pam and Jude, two who stood waving, with my love

Identity

Tenuous
A fragile necklace strung
Or Larkin’s frail travelling coincidence
The stuff of dreams blown in a pipe
Dandelion globes
Our little life, bounded with a sleep
Though once it seems
We all were stars
Not dust to dust
But debris, shining shower
Fallout from celestial bang
Now plaited in a double helix twist
Blueprint mapped
Look there the chin cleft, curly hair
Or tendency to fat
But where the particle poetic
The heart and eye, hand to hold the pen,
Love’s lilting soul?
Ego superego id
Unfathomable mystery
Hid

11th January 2011, Brighton