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