Silent subversives

 Silent subversives 

Here’s half a dozen sunflowers 

tall in a fallow field 

have made me smile and raise a cheer. 

Hurrah for the gatecrashers, random, rogue

and accidental cosmos, shocking pink  

colonising onion rows. 

Whilst you might sow and coddle and tend

watchful for enemies out to destroy

for wind and drought and heat and cold 

and often as not your crop won’t grow

beans fail to run, flowers not show

see there on the wall all barren and dry

a rampage of passion flowers has taken root

scrambled and climbed and curtained the wall 

concrete now green, leaf, flower and fruit

somehow sustained in a dusting of dirt

making me smile and raise a cheer- 

three cheers for the triumph the random success

for nature not bounded, out of hand 

silent subversives running wild. 

Hounoux, July 22nd 2021 

Superhumans as they pass

 Super humans as they pass 

Saturday sun is early hot and rising 

stuns the valley golden green 

only the electric crickets ticking. 

But here’s the caravan advancing 

brouhaha and razzmatazz 

and through binoculars the combatants

rider blended into bike 

extraordinary striving 

grind of the day not yet begun

all ahead the foothills rising 

then the mountains floating blue.  

Through the glorious glowing landscape 

super humans as they pass. 

July 11th 2021 Hounoux. 

Singing our own

 Singing our own 

I think of you as I am reaching, searching for rhythm 

and rhyming, assonance

care in the choosing, groping for meaning 

pleasing, novelty 

now that your utterances refuse to flow, but stick

and jam

requiring push and prod, a freeing rod

your fluency now failing. 

Still your Yorkshire lovely lilt, inherited, Halifax 

has made me smile for gratitude-

that you’re battling with the silence 

that you won’t be overcome. 

So from girls to grannies, still 

singing our own in two parts, harmony and song. 

June 16th 2021, Hounoux 

That lets the rain come in

That lets the rain come in 

Unconvinced, she said,  It’s Emperor’s new clothes

not art 

just a square capturing the sky 

a frame,  and today, large clouds passing 

but equally a hole that lets the rain come in

a con trick of the light

so Tracy Emin’s bed unmade, or house bricks in a line

elephant dung, or paint flung and flicked 

Pollock and Rothko- colour mad

visionary or insane? 

And if I write a poem no rhyme nor rhythm 

theme, just words in a jumble 

punctuation-free

or scrape on paint with palette knife and spray 

then watch the colours pool and sometimes zing

 by chance, happenstance 

then turn the canvas sideways so a friend discerns a beach, waves crashing 

though I never meant it so. 

Now is the Emperor clothed or naked? Is he beautiful? 

Who’s to say? 

Displayed with Frink and Hepworth, monumental Henry Moore

here’s a cloudscape in a picture frame 

has lodged inside my brain. 

1st June 2021, Hounoux 

I wonder

I wonder 

I wonder, now the month is May

and so much shoots  and sprigs 

In lovely limes and lemon, 

froths like meadowsweet In clouds 

or clusters creeping, wisteria, 

bee-buzz, butterflies

cuckoo on repeat, not yet the serin

nor the swallow swoop 

but all the busy-ness of May’s marvels, 

set in motion as the earth tilts, sun stretches

at light and lengthening of days. 

14th May 2021, Hounoux 

Grateful for Clive James

 Grateful for Clive James 

Immersed in Hughes and clever Empson 

in sunlight with Mac Neice, glad to have sat under thunder

and rain with them all 

enthralled by the tigred pike 

spiked on his aged grin

women alas too few

the Mrs Hughes and Browning 

and Dickinson, of course, not drowning. 

But I have James to hold my hand 

to buoy me in deep water 

to bid me Leap! And float on thermals 

for such delight 

in depths and heights 

this treasury collected

recollected, got by heart 

since Aussie schoolboy years, note

by heart and not by rote

and bless him for his labours

in his last and dying days 

still his wit and warmth and wisdom 

all-pervading, perfect legacy. 

22nd April 2021 Hounoux after reading Clive James’  ‘ The Fire of Joy’ 

After Louis MacNeice (2) The Earth Compels

 After MacNeice ‘ The Earth Compels’ 

The sunlight on the garden slants at dip of day 

in shafts oblique, long and low, the glow before dusk

loveliest of light mellow filtered

it blurs and blends, this landscape now Van Gogh or Monet

unsharpened, indistinct 

pink in the palette warm on the folds and fields 

as cools the air, pools

single spotlight bright upon yellow. 

We cannot cage the minute within its globe of gold 

we shall grow cold 

seduced by the glow of twilight 

at blessed dip of day. 

16th April 2021 Hounoux.