A selection of poems written over the past few years – with a few notes, here and there, about how they came to be written, what I was struggling to convey …
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Signs of spring
pigeon
like a sailor
see-sawing
over grass
old grey fox
cocking his leg
scratching
sodden leaves
dogwood
orange against
dark earth
dull grey mantle
of cloud
hardly moving
even now on this
cold morning
buds on the old English
rose fat
as yeomen
stretch and poke
first green fingers
of Spring
on its way
Summer afternoon
sweat-shadows
under oaks
damp grass lolling
baked clay pans
where cattle
stamped and flicked
- flies worrying eyes
and ears
buttercups shiver
- a pauper’s breath
tipping yellow to
silver cold
at river’s skin
a heron prods
as if to nudge
a fish to life
There is a rhythm to walking that gives muscle to the words as they come to mind and images just emerge like beads threaded on to the line of the walk. The small white church of San Rocco stands high on a rocky bluff beside the sea – it is a popular place, magical, even with lots of people coming and going ….
Pembroke walk
gorse-ribs
black-spiked
on burnt scrub
leaning leaning
scuffed by heel
on pocked trail
stonechat calls
from granite nob
as if lowering sky
pulls it out of him
crusted gate
scabbed latch
finger-lift to open
twist of boot
on glistening
boulder
look back at dark hill
wonder at such wonders
song of stone
elegy of burning
drift of eyes
to silver cloud
Pilgrims at Camogli
even now they ascend
hundreds of steps
like sparrows chirping
until at San Rocco
they stand outside
by a stone wall
gazing out to sea
where infinity holds them
silent for just
a moment
Two poems, two of many, written while travelling by train:
businessman with shiny
slow-polished shoes
reaches up to take down
his jacket
unfolds it with care
strokes the soft lapels
smiles as if he is
the richest man
alive
*
flat river sun flashing
silver-grey corrugated roof
bungalows pirouetting
from side-to-side
birches high on a bank
golden willows tracing waterways
through fresh-green meadows
five geese heading east
us on a train
heading the same way
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Just so
everything is just so:
room, bed, scarf draped
over a cupboard door,
breeze pushing curtain
with poppies in rows,
cars and a football crowd,
sliver of dark night,
cup of water
on the table
each thing has its
penumbra of uncertainty
quivering signature of
what it
is
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Around February time, our small pond is filled, overnight, with a horde of frogs. It is mating time and for just a few days they are busy …..
Frog bacchanal
chirruping in dark pond
carnival of legs, pale throats
oodles of spawn water churned
paddling of sinuous oars
a week ago
they were breathing skins
deep under ice
now they cavort
like sumo nymphs
stirring water to
a gruel of silt and
murky waltzes
Owain, son of Urien, appears in an old Welsh tale, The Mabinogion. Having heard a story told by his friend, Cynon, in which Cynon follows a mysterious black-haired man to a magical well, Owain heads off for 'the remote regions of the world' in search of the well. After many fantastic adventures he finds not only the well but the Lady of the Well - needless to say, he falls in love with her. The image of Owain setting off for 'remote regions' stayed with me ....
Owain’s exile
a long road
palms, sunflowers,
gardens of tombs,
carnations and violets
a night of longing
tomorrow I will walk and
walk until I meet the sea
and I will quench this thirst
on the flat horizon where
sun meets water and
another day drowns
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I’ve been writing poems or poetic texts since my late teens. I grew up in Whitwick - a small mining and quarrying village in the Charnwood Forest area of Leicestershire. Middle England. Coal and granite country. Most of my spare time – and I had lots of it – was spent wandering in the woods and common land around our solid square stone house with its jackdaws and breeze-whispering Scots pines. As far as I remember I started writing to try to evoke moments of observation, insight and ecstasy in those long hours of meandering through bracken, bilberry bushes and gorse. My friends and I spent days looking for bird’s nests, watching lizards skittering across the granite outcrops or spying on rock doves rising and falling in the quiet air that hung in the abandoned quarry behind our house. We made dens in rock-groves lined with bracken. I helped my uncle with harvesting on his nearby farm. Days of walking, climbing, watching, pondering. My scribblings were usually short – reminders and summonings-up of moments of intense experiences of connection and being-in a particular place. Moments when I dissolved into the landscape and felt the flood of life.
Here are a few of those early texts:
Cardiff reverie
from here first floor window
I can see right along
Splott Road a name like rainfall
scooters turn off it all ways
cars and trucks go all the length
of it, only the odd one whipping
suddenly left or right
two kids with fishing rods
in leather and canvas cases
stalk along the pavement
and make trees and hills
of houses a gorge
of the street dog becomes
coyote and neighbours
grow feathers Apaches
howling and dancing
around the belisha beacon
what nerve it takes to cross
the bouldered road – swirling
high water of the Merrimac
Thoreau, watch out, these kids
have their Walden in the gutter
[I studied at Cardiff College of Art]
Two poems from October 1967
I.
the years rotate….
lopped-off stumps
naked round ends of fir branches
radiating out
at the horizontal
tall fir body
with crinkly bark
furrowed old skin
magpie
on the eaves
looks under
runs
bounces
the rippled roof thrust down
lurches into the greenery
thick needles close around him
hidden
he clacks away
cluclac
klalak
low cloud gropes along
small whisp of fire-smoke
drifts & rolls
fades into grey tree-tops
II.
Robert
drags a branch of birch
still silver in parts
scrapes the gravel makes
tracks in the driveway
turns it over
& over
until it pivots
on the bramble bushes
curves of spruce
hang down
comb the air just
above his head
bundles of brown leaves
drift
around the wheels
of the Vauxhall
ivy in the distance
darkens the first six feet
of a dead but standing
straight unbranched
birch again
There is no sign
there is no sign
of me anywhere
where I stand
I am not there
and everywhere I turn
I find no part
of myself
no spores in the air
I cannot see the flat
evidence of grass
and no arms to hold
the non-existent heart
the bewildered eye
that cannot
see itself
things and events
roam through
my head
and there is no sign
of my not
being
anywhere