Illumination  

 

Scarlet striped lighthouse

punctuates a blue as fierce

as wolf-eye.  And the width of it

dazzling, oh dazzling, as stars,        

 

a galaxy of blue shot through

with white.  And colour, colour sings

in veins, tickles throats with strange

lust to drink the rolling ocean dry.

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Published in Black Bough's online edition Sound and Vision.

 

 

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Nightsail

 

Glittersplash here they fly.

At harbour's mouth

fins slap, slide under bow,

heart flips

in silly joy.

Each small body aloft

a new word written on the sky.

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Talisman

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A constellation of crystal tumblers strobes.

Each glass brimful of seabrine, dim as clouds

propped in occult circle at whose crux a box

 

sits, anchorshaped, a dovetailed masterpiece

of joiner’s art whose fulgent hinge and key

blaze gold to iris. She conjures this room,

 

fastness of life’s salt, ship’s locker of her heart.    

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How to find a jay

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Walk into a wood so full of light and leaf it doesn’t matter

if you do not see a bird. Forget about the bird.

Remember the one who used to love jays

who watched for them with you in this place

who walked her ailing dog along this track

who held your arm in the latter days

who hoped for a sign of something

wonderful.

And when you think of her

your eyes will catch

a flash of

blue. 

                                               

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 Little Langdale

 

On scree, turf, stout hill-bone family lay-lines wave and burn.

Each crag, cairn and passing-place

               radiates significance.

 

Absence squats on bench-like stones that bear the ring

of flask and cup,  exude a spectral fume of sock

              steamed free from hobnail boot.

 

Walk this mountain, you disrupt ten thousand intersecting tracks

made holy by those you never knew and yet

               are kin who if you crossed

 

their path might hold your hand to jump a tricky ford

might laugh the sun to shame when both of you

               fall in.

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Winter reflection                    

 

after Julia Copus

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It was a dark day and there was no way

to tell you what I felt. I longed to

take you into the leafless woods,

your face shining at me.  I could not.

 

Your face shining at me.  I could not

take you into the leafless woods

to tell you what I felt. I longed to.

It was a dark day and there was no way.

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Millers                      

 

Wind ran away with the sky,

swung shadows like scythes.

Grains smashed to powder,

sails whipped & screamed

wheeling on fragile pivots, 

canvas blown flat as fens.

A gale will turn these vanes

into miller’s guillotines. 

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in Black Bough’s Christmas edition 2022

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Sirena, the mermaid

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Her shape is a wineglass drawn in water,

thoroughbred lines, a full-hipped stern,

discreet curve forward to narrow bow.

Amid-ships, a golden mast.

 

Below, a paradise of old teak glows

the shade of conkers pocket-rubbed.

 

Look up from the helm, see living sails

blown tight. Smacked by southerly gust

she beats like a soul through summer sky.

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Ritual for loss

 

I will carry the still bee whose small heart beat under crushed wings

whose narrow proboscis reached into the honeywater I offered her

whose body I shaded from sun, whose last hour of nectar-work was

done, whose eyes saw nothing of my giant’s hands, whose body

I will bear on a cardboard bier to a small depression in wet earth

where I will sow her like a seed and say the De Profundis prayer

my grandmother always murmured when she saw a hearse

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Dragon fire on the M5  

 

Tail lights are blazed arterial red.

We gaze at bright hypnotic tint

feast on lumens’ scarlet hearts

touch brakes at every strident wink.

 

Queued uphill they build a dragon

whose scales are salt-slick with blood

whose swift and smoky progress sets

a flame to every thing we love.

 

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It is the moment when  

 

the sea bites my fingers numb

the arrow of my stroke is ice-tipped

as if winter hidden in the Sound’s depths

has stretched its tentacles to suck my hands

 

and I remember

 

warm Novembers are not the norm

planetary tilt is still assured

seasons still hold, cold is good and

ocean calms a soul in flame

 

 

 

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danger of breakers

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                salt crystals line lashes

          ozone bemuses lungs

hair coils to frizz

                               beware transmutation by air and spring tide

 

sea will throw your soul to the south wind

                                 roll you to unlooked for destinations    hold

you alone and shivering in primeval dawn

                                       smash you to skeletal parts and     fold

you in her frozen arms        to prove you are

                                                    alive

 

all boundaries lost    

                      only skin

                                          divides you from gulfs of flashing wet

 

               float on ocean’s breast                   let your self go                                                                  

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