Continental Drift

I tried my hand at a sestina...

I suppose you call this time fall.

It’s always autumn to me. Your alien mind

likes to speak in a distorted tongue.

And when we see the spinning leaves

drifting down an eggshell sky

I catch oak, and your hands are empty.

There half the houses stand empty,

you say as you watch rain fall.

There the world is bigger than the sky,

with room for my restless mind.

I know you pine for maple leaves,

for bittersweet syrup on your tongue.

The words are waiting to leave your tongue.

This land is small and your heart is empty.

That’s why everyone ups and leaves.

This place is paradise after the fall,

There you can be naked. No one would mind,

no one would see you bare yourself to the sky.

Through the window is my perfect sky,

the places that come easy to my tongue,

If we left maybe no one would mind

but me, I say. But if your land is empty

who would catch me in your wondrous fall?

If your land is perfect, what fool leaves?

One day I will weave from leaves

a tapestry of your autumn sky.

We’ll go where poplar and maple leaves fall,

where every red and amber seems a tongue

of flame, and where the world is empty

and gives space to your fragile mind.

Perhaps after a time I would not mind

my future in a place where everyone leaves

but you and me, where the world stands empty

but for us. I’d give you my entire Eastern sky.

Words slip easily from your honeyed tongue

and I think, after all, that I may fall.

I cannot mind your perfect pale blue sky,

your autumn leaves, your ever altered tongue,

You make me fall. With you, I am not empty.

Drift (Collected Poetry)

A collection of my poetry is now available online. 128 pages of poetry inspired by my children, current events, the questioning of religion, geology, Darwinism and 1960s television. :-)

On Washing Up on an Autumn Day

Elbow deep, water warm.

There is a squeak to ceramic,

a smooth slip, soap and cloth,

and fingers pink with work.

Eyes on the sky through glass,

on elder offering berries to birds,

on rain washed grass, and terry towelling

hung as a surrender to life and love.

And the thought in your mind,

open like palms held to the sun,

that the water and soap, the berries

and the translucent sky, are no less you

than flesh and bone. The air in your throat

no less you than birds uplifted by wind.

The world begins at your feeling fingers,

a Möbius strip in your hands.

A Whelk, Perhaps

I shall draw myself further in,
safe in these whorls. No feelers
feeling. No fronds out-turned.
A whelk, perhaps. Invertebrate.
Safe in myself with my eyes closed,
head drawn in, curved to the
contours of this calcification.
No man is an island, entire of himself.
But I can eke out the neck of
this peninsula. I can huddle like rock,
my spine an archipelago, undiscovered.
I can stay like a soft thing, washed
by waves, moved by eternal currents,
but always held. Always safe
in Fibonacci’s constant. Curved in,
and blind, and alive in my mind.

How The Shale Feels

I know how the shale feels.

That thin drifted piece, naked

in a pool of beach-cracked rock.

I know how each grain of

windswept waveswept sand

rubs a little and rubs again.

I know the effaced (un)importance

of the bedrock we press underfoot.

How it will not bend, but slowly erode.

How it will never bend,

but only snap once the scouring

is scoured enough.

I know you, you pressed out slab

of mud, once-alive remnant of

a time before, who teamed with microbe life.

I know that soft, soft weight of years,

that suffocating sleep

that slowly turns slip to stone.

And then the voice saying, We

will sit here. The tide’s on the turn.

Let us sit here and watch the slow sunset.

A good place to sit. And the hand

that touches the slab, small now,

scoured to thinness, feels the heat

of the day and the smoothness to the palm

and thinks nothing.

I know how the shale feels.

Isn’t There A Fanatic Somewhere In All Of Us?

What is it with you people?

You, who stand with your heads above the mist,

you with your Easter Island faces,

turned to the here and now, outward looking.

And I, here I am, elsewhere.

I balance on my straw raft,

float toward the horizon,

sea brine seeping past my toes.

In my delirium

I seek fresh water in the depths

and see monochrome men,

the lingering smoke of cigarettes,

the watch inturned and the hands adept.

Somewhere I lie with my face downturned,

my hands downstretched, catching

currents that left the shore decades past.

I couldn’t be happy in bobby socks

and outspread skirts. But.

But I will stand in the shadow by the dance hall wall.

I will watch them spin.

I will watch the play of muscle under skin,

the lucid eyes and the dark ones.

I will watch the sleek wet cling of cotton,

grained on film and left when life was vital.

I can look through the sheer water

and dream of the oxygen beneath the depths.

And dive, and dive again, and bring back pearls.

On Passing Her in the Street

Today we almost met.
You with your walnut heart,
your hatchet-blade face sharp-edged
straight on.
Today I realised how deep and wide
is the void between atoms.
How each of us is an emptiness,
each a spinning solar system,
more vacuum than dust.
Today I saw how even if I shouted
loud across that crackling void,
my words would slip between electrons
and fall, useless and unheard.
We none of us are really here,
and if I prised – or prized? – 
your walnut heart there would,
there would, be substance there –
but nothing to my taste. Nothing
but gall to my tongue.
I think, instead, I will hold facts close.
That each cell has its nucleus.
That each atom holds hands only with its kin.
That sometimes we can only speak
to those who speak back
in our own tongue.

On Moles On The Fence At Nebo

We saw your soldiers’ ranks, your
desecrated corpses. We saw you
hung, sleek, one by one,
a dirge on a your own stave.
You were such small trophies,
so small, each one. Each one
a glove of dark, smooth silk.
Each one a sorrow of its own,
head height to our child’s eyes.
There was no triumph in this conquest.
No triumph in your sad spade hands,
your aborted tails or quiet eyes.

Now I imagine Goldsworthy meeting Hirst.
Then only sadness in a wind-struck place.

The Smoker

We will take it from the exhale.
A single drift, a caress of your lips
and the soft pass of silk that billows.
The bloom of orgasm widening in the air.
Your lips part in the afterthought of a kiss.
The afterthought of all that is in you
widening in the air.

There is a dilation inside you.
Your pupils become pools,
your lungs expand. And
your shoulders fall, the strength
at bay. Your chair is an oyster,
your chair a resting place. Your head
tilts back and smoke rises. It is
no signal of distress, no call to arms,
but an incense for your peace.

Milky Way

It is on days like this that I drink too much tea

and create a whirlpool of my stomach as the lactose settles,

and all you can say is uhuh, guhuh, your nakedness an entirety

and a subtle threat of chaos to be unleashed.

Half the world is out of your reach, your up-stretched hands

starfish, seekers, your palms maps that have not yet been written.

You describe the world as guhuh, and I drink tea and find

a galaxy threaded inside, an opening of my thoughts,

a settling of my tired eyes and star after star to string for you.

It will be years before you can understand. Astronomy. Navigation.

Myth. Hydrogen blazing in spheres and atoms out of reach.

Now you are a mountain climber, a daredevil. You can say, a-gone.

You would toss away your yolk-yellow duck and reach for

handles, books, and dip your bread in daddy’s tea and suck the liquor.

You would toss aside anything that does not suit, a king kong in the city

and your starfish hands would settle only on the inappropriate.

your havoc is mellowed with honey. The curtains are a forest,

a hideout and a shield, and I sit with my tea, and no place to hide.

Depths

I lie more still than a corpse, deep down,

swaddled in peat, its face a tannin mask

shrunken to expose teeth. Eyes lost and staring.

A nose that flares for an anaerobic balm.

If my neck were noosed I could not be more still,

if my sacrifice had been made, my hands curled.

If I lay for two thousand years in this soft bed

pressed upon by peat above, pressed by peat below,

with all torment dead and passed away,

I could not be more still and calm.

I could not matter less. The bog bottoms

are a place of calm. A place of sleep.

Remembrance

Lest we forget, they said.
And not just forget the men in the mud,
but the men who found air and sea as treacherous,
and those who guided them down safe paths,
and those who shot, and those shot at.
And not just the men,
but the women who worked, and the women who waited,
and the men and the women who died at home,
sheltering in places that were not shelter enough.
Two sleeping children at Glebe Farm.
Those tiny, single losses, blossoming into a field.
No race, nor homeland, nor gender matters in death.
Lest we forget, they said.
And not just those who died, but those who are living still,
and those who are fighting still,
and those who are still waiting at home, with hope clenched in their hands,
and those who were left behind.

Of Hades and Other Gods

It is a beautiful, clear day, and -
sometimes this Hydra has no head,
has no Achilles' heel.
The street lamps steal light from the sun
but cannot compare in brightness.
They are a whimper in daylight.
A whimper is my mind.
Helios rules us all.

Conch

I would curl tight in my conch shell
and ignore their feelers and blind, feeling eyes.
I would curl so tight that my atoms would condense.
I would be an ammonite, tight on the ocean floor,
unfound until split by a geologist’s hammer.
I would be a fossil, shelved, doubtful as Darwin,
silent as the grave, and tight, so tight,
and trust would be a nonsense word,
and faith no more than letters arranged in a press,
and for all their instruments they would say no more,
than, this is a fossil. We will let it rest.

Heat

Indian summer,
heat pressing down on the world.
Still sky, still air. Obsessions and
jackdaws calling and the sun
slipping through the curtains.

And even when the sun slips
away the heat smothers still.
     Thank god they’re asleep, we say.
     Thank god they’re asleep.
Their breathing after dark in the thick air,
bodies naked, curled like Inca mummies.
Their skin stifled by sweat.
My hands won’t stroke.
Three children, Russian dolls, equalled in sleep.
We’re not the only ones who were fools.

Peace settles in this afterlife.
The television is a crackle, the only thing that moves.
We try to glean a draught through windows agape.
We try to glean a harvest from the dark.

Some Time Before Dinner

You cry. My head a ringing place.
Your face a freeze-frame of outraged red.
We walk and waltz and you hiccough with tears.

My body is a besieged land,
defences breached and the headquarters
inhabited by music.

In my head I am riding to Juneau.
In my head a strong man, arms like fortress walls,
holding me hard against his solid ribs.

My waltzing does not amuse you.
My tuneless singing I cannot hear.
I don’t know the words, the drums are a heartbeat.

Your hot hands cling still.
Your hands entrenched, scaling the walls.
You may conquer me yet, but my mind is lost.

Seven, Until Eight

We slip upstairs, into the half-light dark,

leaving the tadpoles playing in their pool.

Time to be together, to shade the lights.

My patience is a skeleton leaf, each vein

frayed. I pray for peace. The Middle East

has nothing on you. And I lie while

you walk the floor, and drink, and milk

hangs at the corners of your lips. Outside

the sky is aflame. The neighbours fight quietly.

Inside nothing but your feet on the floor,

your experiments with sounds,

your mouth a new toy. Outside the

deepening dusk as day gives way

to shadowed hills. You cannot fight.

You fall like an old soldier,

surrendered to the hours, at last.

Fifty Minutes, Without Adverts

Exercise is good for depression. Picking out words with poetry. Watching people move on the screen. Sleeping baby giving a surrender with his nerveless arms.

Deep breaths make light work of pain. On the screen they are spying and cycling, long ago but vivid. Actors are writers, writers act.

Doctors sometimes tell the truth. Eat red peppers and tomatoes. That may work.

Brain stutters. Baby's hands twitch. Don't wake yet. Don't wake. Let me watch my silver-hearted screen. Intrigue and the tiny movements of eyes. Six foot three and broad shoulders.

He is awake. Milk on his lips. Tiny yearling sounds. You would be surprised by what is in my heart.

He nests like a bird in the crook of my legs. Tumbles back into sleep. Sweet, hot breaths, short and fast. How will I roast a chicken by five?

The credits roll.

Of Virginia Woolf

You filled your pockets with stones,

a seed-sower sowing nothing,

nothing to cast away.

It must have been cold as you went down.

The bite of March water

must have brought blood

rushing in panic to your skin.

A gasp, perhaps,

as your chest submerged.

(Were you beyond gasping?

Were you so far behind the veil?)

And then the silence.

The hiss of water against the ears,

the stirred up mud against your startled eyes.

The water cold in your palms

and cold in your unravelling hair

and cold through your clothes

to your naked skin. And

the weight inside would hold you,

stronger than stones.

You stood, perhaps, for a time,

a naiad in the depths,

hair taken with the flow

until you sank full-faced and weary

into the soft silt bed.

Hung

By night I climb the scaffold.

Step, step, metallic uncertainty,

the slip-threat hanging, torch swaying,

an angler-fish bait hovering in the thickened air.

Its pool hits grass and rough-stoned walls.

Its pool hits slate, each square a sheaf pressed hard by time,

layering the roof, book-like, each a story in itself.

By night I settle my back on planks elevated

to greatness, a lifeboat up high,

mortar dust skimming my clothes.

Cold pins me down, bone-deep, empty.

I settle and stare, plunging deep to the world above,

the night sky a pool, a clarity hanging still,

a vertigo waiting to happen. Each star

a point of magnitude too great, too small,

to be believed. Each star caught, still,

a point in a scatter of billions, billions

of miles between us, too profound

to be likened to mundane things.

Ice-cold, they seem, remote and frozen

but each a maelstrom in itself, watching,

glitter-eyed, white-hot.

I think that making love in this

cold thin air, high up, pressed by stars,

pressed by scaffold boards powdered with mortar,

would be an explosive thing. It would

be a tumbling on the edge, quick, cold,

vital, once-in-a-lifetime. Impossible.