Sea Eagles
My heart is warmed, if I believe such things,
Defying what I know I’ve always known.
What sings to me? My God! What dares to sing,
And aches, for being once too cold, alone?
So warmth? Or is it light this sweet collision?
She binds to rock, remembering she can fly,
One vision woven with another vision,
That falls from rock into the open sky.
Unbiased day surrounds us, where’s the night,
Exacting once high price for scant returns?
An age behind this symmetry of flight,
That each has always known and now each learns.
To clasp and fall then rise on outstretched wings?
The answer’s "yes", if I believe such things!
1985
The Rats
The rats would make an excellent poem.
…Rats!
Jan 1999
Train ride
If you ask me why I’m crying
I’d reply, for what it’s worth,
That there use to be a steam train’
Out of "Joeys", to the North.
You’d be quite safe in the cabin,
Without much cause to cry!
It was only when you looked outside.
That soot got in your eye.
I’ve been thinking of a train ride,
Through familiar territory,
And all the other journeys,
That you’ll never take with me.
Still, it’s safer in the cabin,
But in case you wondered why,
It was only that I looked outside,
And soot got in my eye.
Dec 1992
3:10pm
I let my mind go out at ten past three,
To you, though you were many miles away.
I felt that I should hold you close to me,
And let you feel the things that I should say.
Alone, I knew that I was not alone,
Despite the solitude that I endure.
Your hand was clenched, I held it in my own,
With all the force I had to reassure.
Then, suddenly, I felt with equal force,
Such sorrow that my face was wet with tears,
And I, half thinking something else the source,
Descending now from all those ragged years,
Released your hand and suddenly was fine.
And then I knew I’d felt your pain, not mine.
Nov 1992
Invertebrate zoologist
The woodworm won’t be grateful that you came,
And as for me,
I’m not sure.
All the same,
Sometimes amid the sadness and the passion,
There was
A little
Serious discussion.
At least, I might have said more than I should.
Is it time for me to go back in the wood?
June 1995
Guti
All those warm and misty mornings.
While we waited in the hall,
I would gaze beyond the window,
And watch the guti gently fall.
I envied those outside their freedom,
But they had business in the town,
Drifting by outside the window,
As the guti sifted down.
If we ever had our freedom,
It long since dried up with the rain.
In Africa, they may be lucky
To ever see it come again.
Here my life is cold and misty,
All the leaves are wet and brown,
I look through some distant window;
Watch the guti falling down.
Nov 1998
Too Close
I did once love a boy. It was a shame;
He'd gone just as he learned to use my name.
They said it was an ambush on the day
Of the cease-fire. He still got blown away.
For all that blood we shed upon the earth
Our souls were squandered for our place of birth.
Now come, or go, but I’ll seem not to care
Since I was brought six thousand miles from there.
Yet, all of those I ever could have known,
Along with every breath, each drop, each stone,
Each particle, all that we cannot see,
Are infinitely close, as you, to me.
Dec 1998
Mind the Drop
So now he shits on me from a great height!
We will not speak again.
A lesson in the pain?
I suppose I should be glad to see the light.
And to think I once was keen to know the man.
Did I put a foot wrong? It was not my plan.
There will be no more slipping, though.
Well not from where I am.
Jan 1999
Another Night
Keats got it right, though not in Berkeley Square;
In fact I've never heard one; even there.
Anyhow, immortal bards, or even birds
Are not the point; it's something in his words.
Well saline does give lustre to the eyes!
The thing it seems, just there, away it flies
Or falls apart. It's still a source of sorrow
That none of it can last beyond tomorrow.
They should have said it's uphill, from the start
And love and grief we get for being smart.
And life, I'm told, is anti-entropy.
Hooray! Because it's all too much for me.
Aug 99
The Sort of Bloke
I like the sort of bloke
Who roller blades downhill
And knows the names
Of all the flies
In Latin.
I like the sort of bloke
Who spares a thought for trees
And rescues wasps
With honey on
His finger.
I like the sort of bloke
Who plays a minor third
And teaches rats
To listen while
He's talking
I like the sort of bloke
Who always looks for reasons
But never tried
To get the point
Of fishing.
I like the sort of bloke
Who likes a sort of girl
Especially
The kind that jumps
In puddles.
Dec 1999
Anything?
The mockery and semi-truths;
This touch-type fantasy.
How little holds this quasi world,
If anything, for me.
Only catch the upthrust
From the waves of levity
And seriously doubt the depths
Mean anything to me.
All those flags of friendship
Where everyone can see.
But no one knows he said that he'd
Do anything for me!
June 1999
Who's conning who?
I've grown to love your country after all
To see the good in every separate scene.
I've relished all the reds before they fall
And gazed till I was drunk on shades of green.
There are some things of which you should be proud:
Your people have a kind of native wit
And often speak their politics out loud
With little fear of being hanged for it.
Such words and music! History and art
And education (if not for its own sake)!
In these I've done my best to play a part.
I took about as much as I could take.
So why is this belied by last night's dream,
In which, barefoot, I kicked the dry, red clay
And thought I'd woken from another dream
And thanked the gods I'd never been away?
February 2000
Singularity
When I think how I struggled when you went,
To keep in check unbridled sentiment,
It now appears appropriate to die,
If not from shame, then from embarrassment.
2000
Archaeology
This is a twenty year old feeling
This is my past not coming to terms
This is thought in cryonic suspension
This is an age-old can of worms
This is the scattered bits of the jigsaw
This is lost slices of pie in the sky
This is the seed that missed germination
This is the sleeping ones left to lie
These are not the wings of butterflies
Stirring up old memories again
This is an ancient pterodactyl
Flapping its way around in my brain
April 20, 2001
Flash Flood
Hello River.
I see you’ve come to greet me,
To shake me with your cold, brown hand.
Looking good.
You’re all dressed up for dinner.
Could sweep me off my feet from where I stand.
Great to meet.
Quite take my breath away.
I guess I should be careful how I tread.
It would be easy.
Allow fear to dissolve,
And let myself be taken to your bed.
Sept 2000
Betrayal
I was quite cross to see our friendship left
For a husband, and more children
And your house upon the hill
I did not know then, they’d soon be bereft
And you’d be dead and I, more angry still.
July 2003
Didn’t the Word get Round?
Tasch found a spider in her car
One day, when coming back from shopping
There, hiding in the "hingey bit
Was a huntsman as big as her fist.
She was forced to drive home all the way
In that dangerous condition
Until she could find someone brave enough
To poke it out and crush it underfoot.
It was my mum who saw the jackal
Standing on the front lawn
And not knowing what else to do,
She phoned to inform the police.
The officer they sent was just a kid
And he cried when he had to shoot it.
He blamed my mum, but what could she do?
Wild animals in the city are often rabid.
The old, black man in our house
Stood in the middle of the lounge.
He was thirsty and could he have a drink?
The police were gentle. They’d met him before.
Mohammed was 12 when he was shot
And though his father did his best
To protect him from the gunfire
Neither of them managed to survive.
But really, what do they expect
If they go where they don’t belong?
They, and their kind should know better.
Or didn’t the word get round?
JP
‘Thanks, you tell me, ‘for that day!
So much stuff was in my head,’
I said,
‘just play!’
That time was sweet
No missed tricks, your beat,
My sticks.
Oct 06
Rare patterns here, an image made
On this machine, of light and shade.
Behind the glass, the something seen -
The soul beyond the solid screen.
He swears it's him; he's wont to swear -
Epithets flung upon the air.
They make the lie of it, our game,
When settled sweetly in this frame.
And so, when all is cut and run,
These words, at least, won't come undone.
Nov 06
