Paradise Returned

Early world-day January sun gently

Tears away low scraps of frosty fog ribbons

Washes its delightful warmth and

Fresh-as-Eden light against the

Eastern sides of garden silver birches,

Makes jewels of drips at the purple twig tips;

Feeling is tranquil, though there is work to be done.

A patient, forgiving god is near.

The Measuring Time

The wolves of night

Draw ever closer

For this is the measuring time.

Big and cold the proud moon sits

On heaven’s darkest shelf:

Streetwalkers prize for the taking.

‘Ere sunup and warmth

Some will find loving,

Some will be wanting love;

Many will find love wanting.

Without

This is a night to call on

The neglected-too-long,

Two faced god;

Distant doorways time,

Wandering with the wide-sky

As a hat, deep dark and

Glamourous with frost-pricked stars

That will refuse to disclose the

Futures only they can know.

Walking on the tireless long legs of Memory,

Carrying my weightless ghosts around

The rainbow’d edges of the friendship nation:

Territory with secrets,

Without hiding places,

Without borders.

Behind, Beneath

Behind these dark-of-January eyes,

Beneath deep-winter blues

There is – every now and again –

A space, a time,

A spark of faith

Where here is elsewhere

And distant is  such a tiny word

Dismissed with a wish

And the confidence

A journey can evoke.

Windows

Across memory’s autumn-dug, fragrant soil;

Below wheeling, squealing gulls

A sixty-some summer’s man

Limps up a rising, pot-holed track

With a bent back and a broken barrow,

Rooted to the leaf-fall, sun-bronzed skies

By a skein of light grey bonfire smoke

And the young faerie sparks that dance within it.

It’s Dark …

It is dark,

But, don’t miss the point,

Getting lighter by the day.

And don’t forget that,

If we be but brave enough,

We can raise a chorus,

Sing like honey-full bees

On glorious, bright sun days:

Amber and brown;

Rhythms of space,

Textures of time:

Volume without menace,

Power sans anger.

 

Abandoning …

Surrounded by the senior-sweet sound

Of memory’s belles, solitary man

Smiles, ankle-fogged, in the last-second avenue.

Miles have been travailed, promises kept.

Above him, reflected in truth-deep eyes

The traditional gunpowder trickery traces

Annual, flash- fast chemical lies

Across the change of year clouded skies.

He has walked with villains, heroes, ghosts

And the closest of friends; is here,

Momentarily abandoning habitual restlessness

To show proper respect, to honour the past.

For the future coming will test wits and will

But may also bring health and new adventure.