Christmas

The lights in the trees
Are diamonds on black velvet
Twinkling all night long.


Night Snow


Lightly dusted with
Cosmic icing sugar
Cars and roads sparkle
Under the street lights.

In the morning
All the snow has gone.


Snow Falling

No movement, no noise,
No colours, no cars.
White sky, white roofs,
White trees, white ground,
White ice on the pond.
Flecks of white,
Like monotonous flakes
Of paint, drift
Onto the white and silent
Picture below.

 
I saw this film..

I saw this film today, a real tear-jerker;
A dead mother comes back at Christmas
To her family, just for a few days.
She makes things just like they were before
For her husband and children.
And then she goes away again.

All my December memories
Came flooding back; I saw you again
Cooking the turkey, lighting the pudding
Putting out the nativities you collected,
Wearing the paper crown from the cracker,
And sleeping with your mouth open.

And I wished – oh, how I wished! –
That you could come back too,
To your family, just for a few days,
Just to remind us all how it used to be.
Knowing you had been away
We would value it more than ever.


But would the second parting be
Even worse than the first,
Knowing already how it would be?
Or are we to remember, this and every year,
That we carry you with us always
This Christmas and every year?


 New Year – Norfolk

Looking forward to wide views
Of black sticks of trees
Punctuating soft dun fields
Against a pale grey sky.

For hours at a time it is
Quiet and empty.The cottages
Huddle into the landscape
Their eyes hooded.
It looks as if it was like this
Always: except, of course
That it wasn’t.

Where we romantically
See ancient winds blowing
Through empty lands
With sparse signs of life
Showing spirals of smoke,
Thousands of years ago
The background was all sea;
Marshes and bare sands
Housed mammoth and reindeer,
Bison and bear and the woolly
Rhinoceros.

Time passed. The seas rose
As the climate grew warmer.
Pine, birch and alder
Made forests, mammoth and rhino
Gave way to elk, red deer and auroch.
Man sat in his round house
Making tools of flint and then stone
For hunting, for food.

Later, farming arrived
And though much altered
Persists to this day.
But we look at the skies,
The quiet dun fields,
The black sticks of branches
In the winter sunshine,
And the wheeling seabirds,
And even though life then
Was nasty, brutish and short,
We still feel closer here
To those far off forebears
Than we do in the heat
And the violence of cities


Autumn Haiku

In my garden now
There is a susurration
Of quiet leaves falling.
 


City Christmas: after dark

Like points of ice lights twinkle
In the silver trees;
Rubies and diamonds hang
From the lamp posts’ ears.

Golden headlights move and stop
Hiding invisible cars.
Monitored by red.orange and green,
The colours of Christmas.

Passing faces, serious, expectant,
Intent on preparations, are
Bizarrely capped with antlers
Or Father Christmas hats.

I, silent, observant,
Walk amongst them
Without antlers or festive hat,
Towards the welcoming church.

 


Lines from a Time Capsule

This child of my old loins
May be another hundred years
Before it sees the light of day.
You children of my future
Will be amazed to meet
Someone who lived before
The time between child and adulthood
Was filled with teenage years;

A time before rock and pop;
A time when the country’s one computer
Filled a whole room
And it was predicted that one day
There might be as many as five.

You may be yet more amazed
To meet one who went to school,
Confided in a best friend,
Thought parents old-fashioned;
One who dreamed of freedom
And once it was discovered
Learned to love the family.

So do not think, children of my future
That you alone have feelings;
I had emotions too,
And from my loving your existence came.

 
New Year 2009

Above the littered dinner table –
Cracker remains, dirty plates, old jokes,
Half empty bottles of wine –
Hovers, like ectoplasm,
The reason we are here.
We’ve shared this laughter and these tales before,
We’re warm and comfortable together.

Later, we move, mess up another room
With chocolate wrappers and empty coffee cups,
Before it’s time to drink champagne again.
From the kitchen the commanding sound
Of Big Ben calls us all to rise
And toast and greet with kissing smiles
This new and different year.

We think with gratitude and some surprise
Of all the years we’ve seen;
We ask ourselves how we can mark this year
Be better people, do more of what
We ought or maybe want to do.
Of course we won’t. We never have before;
And now, we think, we’re far too old to change,

We’re happy in the friendship we have here,
With those who seem to like us as we are.
And yet, in this quiet moment, on this night,
Anything seems possible,
Even the changes we’d like to make.
Maybe it will be easier this time;
And looking forward is the only way to face.

So, in the early hours, against the dark,
The golden light spills from our windows
Over the white and frozen world outside.


Sic Transit

Things disappear: homes where I used to live,
No longer there, places I visited
Professionally, demolished.
Landmarks of my life are unravelling
Behind me. I think: ‘I must let her know’
Or, ‘How he always hated all this change’.
But they too are gone; they too unravel,
Trailing their threads along the paths of time.
The ripples my existence made are spent
Before I’ve gone, leaving only, perhaps,
The faintest perfume of my having been.


Frost

Footprints like exotic leaves
On a silver floor;
Fir trees prematurely grey
Where they were green before.


On the windows filigree
Silver stars of frost
Decorate them beautifully
With no designer cost.

The grass is crisp beneath the feet;
We blow out dragon’s breath
With burning smoke in icy cold,
Each puff a little death.

Too early flowers droop and drop
Their petals brown and curled;
The heavy sky is pressing down
Upon a silent world.


I think of You

I think of you as trees begin to change;
When one great leaf, more golden than the rest,
Spirals to earth past traceries of black
Branches outlined against a leaden sky,


It seems that you are reaching out to me
Reminding me of love, all golden, but all gone.
Now on the earth it lies and browns and rots –
And yet in spring it and the other leaves
Regenerate the soil for those that follow them.
And we will join them when our autumn’s come
Leaving perhaps some nourishment behind.


I woke today weeping

I woke today weeping
For as I was sleeping
Your form in my dreaming
Appeared to me seeming
To be singing and dancing
So life-enhancing
Joking and jesting.

At bedtime divesting
Yourself of your wearing –
For our private sharing –
We were kissing and holding
And then you enfolding
My person while sleeping.

So I woke today weeping.

 
Epiphany

They came to Bethlehem, it seems, by the light
Of a supernova, these men – or women –
Interested in the stars and science in general.
There were three gifts, we are told,
So three astrologers were assumed;
(They were called wise men by those
Who knew little or nothing of astrology.)

But there may have been three groups,
Each one bringing a present; or perhaps
Someone was so absorbed in the algebra
He forgot what time the shops closed;
Or else one person, or group, came from a culture
Where it wasn’t done to bring gifts for a newborn.
We can never know the truth of it.

But they came from the fabulous east
Full of learning, expecting a king.
How surprised then must they have been
To find a homeless baby, without a cot to lie in!
Did they decide to recalculate their figures,
Or instead adjust their interpretation?
We don’t know the answer to that.

And they may not have been unanimous
About their choices, for scientists rarely agree;
But we can be sure that they did agree on one thing
And how right they turned out to be!
They didn’t trust Herod, and were against infanticide.
So they didn’t go back as he’d asked them to,
But left for home secretly by the back roads.


 
Winter

There’s something wrong with November,
It’s heavy and leaden and grey
With no promise of anything good..
Words thud down on the page and
Lie there like misshapen biscuits
Made with unrisen dough.
Or – lumpen - they lie in the head
And refuse to come out at all.

It picks up a bit in December;
The lights go on in the towns,
And the shortest day marks the turning
Towards the new waking year.
But by then we’re too busy to sit
And wait for the words to come out,
And they’re occupied writing the letters,
The cards and the labels and lists.

So it’s best to close down the season
And harvest the parties and fun,
And lay them up for the time when
The words will again venture out,
Prepared to dance on the paper
And sing with the coming of spring.

 

Apercu

Under the threatening clouds
At the end of a long grey road
There was a sudden splash of orange
A woman in a summer dress
Vibrant and startling – a touch of colour
Like those carefully included in rooms
Being rearranged by designers,
Or like the spot of colour put
Artfully in a picture to draw the eye
To a particular part of it.
But this was not artful: this was not
Feng shui, and its unexpectedness
Made it all the more charming.


From my window

With sunlight on its breast
A small bird sways
High in the red-tipped branches
Of the leafless tree.

 


Night

Close your eyes for sleep
In the blackness that makes:
But on the back of your lids
Exotic patterns, in art deco
Black and silver, are etched.
Add the riotous colours
Of dreams and imagination.
Even if you wear shades
To exclude the night
All night inside your eyes
Colour has taken over.


Hope

Life’s razorblade finds its mark
To mar the perfect white
Of dreams and wishes.
Making a line of red
Across the virgin surface
And what we hope for bleeds away
In a grey-brown slush.

Tomorrow it will snow again
Covering today’s disasters
With another blanket of hope.

 


Today is a doing day

Today is a doing day:
Washing and cleaning, tidying
And reorganising
The pale blue sky looks down
Uncomprehending:
‘I am the sky’ it says.
‘That’s what I do’.
We consider the lilies
Which don’t toil or spin.
They might say, too,
‘We are lilies. That’s what we do’.
I envy the lilies. I envy the sky.
The sky is for ever; the lilies
Live out their little span
Contentedly. What do they know?
But if I don’t toil,
If I don’t have a doing day,
I’ll have nothing to wear,
I’ll have nothing to eat,
I’ll have nowhere to live.
And it’ll be my fault.
While I think of all this
My doing day grinds to a halt.
Now it’s a thinking day.
Lilies and sky
Don’t have those either.
 
Winter: Mourning

In the January grey today was a grieving day.
It was not raining but chill; I remembered you ill
And dying, and I trying again and again
To help with the pain
Till we couldn’t pretend it wasn’t the end.
But though it was, it wasn’t quite, for
I can almost hear
Your step on the stair
But you’re never there and it doesn’t seem fair.
So today was a grieving day for us and for me.


Jetsam

Above the high tideline
Stranded, I lie
Far away from
The countless murmurings
Of grains of sand
Brushing against each other.

In my ears
Only the ebb and flow of life
Reverberates at a distance.
One day, in a spring tide
I will be washed back to sea.
But not yet.

 Waking Alone

Sometimes I carry you round in my heart
Tenderly
And the day is flooded with gold light
And love.
Sometimes I drag your memory behind me
Reluctantly
And the day is dark with the burden of it.

No one can see
The effort this darkness costs me
Only the others with burdens like mine
Can understand.
Sometimes on television
I see shows about families,
With all their various anxieties
And traumas
And I think

Just you wait
Till the family leaves home, the husband is dead
And you’re on your own.
The family dramas and all that stress
Will seem nostalgically better
Than this silence.

 Winter Garden

Most of the flowers have gone.
Some, misguided, hang on;
Heaven knows why. You’d think
They’d welcome the chance to drowse
Deep in the womb of the earth
Till spring woke them up again.
But most of the flowers have gone.

It’s the season of the berry:
Holly and laurel and ivy,
Orange, white, yellow and red,
The rosehips sweet on the rose
And mahonia ready to turn
From yellow to low-drooping blue.
It’s the season of the berry.

Most of the leaves have gone
From those trees that lose them each year.
Those that remain are golden and brown.
But the evergreens still hold their colour,
And camellias come into bud
Against waxy dark-green-shining leaves –
Many of the leaves have gone.

But the garden’s not empty below
The skeleton trees above.
Papyrus, bamboo and the peony tree
Flourish beneath them in pots;
New Zealand flax waves its tall leaves,
Christmas hellebore’s waiting to flower:
No; the garden’s not empty at all.

 


Journey Home

Outside this train the countryside is quiet
Green under grey sky, with patches of colour,
Stubble’s ochre and yellow of late sunflowers.
Houses nestle into the side of hills,
Their stone walls and terracotta roofs blending
With the background of field and grove.

Like a furtive dragon the train slinks by
Not wanting a fight today.
We pass a farmhouse and its domain
Of barns and outhouses, dignified
With serving the land around it.
Small churches with sturdy towers make a focus
For the cottages huddling round them.

Now our train, the interloper, approaches
A large town of this departement:
Here are houses and flats, busy people
Who move on and off the platforms,
And a freight train bringing cars from Spain.
Houses cling to a bluff above us as we slowly
Draw away.

Suddenly in our carriage swearing in French and English –
‘Merde’ he says, and ‘Oh shit!’
Which is at least consistent.
Someone has left his papers on the platform.
His wife has little sympathy – ‘You talk too much’ she says
‘And don’t pay attention to things’.
We have no sympathy either for they also talk
Too loudly. I pretend not to be English
Until they settle down.

On the outskirts of a town a new estate
Waits for its weathering
The houses do not yet fit in
Though traditional in style.
They are too pink and altogether young.
Travelling north, we cross and recross
The great dark slow-moving river
Which punctuate our progress,
And now we pass avenues of straight poplars
Like mediaeval illustrations,
And thicker trees infested with mistletoe
Which conjure druids and pages of Asterix.

The sun shines fitfully against black clouds;
From time to time it rains;
We’re slipping gently towards twilight, and
Moving from the great emptiness of the south
To cities in the north so much more like
What we are used to.
And now we wait for this quiet dragon to slide
Into the terminus, into its lair.
And when it does we leave for another cave
From which a sea monster will carry us
Under the sea until we’re home again.


 

Storm in the Dordogne

It was becoming hotter all that day;
The sun burned down, the sky was cloudless, blue,
And on the terrasse where we spent our time
The terracotta pots ablaze with flowers.
Bees buzzed around, a butterfly appeared,
A baby lizard ran from shade to shade
Lifting its tiny fingers one by one
Protecting each in turn against the heat.
Swallows above us swooped and looped the loop,
And we were drowsy, lazy and content.
Later we went for pizza down the hill
Taking the car in case the rain should come –
And we were right, for just as we drove back
The first large spots of rain began to fall.
Our window gave a panoramic view
Across the river valley to the woods
Which clothed the hillside on the other bank.
And as we looked sheet lightning backlit them
Forked lightning too, and then the thunder came.
After the thunder rain began again
And fell in stair rods on the arid earth
And fell in sheets and tumbled down the hill
Missing the gutters, sweeping all ahead.
All night the thunder rolled and lightning flashed,
The rain beat down on road and house alike.
And then the morning came: the world as damp
And clean as I am freshly from the shower,
The sky a pale washed blue, the plants and trees
Shining with water droplets on their leaves.
Cooler this morning than the night before,
We saw a new and less familiar world.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 01.12.2009

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