Casting Off
CLICK ON THE ARROW ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM Like all before me I now know how we leave. The hawsers that link us to this life are slipped, some cast before we feel that leaving’s underway. We learn with a jolt, when the first …
Category: Experiences
Signals to myself
CLICK ON THE ARROW ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM It has taken time to realise that these small changes are incremental signals of approaching decline, not terrifying, just inevitable and not to be ignored. The precursor was cancer, so discrete it was almost secret, but careful doses of …
Circus Aeruginosus
Lifting with one lazy stroke from stunted blackthorn you glide in the silence over sedge then almost brush the rustling carpet of dry reed’s autumn seed heads. Your mate follows, on a higher flight path alert for any movement your passage startles. Your cruel dispossession is fully …
The Allure of Water
Powerful water currents lured my mother particularly those sucking at the harbour wall, but she never spoke of her real fear, wouldn’t use its common name — even when it took her. Aging doesn’t teach us courage, we just lie. When you mention another change in how …
Starting to go
Nothing really prepares us for old age, it’s a mystery kept from the young, to prevent their discouragement. Like an ebb tide after a full moon life starts to slip from its highpoint and flotsam begins to show. Expectation has proven false; that age rewards with …
The Real Terror
No need to think about difficult issues, our glorious leaders will do that for us. CLICK ON THE ARROW BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM Forget advance planning, just jump and react – we will win with short slogans, not thought. Let them wait for the …
Liquidity
Do we realise how much we owe to water? Do we know that we are mostly made of water?
Midsummer Night 2016
Click on the arrow button above to hear this poem The full moon rose as we left the heath from the teasing chirrs of nightjars to make our way to Dunwich beach, drawn by lazy sounds of tired sea sighs drowned by our trodden crunch of pebbles. The shoreline …
There is no Constant
Have you noticed silence seems to slow time?
Time is a constant you might reply, but
it is measurably quicker on mountain peaks,
gravity slows time’s flow when on the beach.
It’s only for Twelve Weeks
Listen, it’s the silence of my childhood —
imposed by the virus from a distant bat,
as I am shielded from its touch.
Lesser Known Philosophers.
Much of the wisdom in this poem was heard nearly fifty years ago, over many sessions in an isolated village pub, in the north of Suffolk. All the wise men quoted are no longer with us. Some taste wisdom in another tongue digesting Descartes ‘Cogito ergo sum’* or Nietzsche’s more …
The month of the Summer Solstice
The rich month of June brings so much to enjoy. Now the Dog Rose shyly flowers soft blushes amidst hard thorns, only six weeks now to ripened corn. Sounds to lift hope, insistent purring Turtle Doves, close by, call for company. Caressing cries that murmur joy. Zephyrs skim the meadow’s …
Unexpected
There, just inside the threshold are your treasures beach gleaned sea glass and gathered hagstones. The first pebble-tumbled, shaped and smoothed. The other’s pierced form thought to void witchcraft. Wire strung hagstone columns guard our house. Myth tells that magic wont travel over water and holed stones, wrongly thought sea …
Myth and Memory Flow
Rivers have a special attraction in childhood, a different world from the hard land. Most Suffolk rivers take a leisurely approach feeling no rush to reach a restless sea, they mardle, drifting on the gentle declines of soft beds, slipping slowly past low banks. These are rivers of low ambition, …
Another Insignificance?
This poem was triggered by an experience in early July, during the unusually hot weather. The undulating Jet Steam has seduced the Linden into bloom with prolongued heat. Cymes and their protective lime-green bracts extravagantly jewel the darker leaves. Intoxication beckons across scorched grass, a smell of honey laced …
Equivalence
This poem was written whilst on a river trip from Amsterdam to Budapest in May 2017, whilst I was awaiting the results of a biopsy to determine what sort of cancer I had. Here in Bamberg we are buying history grateful that no symptoms show the guides are …
Blyth Estuary Evening
There is a wonderful walk along the line of the old narrow gauge railwayline to Southwold, where it runs alongside the Blyth estuary. I led a walk for a group of poets there this year, and this was one of the poems that I read on the walk. We had …
As The Light Changes
The East Anglian Daily Times ran an article entitled ’22 beautiful poems about East Anglia’ in their Saturday magazine insert on March 18th this year. I was very pleased to see this poem of mine on the same page as poems by Sir Walter Raleigh and George Szirtes. Spring’s …
Poems for a portrait
I agreed to sit as the model again this morning for an art group producing portraits. We had a cultural exchange as at the end of the two sessions as I recited the Haikus composed in my head during the forty minutes of the sitting. I then exchanged a book …
Last Orders
This poem won a ‘Commended’ award in the recent 2016 George Crabbe Poetry Competition. The competition judge, Moniza Alvi, wrote of ‘Last Orders’ “Tragic and hard hitting, I found this poignant poem compelling.” ” This is a poem with a real sense of urgency”. Every night at seven, he shed …