… AND IT WAS SO

 

In the dim beginning

we were simple: grass in the field

baking to the colour of plain biscuit,

swayed only by a wingless wind.

Water and light were undivided,

no firmament there to guide us

other than knots in a rosary.

We pressed those beads tightly,

mumbling the calculus of our virtue.

 

Parents who knew no worse

- or if they did, never told us -

seldom counted just how many

raindrops made a shower.

Hereafter was a given thing, unglimpsed

somewhere in mist across marshes,

or the smoke from a thurible.

You and I see clearly now: swallows perched,

still on the broken fence we share.

 

x. 2021

Poetry Is Not Dead - May 2023

Visiting Arne without access to Google

What did we learn today?

Among the ferns of anecdote,

where bomb craters lie long hidden

down Melancholy Lane.

 

A circle of mouldy news:

two ex-workmates walk and talking.

It is but meagre dialogue,

an echo of birds calling.

 

The land expands their outlook:

they know a diving osprey

will absorb its loins, that sika deer

swim well when they need to.

 

Noticing is our resistance.

Spore-laden, we crash through bracken,

share these arcane findings, guess

how a hedgehog climbs a wall.

 

iii - x. 2021

WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY

Hard to come by, hinges like these –

feel their thickness.

Chip out the layered years of clumsy paint,

leave them soak in easing oil.

With periodic gentle agitation,

from past into the present,

they’ll open fully once again.

 

The learning of new skills:

superannuated feet on rungs

are found and squarely planted.

Every joint and corner of every frame

is tested for integrity.

Each excavated face

gets hardened, sanded to a feather.

 

Slow work. Feel the difference

that sharpened tools can make,

if you take control of them.

Choosing age-long raw materials –

linseed, putty, turpentine –

entails more coats, extends their drying time,

but will unite, bind with the grain.

 

Neither acrylic nor silicone

can claim the same;

repair without petrochemicals

does – in the short-term – cost you more.

Yet rain always finds a route to rot.

When sills begin to flake, we should not take

our window light for granted.

 

ix. 2021

Pens Of The Earth - small differences add up xii. 2021