STAYING POWER

Within our walls this talisman grows old.

In the north-east corner, where demons loom,

it seeks chill time enough to later bloom:

such hours are fewer now and not as cold.

Each year the snowy corymbs soon unfold.

Then on pruned limbs a glossy crown makes room,

where fruit must strive to swell, not be assumed –

for heart rot saps the trunk, its bark shot-holed.

When loading grows too great, some must descend

unformed, like once good Christians fallen.

For while love’s tears get harder to requite

midwinter – from June on - draws in the light.

What pears remain wait patiently to ripen;

those dropped are best forgotten, odds and ends.

  

vi - viii. 2019

FLIGHT

When I reach the top of this mountain

I will rest, suck in the thin air.

When I reach the top of this mountain,

I shall know with cold certainty

that I won’t come this way again.

When I reach the top of this mountain

I’ll look down and beyond,

turn a full circle

from sunrise to nightfall and back again.

Hear the chainsaws slash,

Hear bulldozers tear. 

Watch smoke rise, the cattle moving in.

See cities bulge with driveways,

malls and shanty towns.

See haze hang

over the concrete and corrugated iron.

The earth in a single revolution,

when I reach the top of this mountain.

Name fifty things that fall from the sky,

they said.

I began with bombs

and finished at feathers.

On top of this mountain

wind ruffles the plumage;

I tuck stray primaries in place

and unfold my wings,

ready for launching.

Ready to soar

above this barren peak,

in search of a safe distance.

Ready to sacrifice position

for momentum.

I can hear turbulence rising;

they say that sand is running out.

If this is true,

I may never land.

vii. 2019

BECOMING

Locals must have heard us fetching up,

packed in our pug-nosed Bedford minibus –

its cylinders’ spluttered misfire

and gears grinding through their changeful accents –

migrants from the Midlands.

Flat vowels swallowed by greenfield fortune,

moving to see what we might become.

 

At three days short of ten years old,  

rare treat to ride up front beside

my father flush with his big promotion.

Feet warm on the engine,

mother sandwiched in between squabbling

siblings, grubby and tired of mid-summer,

restless to see where we might become.

 

Slipping our moorings, the ferry

is roll-on-roll-off basket of promises,

deliveries and cheap day trips.

Her squat symmetry and shallow bottom,

my very own Dawn Treader.

Like hawsers thrown to bollards we make fast,

settling to see what we could become.

 

Up budget-stretching cul-de-sac, four-square

with own coal bunker and shrunken plum,

a white-walled floor plan forms our blueprint.

In that detachment – shaped by boundary

of crumbling cliffs, creeks and shores,

high downs, woods and hidden caves –

finding how it was we came to become.

 

 viii. 2014 [ii. 2022]