My Mausoleum

after a cartoon by Tom Gauld

is a teensy-weensy bookshop

no wider than its own front door.

Always has a queue of eager readers

entering one at a time.      They may feel

themselves too close for comfort.

But find my suggestions

are more than worth the proximity.

 

Or so I have been told.

 

It would be impolite to say

otherwise. For this is England,

where all is said     and done     and dusted.

So few shelves, so many tongues

to hold.      Yet each book chosen means

no-one goes empty-handed.

When my time comes, please seal me there

 

asleep in this uproar of language.

 

vi. 2025

A lot to be desired

As day retreats, lights come on in the pinched windows of edgeland. There’s a weary shadow play of sorting laundry, fixing meals before the curtains close. New build. Once marshalling yard, now space for one car each. More for a show home. No bus service.

The fen long drained, its waters tamed, is bound by concrete gutters. Rigid, barren. From the last teardrop of scrub, no-one sees the footpad. He finds the hidden snickets, cuts through dark back alleys. Road signs, all turned about, have just one direction. Out.

He doesn’t look back. Traipses through the town, admires its sandstone features. Cares not what crimes have been committed. Where derelict transmutes to real estate, there’s lure of breezy quayside cafes. Steel and glass. The salt air has no memory; nothing grows in it. 

 

v. 2025

Elephant Hawk-moth

I see that smile just ghostly

 

and wonder how its creases, once familiar, now fold

into your open face. An ocean waits on all we almost said.

 

Comms by postcard, or phone box. Always late. Toothbrush, pencil

and notebook to collect. Remember not to bring ID.

 

Barbed wire rides a long, high fence. Inside we know the silos

hide – concrete, guarded. Uniforms ranked ready at the gate

 

with heavy boots and blue instruction. Nothing they can do

until we move: power hangs like a wind chime in stillness.

 

Bound by preparation we think ourselves unshakable. Yet

for missiles flying over, this land is no more than a map.

 

On some beach, uncharted, there’s a bonfire of resistance.

We unload pebbles from our pockets, float free. Tide-minded

 

never swallow fallout. But rinse our mouths with brine, spit out

those dreams – so rich, so wild, so fast – we cannot taste again.

 

 

v. 2025

 

photomontage - Peter Kennard

‘Let a hundred flowers bloom’

 

May Day is a white parasol, has kerb appeal.

Its dazzling unity

best admired from the street’s far side.

 

Perhaps.

 

Step closer. See how cinquefoil cups

like flounces, flank

the corymb spikes. A texture of difference.

 

Beneath

 

where I seek those words that will not come,

you may observe

the age-old secret of such architecture:

 

grafting.

 

Years of growing skill through practice.

Rootstock and scion

together mark their gentle boundary.

 

Fusion.

 

Moth-heavy cherry on whitebeam.

A short cut

to resilience, tolerance, fruitfulness.

 

 

v. 2025