This life
both here and there,
unpredictable
but skewed to love,

not quite a person,
more a silence,
a certain impression
that shifts and slides
like clouds, like banks
of rain moving north,
sudden sunlight –

and here in this moment,
a quiet hush, the song
of a bird, voices
in the distance and the air
an emptiness
dancing across the sky.

Sometimes in the early hours
the world turns hazy, indefinite,
much like in this poem
where things turn upside down,
where the fish start flying
and the birds can swim, where a mouse
walks along the ceiling –

and you may think
this very strange,
a topsy-turvey world
so close to madness –

but if you think like this
the world will tilt one more time
before shifting and turning
the right way around

and suddenly it’s morning,
where normality resumes,
where fish can’t fly and birds
can’t swim and mice
can’t find their way out of poems*

and you might shake your head
in disbelief and turn back
to your rational view.
But I say keep an open mind.
Imagination will never lie to you.

*With many thanks to Billy Collins 🙂

Some intuition
tells me what to say
as I sit in this fading light,
in this shifting in-between space
of possibility, expectation –

maybe something good comes of this,
maybe not, but each day
I turn to a blank page
and write one more line for you,

one more forgotten idea
perhaps too wide for words, too dreamy,
or not thought about before,

like waves rolling in from the ocean
and lapping along the shoreline –
written in my heartbeats,
in stumbling, hesitating words.

Forgive me this – I’ve missed you.

Life, work and editing a book has taken me away from writing poetry lately. But I'm hoping to return more often 🙂

Tonight,
the walls of this room
seem porous, as though
moving, as though suggestive
of something far beyond them
outside in the gentle
darkness full of stars –

yet I see shadows,
moving shapes,
both horror and beauty
unfolding in an ever changing
reel – drama, desire, control,
the fear, the fights –
is this all the world is?

I look up at the moon
and envy her stillness,
the wisdom she sends
to this fragile human form –
what else could I have done?

The dream ends and the sun
rises, bright, welcoming, warm.

October,
watching the drift of clouds
above the horizon,
the crows as they flap
lazily across the sky,
their wings iridescent
in the fading light,
disappearing into the crown
of trees. The landscape
slowly softens
as though dipped in gold
and something
I couldn’t before articulate
steals over me,
silent like the twilight,
like the evening stars.

It stands in the shallows
in a glint of sun,
all feet and angles,
a sword for a beak
dividing the air, a silent watcher
stalking the rippling currents.
We had heard it before,
following the eerie, pterodactyl
cry to the reed bed, the story
of the river gleaming
in its golden eyes –
until suddenly it lifted off,
the elegant neck
forming a perfect S,
the widening wingspan
purple like the cloak
of a royal prince. We stood
and watched as the glitter
settled on the water,
wondering if the mesozoic age
still pulsed deep within its blood.

I am out early this morning
walking through the woods,
stopping every now and then
to listen to the robin
turn its whole life
into one pure thrilling sound.

Strange how poets do this too –
turn shapes and patterns
into movement, elements
into words and song –

surely earth is earth,
water is water, air is air?

Perhaps I think too much,
pondering on what is truly real,
but when the sun comes up,
the air around me
turns golden, potent, warm.

I go to the edge of sky
following the horizon
as though it’s a silken thread
made of blue, a river
through streets, through woods,
like rain running out to sea
or a waterfall, a lake,
a boat in the harbour
under stars, my cheek
pressed to wood, to tears
seeping through my sleep,
to memories of my mother
deep in my voice, my blood,
and the wolf moon
hanging in dawn’s yellow light.

As if the stones
themselves were speaking,
perhaps in softer tongues
or in their own kind of sound –
but if they could, what would they say?
Maybe things you’d never imagined,
things you’d never dreamed,
like they were magic stones
that glimmered or shimmered
in the dark, caught in the sweep
of eons and fixed in the language
of a moment, reverberating
across all time – as if to say
“it is, it is, it is – this essence
that we speak is true.
Just wait, look, see.”

You wake
and reach for the tumbler
of water by the bed,
all windows battered
by rain, flashes of light.
And in that glass
you taste the storm,
clouds racing
through electrical currents,
air dipping and diving
like a swallow in summer –

oh, wouldn’t you fly with it
if you could? A shadow
through woods, an arc
in mid-air – you could go
almost anywhere, right into
vastness and mountainous
landscapes, over oceans
and deserts, swept up
into clouds of migratory birds –

the rain thins, the darkness
beckons. You yawn back to sleep,
the night-light in the hallway
shimmering like a persistent mirage.

I wake up in a dream,
the scenery racing by,
my everyday reality
changing moment by moment
with me (yeah, me!)
its movie star. What is this?
Am I still asleep? Whole worlds
rise and fall as I fly through air
that pulses like a beating heart,

through skies at midnight,
cloudless, empty, full of stars
and the sound of laughter
and centuries flowing past
as if returning to be coded,
filed and put away for good,
my fingers brushing against
each page I touch,
and look, there’s another planet
being born
and shifting into this dance –

I feel I’ve lived this night before
and turn to find another scene
in a leafless wood, each tree
shivering and reaching up
to touch the moon, the closest
thing there is here to a queen.

She winks and whispers something
to me in luminous gold
that soon turns a startling blue
as I wake to the faintest echo
of a ringing bell
and each star blinking out.

Something stirs me
from my quiet world,
an embrace of longing,
pain or soft caress,
and looking up
I see a rainbow
flickering in and out,
hear a language
with no words,
that has no sound,
and yet jangling
spins my senses until they turn
and spark a flame –

there is joy in this,
a new play
to see ‘what if’
and where the story goes,
a sunlit scribble
into air,
a swallow swooping low.

There is something in the air
like silent music,
an invisible current
that tugs and pulls,
that shakes the trees
and gusts around my hair
and skin, whispering
of sudden change, of silver
wind and midnight stars,
colour, stillness, song,
and on the breeze
the sound of geese,
flocks of waxwing
and winter swans sweeping in.

How can I know
what will end up
in this poem?

Perhaps the events
of my ordinary day,
like the sparrows
in the hedgerows
or the butterfly fluttering,
white against the mottled
red and gold of this country lane,

or maybe an oak leaf
or hawthorn, or bright sunlight
dancing along the shadows
of the woodland floor,

or even lightning or a storm,
rain in the wind,
or the serenity of a lake
on a quiet, still day –

all these things
I keep with me,
lifting me up
into the sweet scent of green.

I.       Here's kestrel
         fanning his tail,
         a glide, a flutter,
         two eyes trained 
         on the ground -
         must come like a god
         when he plummets
         from his hover,
         a meal in his talons
         flown through the sky -
         for kestrel breaks
         like the sunlight
         sudden and sharp,
         his cry as high-pitched
         as the wind, 'brute beauty,'
         all blaze
         and beautiful shimmer.


II.      There is a warmth left
         in this early autumn light,
         as though my dreams
         were being gathered into the air,
         lifted to the sky -
         soon my heart will join them,
         whatever they seek to find.


III.      As the sun sinks
          leaving daubs of gold, pinkish light
          glittering along the horizon,
          I feel a quickening in me,
          a rising like upward rain,
          as though I were reaching
          for another morning, 
          the fresh music of another day.
          Perhaps I'm telling it all wrong,
          this story of happiness, of joy.
          A robin sees me and flitters
          to a different part of the wood,
          its song drifting away.
                
  
   

My photo

How history is etched
into each of these rings,
sap slowly rising
to the birds
of the early morning light –

their song intermingled
with the voice of the geese
high overhead in the autumn wind

where we step into silence
from the edge of the forest,
footsteps muffled
by the falling leaves,
red bleeding into gold,
soft as feathers,

and the startle
of a sudden presence
of deer
peeking shyly
between the trees,

and the glimpse
of a lake
and rippling circles,
a swan
rising into its wings

and into a kind of happiness,
a wholeness,
a being in this world.

The path ahead
is drenched in moon,
a substance much like web
or silver dust, but closer
to a misty dream
or old memories and thoughts
shaken up and spread
along the road. The land
shifts and shivers as you walk,
creating gaps beneath
the taste of wind and rain
gusting against your cheek.
All kinds of sky begin and end here,
ever moving between the clouds,
the ocean waves,
until at last the smallest glint
of light flickers in and out
like a candle flame or polished stone.
There’s a fluttering in the trees,
a glimpse of green, a shout
rising up through your throat.

My photo

All this no-thing
producing ten thousand things
that spiral around my life –
a river, a tree,
two goldcrests
in an ancient wood,
a pure white horse
and a lover with a golden harp –

I write this down
in a little book
and leave for anyone to find
and on the shelf
a jug of water
and a fire in the sky
like a phoenix on the wing –

these things
that turn into a no-thing,
that come to life again
in a sudden burst of sound
like music or singing
or a bell that rings
across the stars
for all eternity.

Task: You are an alien from outer space and you have landed near the sea. This is your report back to H.Q.

So much water, everywhere water,
slate-grey, mud-like, slow like tar
or clear and emerald like crystal,
turquoise like silk,
a froth and rage of madness
or smooth like the touch
that feels like peace,
or of something vast and wordless
driving deep into the bone.

I’m sun-kissed, wave-lashed,
my destiny caught in the surge
of the swell, the symphony
of motion
and the wheeling seagull’s cry –

until the day the sea
became my mistress
in the deep undercurrents
of that dark green light –

I put a shell to my ear
and hear it whisper of an ocean
that has no beginning and no end,
continuing endlessly
on its flow.

In this heat, in this dark,
will you come to me,
will you speak? I hear
the night birds, the shrill
call of an owl, its
flight on silent wings
a foreshadowing
of some kind, the coming
of a story’s end.

I no longer watch the news
but have you heard of the Fisher King?
His eyes are tawny like an osprey
searching the surface of a lake.
I was there today as it wheeled
and banked
before plunging into the water,
rising again into light…

Do you want
to live? All I want is love.
I hold a candle
to this quiet darkness
and feel the beating
of my heart.