(The first line of this poem is taken from
Michele Robert's poem "On Midwinter Night")

 

The Day the Sea Froze Over at Scarborough

I walked to the shore as usual
and all was silent,
the scream of the seagull froze
above the un-pounding waves.

The crystal curve caught in mid-plunge,
surely the weight of it will crack
the prism, release what lies beneath:
the crab, the weed, the worm?

People stand and stare
at the roar-less sea, there's ice enough
to burn a thousand tongues,
cold enough to ache.

The swallows fly and drop
and reform once more, our comma,
our full-stop, our question mark
punctuating the sky.

Even as I walk, the thaw begins.
Water droplets blindingly glitter,
slush edges the beach,
the dregs of souring ice cream Sundaes.

And we who have seen
turn to comfort one another
from the glare of others'
gleaming disbelief.

Haiku

Misty, murky days
keeping me inside myself
for that Summer's touch.

After Edith

with inspiration from Edith Sitwell

Once we moved through hazes,
warm and golden,
Dagobert and I;
caught in a tapestry of silken threaded creatures -
birds with custard tails,
unicorns and lions with torn faces,
parrots with stuffing for a soul,
dead but riveted
to our progress in rose gardens by the sea.

And silly girls laughed
to have their hats picked by the wind
and rescued by men twice their age.
Colonel Fantock and Peregrine
are gone now,
replaced by over-done trippers
dreaming of Spain,
and I am the lost ghost
I always imagined myself to be.

"What a lovely poem and brilliantly evocative of Edith and her siblings.
I loved reading it."

William Sitwell (Author & Great-nephew of Edith Sitwell).

Walk in the Wolds

Heavy dark earth
clogs our boots.
We’re two work horses
treading the furrows.

Flint beneath our soles,
splintered metatarsal, spine or skull,
of those who trod before
the paths we now take.

Combusting manure a bed
for snow drops,
dew-spun fresh,
dreaming of Spring.

The geese call
mournfully, dolefully,
a ragged cupid’s bow
unstrung in our sky.

I am no longer
as you married me,
perhaps not even as
you would have me be.

Sometimes we kick
and show our teeth.
Sometimes we nuzzle
mingling our steamy breath.

One day we’ll reach
the sheer cliff’s
eternal drop to a world
woven from water.

We’re two shires
in our traces,
resting occasionally
shoulder ‘gainst shoulder.

And when I stumble
as the incline
becomes too much,
I know you’ll tenderly wait

 

Caution: Danger of Unstable Foundations
In memory of Julia Darling, 1956-2005

In the stillness
of the roaring waves,
in the barrenness of winter,
the quietness of love,
in the pleasure of writing,
a fragment of my mind has found its peace.

Yet still I fear
the tick of the beetle,
the wormy beams,
the rot in the timbers,
though treated and fumigated,
never quite eliminated.

I stand amazed
at my structural integrity
while always attentive to
the creak, the shift,
the cone of sawdust,
unkind signs of
my inability to avoid
the inescapable
crash.

an awful drink half sipped
in the half dark
a conversation
left half done
in the half light
a sentence half spoken
through a half open door
half caught by the half listener
ideas grasped
through broken grills
in a half-way house
a half smile turns sour
given half a chance
and we're half way there
before we've half way noticed.

See also www.peasholmpark.com/content/view/13/15/

 

August 31st 1991

with inspiration from Sappho

 

Before you, love was contained, stoppable,

until that moment, a perfume bottled.

Now I know it floods and brims every pore,

sweet, heady, over-powering, by turns. Raw.

 

I came to you enwrapped in orange silk,

in my hair dried roses of buttermilk.

You’re considerate in your description,

a wood nymph, you say? A gawky one, then.

 

All that I am I give to you, I said,

my contribution to our summer’s pledge.

Though did you know what you had taken on?

The hurts, shreds, of my contrary person.

 

To have and to hold, ’til death do us part.

Yet the gentlest touch of a sweet-heart

finds out our scars, the smarting of a bruise,

it snags, wounds, while wanting only to soothe.

 

Then after our squabbling, starched silences,

love, tender loosener of limbs and faces,

creeps its warmth back in between us, binding

what appeared hopelessly unravelling.

 

I’m not sure you know how I cherish you -

when you make me feel wise though I’m a fool;

when you see my courage though I’ve lost faith;

when I’m walking slow and you keep my pace.

The Falling Man

11th September 2001, New York

 

We were sold a lie.

What we saw was a picture of acceptance,

but that was not the whole of it, no,

hardly a bit of it.

We were not shown the fire,

the poisonous smoke

at his back

as he shoved himself forward

to get air, any air, all the oxygen going

and saw the blaze in the floors below.

 

So he had a choice:

to roast, suffocate or jump.

How long did he hesitate?

But then he did not go softly, no,

not at all,

he writhed and turned

as he went faster.

Faster.

 

The air gives no resistance to a falling man.

 

Perhaps he died as he went down,

some cataclysmic lurch of heart or lungs or brain

brought blessed relief?

 

Before the ground hit.

Haiku

Grant me a cloud's grace,

a slow imperceptible

metamorphosis.

Knitting

There came a moment of inattention,
I think I was trying to make sense of my own design,
when it began to unravel.
I dropped stitches,
felt the yarn untwist then knot between my fingers.

There came that moment of inattention,
when my own fashioning began to seem unwieldy,
and I purled instead of plained
and our glorious pattern looked
awkward, unworked, unbeautiful.

There came this moment
when I saw what I had done
and cried.

Then there came another moment
when together we scooped up the sorry mess and wove
a variation on what we had before
but more brilliant.

 

Postcard to the Somme

 

I didn't know him,

yet still I weep. Gone

ninety years, bones no longer even dust,

and still I weep.

For a life unlived,

for an undignified death,

oh I will weep

for the fear and the cold of it,

there's no greater loss than that of our compassion.

 

I would not have agreed

with his urge to fight, to prove his masculinity

with arms and guns.

I would have argued with him

to stay, to bear the white feathers, the taunts,

begged him not to kill

for the thrill of it.

I would not have loved this man,

would have hated him for going,

 

yet still I lay down my head

and weep.