Talking
about all the
xenophobia
in our
destructive
existence,
reminds
me of all that
is still here,
still to pray for,
to be reprieved.

Where do we go in the dead of night;
what lights shine in secret gardens?

Waking leaves green and soften
the place where rain has fallen
and candles are not lit and
interloping paths are strange
un-wild ways,

and the door is ever open to
the darkness, the deepness
of un-tamed dream-space.

Who are they now, the Elders?

Where have they gone, the wise ones,
who held all that was sacred?

How long is it since the pure-in-heart
and ancient-in-wisdom, looked upon
the path ahead and turned aside?

And will they return?

It is hard to live in the world of man, and yet

the oaks still stand
 

gnarled and twisted and bark-stripped
and deep-grooved, and branch-shed,
and leaning over the road,

and wounded and

open-hearted.

Where are they now, the elders?

They wait in quiet lanes
and by the woodland paths.

And you will know them
by the silence of their beckoning.

What is wild, or life?
Not only that which breathes, but
stones and fallen leaves.

Is there anything more wild and free
than sunlight?

And are we ever more arrested
by the natural world, than when
it makes us stop…

…and see.

It lay there, still bloodied and gnawed. I foot-dragged shingle over it and tamped it down to feed the earth-living things

and hoped it would rot and disappear,
but truth is it was too near the door, and I would tread upon its grave too often to rest easy.

I let it resurface and was surprised
at the humanity in its paws, how hand-like
they are holding that single pebble
like a holy book, and the flowing nature
of its gown, a rain-drenched shroud.

So what do I do now?

Don’t drape me with plastic, or flowers,
nor tie me with ribbons and string,
clothe me only warm sphagnum blankets,
and birds stopping by to sing.

For pearls give me mushrooms that gleam,
for diamonds string dewdrops on webs,
cloak me in gossamer mists of a morning
and crown me with a ruby at sunset.

If you were tiny, and your rapid
heart, outraced the minute
a thousand to one;

if you’d become a poster-boy
for some strange cult, purely
because of the colour
of your skin;

If you woke too early and slept
too late, and were harried to
live the frozen months on
scraps, and ice;

would you still climb the highest
tree, and sing?

We do what we need to do,
not what others want of us,
yet while we’re slamming down
head-first after soggy bread
on Christmas day, we don’t
know just how beautiful
are the wings that
hold us.

Longest night steals in;
trees spread their black
fingers into the sky and
across the waters.

Darkness does not fall,
but waits for daylight shades
to fade to grey and outlasts
that flash of white,

while blackness oozes
from the banks.

I do not wish my old life back
nor the people from it

but how I miss…

the way they made me feel
and how I feel the sadness
of this new world.

I woke to a world of fairy-dust
and glitter,

not true snow-fall, more

a sugar-coating,

an end-of-Autumn shimmer,

winter’s coming.

Translucence rises from logs and leaves,
pearlescent, alabaster, sepia memories of
the aging and the birthing, the quietude
of autumn: woodland decaying into life.

If I should fall in Autumn, then let me lie
where golden leaves will be my coverlet.

Let the gentle mists sing me to my rest,
and early evenings welcome me to home.

Instead of swan-song let me hear the honk
of returning geese and believe that I will fly

in a shimmer of golden wings rising
into the morning Autumn sky.

We look to the stars for the alien life,
which already lives beneath our feet, and writes to us, in hieroglyphs
trying to find a way to speak,

while we look far beyond the place
we live and do not yet understand.

The scarab first caught my eye, emerging crablike on the Cromer sands,

then the overflowing horn of plenty,
its silver shimmering creator coiled

and dived leaving all the cryptic faces,
goggled, helmeted, spaced out and

planned for me to wonder at, puzzle out to find the four-ribbed tube-breathing prototype of man.

We think of famous places,
natural untainted spaces, or those
magnificent castles and country piles
of bricks, and gentry lives, but whose
landmarks are those?

What relevance to your growth
and being who you are becoming
registers in that earth, or those walls?

Make your own marks on the land!
Create your true points of reference, and
raise the smallest statues to your beliefs.

Or plant – or maybe save – a tree, to
shine golden in the evening against
life’s stormy sky.

As we edge towards the darkening,
lanes are lit by summer’s lingering.
Fairy-sconces of toadflax torches,
shine by the hacked-back hedges,
while beyond the rusting gates,
and long-forgotten fences,
bright green fields stretch
out their aching sinews,
refreshed by autumn
drenches, and then
relax their greens
into fading sage
and brownish
beige, as all
summer
colour
fades
away.
 

Though my dreams are scattered
at your feet, run wildly on.

My hopes are as firm as the
dunes where the marram grows,
as the quicksilver of the evening seas;

they have all the fragility
of the moon at dawn,

but fear not your treading
across my heart, run free,
run wildly on.

Soft ice cream and the pointless drive
along country lanes, which you haven’t yet
figured out is one of my favourite things, idle
rides on roads to somewhere, or nowhere,
just looking at the places in between.

The gentleness of cygnets on the river,
in their end-of-summer grey, thunder clouds
fallen down without rainfall, soft feathers
on the water, and beyond the tree-lined
bend: the skipping light.

Reed-streams below the surface, and
why I wouldn’t swim where such fickle
greenery lies waiting to entangle the
unwary; ramshackle boats and one
sleek beauty of polished wood that I
held back from stroking.

Old flint walls and hidden park-land
beyond its old-money rusting fences,
tree-tunnels, and macho fools who jump
from the stone bridge into the weir,
impressing no-one.

Be still blood red heart
of paper whispers, there is
bee-work to be done.
 

Lonely seven-spot,
forages in the shade of
a ragwort sunburst

Hearts of burnished bronze,
and silken fawn, held in the
palm of lime green leaves.

Flaming June is doused,
and sopping, sobbing still.

Night-scents are wasted
when moths cannot fly,
wet-winged, grounded,
hungry for the sweetness
hidden in that pale blind
eye.

Heat on the river path has me slowing
to the pace of swans, languid and diving
beneath the water, seeking shade; has
me retreating to the few trees
and the breath of leaves.

A swing has been strung on a branch,
seemingly grown specifically horizontal
for that purpose

and looking as though it has been
there forever,

waiting for childhood to return.

I regret just walking on.

Impatience flutters,
alights on the perfect bloom,
folds wings, disappears.