Tuesday 24 April 2018

LAMB



Lamb in the seething heart
Of the nervy flock
Butted and nuzzled

Reddle-daub rainbows
On weather-damp wool
Circling soft

There the wall fallen
Opens on precipice
Bleats and barging

Lamb nudges hocks,
Tough mutton and tender
Hogget and mouflon

Upward she draws them
Stompers and sleepwalkers
Sheep of this pasture

Up the rock stairway
Of sunlight and silence
The lamb, she leads



Sunday 22 April 2018

GYROVAGUE



Fear lurks at my gate like a gyrovague,
Its begging bowl clogged with failure's bones,
Lisping its warning never to change,
Unstable as night mist's shifting tones.

It cries for alms in the dead of day,
It tolls the hours with cowled skull bowed,
Its habit frayed where the shame shows through,
Mulls over misstep and untrod road.

If I turn the key, it will knock and knock,
So I lend it a seat in my circle of bliss;
Having seen it hollow, I now sleep safe,
In the stillness of light where no dread is.










Saturday 21 April 2018

MISTER STARLING



Mister Starling soon bores
Of gasps and applause
From the rapt and ecstatic
At his feats aerobatic

So he has a few sessions
Of skits and impressions
Pretending to be
With a whistle or three

Other things he has heard,
Klaxon, car horn, Blackbird,
Mobile phone on vibrate
To impress his new mate.

In motley he dresses
Punky bad-hair-day tresses,
Sturnus vulgaris ought
Be called vulgar for short,

But without each wild antic,
Balletic and frantic
Roof and garden no doubt
Would be poorer without.


Friday 20 April 2018

UNSUNG



I didn't rise for Matins
In anything but heart
Leaden limbs under the duvet

Tracing the restless
Leaf-lace on the nets
In bruise-bright ambulance blues

Hurtling through the oven of night
Pale ceiling fanned with someone
Else's tragedy

I held their panic up against
The small hours' looming
Wideness

Listening past the siren
Past the unsprung dawn
For unsung mystery and mercy



Thursday 19 April 2018

TELLING THE TEACHER



Standing by the nature table in your classroom,
Ruckled landscapes of gingham,
Jars of startled lemon trumpets,
Scent of binka and little accidents,
("Who's made a naughty smell?")
Squeak and slough of wax crayon,
Conkers in autumn
Pussy willow in spring.
Stroking fragility,
Sniffing the furry,
Twirling my tongue
One snowy playtime
To taste the fluster and fizz
Falling from forever.
That fossil hiding in the wall,
Ripples of secret aeons
Between the Infants' and Juniors'!

 Coaxed by your compendium of buds and birthing
My eyes, my heart stretched to take it all in,
The wonder of this world,
In music and motion.
We'd made it to the Moon,
Lived a whole decade in our skins
Made collages of how we might dress
In that thing called future,
Rubber-glueing chain mail of foil and button
On sugar paper, chubby fingers
Skipping in glitter,
Imagining.

We could never have dreamed,
We babes of the boom,
Your weekday words 
Whispering down all our tomorrows,
Rhythmic reminders
You are still somehow
Incurved nurture round our eggshell childhoods,
Tender to tease us out of ourselves,
Believing in us
Till we could
Believe in ourselves.








Wednesday 18 April 2018

WHAT NOW?



Bell glows
Now. Now and now.
No emphasis or urgency.
Only the rift sliced through
The tolling
By the frisking wind.


What now?
This now,
Between breath
And silence.
Moss-lipped wince of boughs
Present beneath
This butterscotch light
Purring with sunfall.



Tuesday 17 April 2018

WINGS FROM SILENCE



Leucistic Blackbird scuttleflusters 
Slantwise into hidey hedge
Wondering unhumble at its own
Soul-sweet difference

Sevenly splendid Ladybird
Beacons its unhidden
Abacus wings from silence
As suddenly as Spring

Both are beauty

Glory enfolds them both