Poems

Leckhampton chimney has fallen down’ – Ivor Gurney In fact, it’s still much as it was,if you can find it, and if the dogs(nobody walks the hill without one)will leave off for a moment jumpingto press their muddy scrawl on you. Out here, I’m protected, surelywith three jackets. I missed the bus,lost the path, then climbed the mostdifficult route, up the oldtram incline to this stack of limestone. Walking, he imagined its collapse,yet here it is. Smokeless. Solitary.A cenotaph for something quarried.Headquarters, chapel, school,government building, home, asylum. The Devil’s Chimney. Its partial viewof Gloucestershire makes it seema healthy peaceful place, but hardespecially on lungs. In Stone House,he walks and walks the level grounds.

Pull back the carpeton last year’s compost.Amid the richness:ratholes, a snakeskin;the fetid carcassof a wounded muntjac. We grow our foodbetween such influences.The body incorporateswhat the mind refuses, so there’s a hintof rat and snakein all of us. Our kindsoft hearts springfrom moist darknesses,the wasted ribcage. ‘Om’ is a sacred syllable in Hinduism, mystically considered to embody the essence of the universe. ‘OM’ is gardeners’ shorthand for organic matter.

Well will wounded Wilko wieldhis bloody red/black axe –fingers fast on Fender.Watch him as he chops, attacks,his hearers hoarse ring rafters Weighty wordsmith’s word hoard wandersthrough the streets and down by jetties.Long his living lays will lingerin the wide world’s towns and cities So, for fearless friend and friendship,many moons and miles rememberedin the Great Halls of our minds,Rock on! Sing on! Play loud and tenderas your flame bursts from the embersstill yet you steal a march on Time.

Ironing is her favourite task. The rhythm and the steam transport her to an outer state more vivid than a dream – a place of creased and crumpled hills, a wet and heavy land through which a burning body moves, directed by her hand. Each stroke a stride, the rugged earth dissolves into a plain whence she can touch the brooding clouds and taste the coming rain. This wide expanse, this untrod moor she spreads out fresh each day and, godlike, when she’s done with it she folds the world away.

Your phone still works. All I have to do is dial your old number and I’ll hear your voice sounding almost like yourself. Perhaps you are not feeling well? I am walking in a part of London unknown to me but for the fact you live here, and always have done – an alleyway I never knew was there. Now here’s the tall house at the corner of the street, waiting, a faint glow at the window dark as a beetle’s wing. There’s something the matter with the door, its heavy, rusty hinge won’t give way. How will I explain why I haven’t been to see you all these years?

Robin is dead no more shall sing nor ruffle his wing no more shall sing Robin is dead no more shall wait at the garden gate no more shall wait Robin is dead his soul has flown but whither gone oh wither gone Robin is dead and all my joy my sweet bonny boy and all my joy.

My son, who’s never been allowed to tread on the scarce, yellowed lawns back in Spain, hesitantly takes a few steps in Priory Park, glances back, checks for approval, then breaks into a wild canter. And I, who played in our garden all summer long and who took it for granted, learn the amazement  of running over springy grass, the fear-free tumbles, the green stains. I wince at them like his Gran did.

From direct to indirect speech,spelling and pronunciationremain the same, though the meaning of this word has changed forever,my tone no longer impatientor jokey, but strictly neutral. I end up juggling sentencesto give the proper noun the slipand dodge any mention of Dad.

These are the days when no words will do.Such horrors accrue by the phone’s blue lightconstant as the wind tonight rattles throughthe alleys, a side gate banging to. Rain whitein the gutters, the new year’s promise a kiteflapping in a thunderstorm as you, farwith only second-hand knowledge, rewritethese lines, for all the good they’ll do. If you’resilent you are complicit chirps one, ourself-styled moral compass, but certaintybelies difficult truths, as if the world werea clear-edged colouring book, not poetry.Outside there is only the wind and the rainand, overhead, not a single star to be seen.

Instead of scattering your ashes, let’s go for another walk, across those swaying fields you’ll sprint half the length of, sun low as I dawdle your lead, watch you weaving free through waist-high grasses, time blurring as wind whittles away at gritstone edge. You’ll sniff your way up the scree, village blinking below like so much loose change, the ledge gifting a perspective that the hardedge look of things might resolve to melt away, your single bark now echoing a pledge to live, as dogs will, in this moment, this day. So much for memory. Below this ancient shelf you’re still running, still scattering yourself.

Her tiny headpeers above three jarscrammed with votive jonquils – her face among the crows, the marching limes, the warty humps and bubblesof the London planes. Bronze and bluebell. Bronze on high Portland stone.

Ever wonder why foxes always slip  into poems? Imagine the present moment embodied, coat ablaze as it skips littered bushes and moonlight’s lament  like the burnt shock of iron sediment at a river’s turn, you’ll find its furtive glare soon meets your own. Now it stops, head bent to sniff the rutted earth scattered with these early-hours, half-eaten chicken wings, tears open a plastic bag that’ll outlive us all. The future is nowhere and nothing, the past the waste of all our take and give, and what defines us is as radiant as moments we thought insignificant.

The squirty old style fuel pumps lie dead as I hook the car up to the charging point and brace in case the plug recoils. I’m pleased we’re powered by wind and solar now shale gas lies untouched and coal’s defunct. A half-hour charge beside the jet-wash gun with pushy forecourt ads, someone changing oil, Pepsi packs to win on smart phone apps. A slot lights up to take my banker’s card, digits on the touch screen flash my kilowatts and hours I’ve bought till the battery decks. The slot slides out my card and shows it cares; emoji smiles that sign off with a kiss, x.