Lifescapes Read online

  The Lurcher had run away

  Lived with us for a week

  Tail tucked in eyes white

  Unable to sleep or speak

  For sheer fright

  An aged Retriever

  Came on holiday -

  Christine would leave her

  When she went to stay

  In France, Goa, Japan,

  On fashionable flights

  To boost her tan

  And see the sights

  I loved old Amber

  Didn’t mind the hair

  On the carpet - fed her

  Walked her everywhere

  Polished her gold coat

  Coaxed vital medicine

  Down her throat

  We couldn’t win

  Old Amber’s gone

  She who was nearly mine

  Left me with one

  Beautiful photograph a line

  Or two in an old diary

  Her Leo birth chart and

  The moment she bit me -

  Angry - on the hand.

  No dog for me

  No dawn exercise

  Haven’t the energy

  Wouldn’t be very wise

  But now just a glance

  At Poppy, Wallis, Betsan,

  And up they dance -

  I give what I can

  Walking the beach

  Poodles, Staffies, Springers

  Strain at the lead to reach

  My burning fingers

  Burdened with love for them

  When did it start?

  Did Kent or Bethlehem

  Break into my heart?

  I am a healer’s wife

  Touching a Dog’s Life

  Forward to Index

  SCRATCHINGS FROM THE BEDPOST ...

  This arrow is not a tattoo -

  It's something that hospitals do

  To prevent any harm

  To the undamaged arm

  And indicate one bone or two.

  Now, piercings were never my thing,

  A bar or a stud or a ring ...

  You can guess how I feel

  With a wrist full of steel,

  The latest in hospital bling!

  When first I was put in a plaster

  I hoped my poor arm would heal faster.

  But this fibreglass shell

  Is hurting like hell,

  A challenge I yet have to master!

  When told that I had a green thumb

  I’d no idea what was to come!

  Now the joint is viridian,

  My elbow obsidian,

  My garden in need of a chum.

  I’m practising being left-handed;

  Its digits must do as commanded,

  Move on from the mouse

  To the whole of the house

  Or else I’ll be utterly stranded!

  I don’t recall saying when stressed,

  ‘I’d give my right arm for a rest!’

  I rarely maintain

  there’s no gain without pain;

  so, zip it! I’m doing my best.

  (broken arm, summer 2014)

  Forward to Index

  MIRROR, MIRROR …

  Mirror, mirror on the wall

  This is a disaster!

  Look at me. I'm getting old

  Dicky knee in plaster,

  Belly-button going south,

  Down on chin and down in mouth.

  Mirror, mirror on the wall

  Once I was a beauty.

  Suddenly I feel the cold,

  Dances are a duty.

  Tired of tramping up the town;

  Longing for my dressing-gown.

  Mirror, mirrror on the wall

  Borrowed time is flying;

  Robbing me of memory,

  All my friends are dying.

  I forgot one funeral;

  Names will not remain at all!

  Mirror, mirror on the wall

  All my bones are crumbling.

  Every nerve is going mad

  And I've started mumbling.

  Lightning flashes in my eyes

  Itchy back and jelly thighs.

  Mirror, mirror on the wall

  Make me stand up straighter!

  I am in no rush at all

  To meet with my Creator!

  I'm fighting back against decline

  I'm backing up my life on-line.

  Mirror, mirror on the wall,

  Don't you go near Facebook!

  Here I choose a digital

  Lavender and lace look.

  Here, I'm who I want to be

  In quasi-immortality.

  Forward to Index

  YOUTH

  TAO

  One wild horse,

  One tame.

  One with plaited hair,

  One with free mane.

  Born of the one Sire,

  Foaled of the one Dam,

  She is the wild one,

  The tame I am.

  One dark horse,

  One pale,

  One trim in ribbon,

  One with flying tail.

  Caught of the same rope,

  Locked in the one stall,

  Her ear flattens -

  Mine pricks to the Call.

  One high horse,

  One low,

  One for gentle duty,

  One for rodeo.

  Fired with the same Blood,

  Breathing the one Breath,

  Twinned in the old shafts,

  Love against Death.

  One dark curve,

  One bright,

  One with a dark eye,

  One with white.

  Poles of the One Love,

  Halves of the One Whole.

  Locked in a single Light,

  Our double Soul.

  Forward to Index

  BEYOND THE PLOUGHLAND

  A cat - asleep? Or dead? - in a bank of grass.

  And a bicycle. Dead?

  To me who think I live these things are dead.

  I pass them,

  The huge present; the infinitesimal past.

  What do they do there?

  Beyond the ploughland lies the blue light.

  I will dig coins for myself as I cross the earth.

  As my clothes fall off me and die like leaves in autumn

  And new grass grows out of the approaching land to clothe me.

  Sometimes I am naked.

  And I can only watch where the blue horizon hangs

  And wait for the wind to finish mating me,

  Then bend with my nickel spoon again to turn the earth.

  For glimpses of what? Hope?

  Splinters of somebody’s past, my future?

  The years turn in their sleep and mutter their dreams

  Out of the sleeping corn,

  And another gold grain sticks in my hand.

  The wind sings

  You are alone and I run around you

  Playing at journeys while you stand and think

  And stoop, and yawn, and think, and frown in the furrows.

  You never look up at me when you rise;

  Your eyes light through me as if - am I there,

  dancing before you toward the horizon? -

  Where the blue light drips.

  The sun curries favour with the wind

  And I work alone

  Planting love, pricking myself,

  And my blood drops somebody’s impulse into the soil.

  One day

  I shall be riding the dark back of the sea

  At the edge of the end of it all -

  The inachievable future the great present.

  And the blue light will smoke over these lifting waves

  To take me into its dream with All the forgotten

  Whose thoughts lie unburied, on the ploughland

  Where the wind stands

  Wondering

  Why we left them there
>
  Forward to Index

  RED FEATHERS

  When you last let in the morning frost

  To scatter crumbs upon your window-sill,

  Shook the bread-board clear over the garden

  And watched the wild wings beating down for breakfast,

  did you think then? - birds have died for you

  So you can have red feathers on your hat.

  A cock bled all his gallantry for you -

  His love flown to your head.

  Put out more bread.

  Forward to Index

  REFUGEE

  Today I knitted myself a hat

  In red and green, for the holly season -

  And pulled it on, and dreaming sat

  In the firelight - when for God’s own reason

  A shiver of ice along the bone,

  The shock of snow below the skin,

  Confused my soul with a soul alone

  In her fear. The air, and her shawl, were thin;

  She strove barefoot on the mountain

  With child and cart and dying man.

  No songs, no feasts, no star, no inn

  As winter comes to Kurdestan.

  Forward to Index

  WHICH WAY, AND FOR HOW LONG?

  Weird life.

  All that time, that rolls

  Before and around me like an irregular sea.

  A pulse of the world s breath beats like a hill;

  Miles of time

  To move in the mind of the tortoise,

  Spacious years

  For living and dying

  The day-dance of may-flies over the water.

  I have borrowed the slow heart-beat

  That shortens the day

  And swallowed time in a step too vast

  To heed the scurry of rabbit-paths in the thickets.

  I have ticked an hour into more aeons of time

  Than can be counted or conceived by men

  Stripped of empathy and

  Armed with stones.

  The ant burns away a long life,

  And the tree, In the onward rush of seasons.

  Trees grow no taller than I;

  They watch my life as I would watch an ant.

  My day is a second in time

  Their day is eternity

  To a may-fly.

  So what of my strange metabolism

  Flung between the particle and the cosmos?

  To what end my journeys, lonely as love,

  To the last forts of reason?

  Which way,

  Through lands of a million clocks that tell no more

  Than a dandelion puffed away in the wind?

  Forward to Index

  IN LOVE

  A SINGLE ROSE

  One rose

  harbours a world

  shelters a heart

  touches a light

  Wholly

  Strange

  One hand

  cupping a dream

  warming a life

  frames love

  With utmost

  Delicacy

  One glance

  nearly a word

  slowly a touch

  dissolve time

  In falling

  petals

  Forward to Index

  FITTING - 1

  This music is the colour of your eyes

  I look out upon the world from under

  Your soft lashes

  In deep wonder

  And slowly smile your smile

  Without surprise

  Forward to Index

  FITTING - 2

  Let

  the space between

  your

  lips

  and your

  Lovely nose

  Equal

  this

  fractional

  Light-year

  between

  My chin

  and

  Dear delight in

  kissing

  Your nose

  having

  my chin

  very

  Gently

  eaten

  Forward to Index

  IN LOVE

  When you are come,

  My heart flies out like a green

  Bird to meet you.

  By night she wanders in rooms

  Where you might be.

  By day she sits in my head;

  In the mere

  Stir of her feathers

  She hears you coming,

  In a leaf-fall,

  In a green murmur blowing

  Over the fields…

  Only my ears dreaming

  Of when you were last here.

  Forward to Index

  JOY-BRINGER

  God walks in your eyes, across your smile,

  Leaves his footprint in your waiting palm,

  Perfects dominion of your gentleness

  And reaches out along the loving arm.

  You, my redeemer, grace the holiest aisle.

  You enclose me with simplicity,

  Kindle rose fire as you undress

  My soul, naked as pain, maker of me.

  We shall in silver time move sound together;

  Aeons locked in rosary and white heather.

  Forward to Index

  MISSION

  In still wonder

  I am in slow burn

  I’ll get there one day

  Tired light

  Is all left behind

  I and you are

  Naked

  In the dark

  Together

  We are

  Starkly brilliant

  Growing

  Among stars

  Forward to Index

  NIGHT MUSIC

  In that turbulent peace I laid

  My lips in your hair.

  No sound nor move you made.

  I left them there.

  So we remained.

  And so your hand I kept,

  All that had pained

  Me, gone. I held you close. You slept.

  If, in that rose-encircled sleep

  You know me there,

  It is because I weep

  Into your hair;

  Because this night

  Of candled mist has given

  More sad delight

  Than I can bear so far from heaven.

  Forward to Index

  WHEN MY EYES CLOSE…

  When my eyes close, I am your face.

  I am in every place

  In which you move.

  I feel the bone adjust, and the soul stir,

  The entire shape alter.

  And this is love.

  I am empty of me by day till your return,

  I suffer the ice-burn

  Of open time

  And of a loosed life flowing away

  With no tourniquet

  But a crude rhyme.

  When your forested hand should dam my brain,

  Never to cry again,

  Were you to love

  Me as I want you, some way to reconcile

  God with the animal -

  That were enough.

  Forward to Index

  PARTURITION

  She has the child now,

  Suckling blindly at her love,

  Calf-quenching himself

  With now a look of limpid acknowledgement;

  His fist full of the only gold she has to give

  Twisted in sunlit hair.

  - Oh, love is a terrible sad thing, Sam.

  Oh Sam, love, they hoist you out, and she has you.

  With much anguish but more ceremony they cut you free

  Than he is ripped from her heart, her life, her chi,

  Piecemeal, so even the soul bleeds,

  Sam.

  She wonders if this after-blood will ever dry,

  This other milk, common to star and stone,

  Ever ebb from the image of his thirst.

  Even lost in the
light-sound-cave

  Where she diminished amid echoes

  There was no refuge, Sam, for very long;

  Even where she went down, kindling, and became sizeless

  To help unlock your prison.

  He the shadow moves ever amid the gulf of sound,

  Ghost of a shade

  Slipping between the pulses of her forgiveness

  Without touching,

  Yet unable to lodge guilt safe

  Behind any sonorous membrane of her light.

  Oh, Sam, he thinks it a hell-sun,

  the glory wherein no shred of man nor woman may hide!

  And they abort him from her;

  She cannot fight so many grappling hands.

  Only lie and howl in her silent places

  Like a bewildered beast, and lick each torn part

  Of her ravaged immortality.

  You, whole, lie and perhaps listen

  Out of your own haven;

  You are the child she thinks may understand

  In manhood and learn to forgive the man

  Who ravished so her soul -

  Love can be such a terrible harsh pain,

  Sam.

  Forward to Index

  I SING OF YOU

  O love, oh dear love, alone in the gaslight,

  Lonely and longing I sing of you softly;

  Smiling a little I sing of your beauty.

  Sad white flower,

  weary of infancy,

  Curled in shadow away from the sun,

  In the moon's hour

  You will open unto me,

  Sweetly so touching, oh sweetly done.

  O love, oh dear love, alone in the gaslight,

  Lonely and longing I sing of you softly;

  Looking on dreams I sing of your eyes.

  Shy-coming light,

  Wells of dark in the fells at sunrise

  Fringed with light,

  Blue-misted morning.

  But how they unveil to the welcome night

  With dew in the dusk

  Thither me beckoning!

  O love, oh dear love, alone in the gaslight,

  Lonely and longing I sing of you softly;

  With love in my fingers I sing of your hair.

  Soft as a sparrow and wavy as wind

  On the bird-brown moorland,

  Wild in the air,