Terrorism

RATTLEBAG OF POETRY
VOL 1
Wendy Webb
RATTLEBAG OF
POETRY
1995-2004
WENDY WEBB
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 Copyright 2013, Wendy Webb
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RATTLEBAG OF POETRY/WEBB/VOL 1
Contents
RATTLEBAG OF POETRY .................................................................... 0
1995-2004 .............................................................................................. 0
WENDY WEBB ...................................................................................... 0
THE STREAM (AGE 11) .................................................... 9
PHILIP (AGE 18) .............................................................. 9
ANDREW ....................................................................... 11
WRAP THE BABY WELL ................................................ 12
INVITATION .................................................................. 13
IMAGES ......................................................................... 14
EMPTY CRADLE ............................................................ 14
MOTHERS DAY A .......................................................... 15
MOTHERS DAY B .......................................................... 16
SPECIAL DAY ................................................................ 17
LORD OF THE MANOR .................................................. 18
COUNTING EASTER EGGS ............................................ 19
BEDLAM (1995) ............................................................ 20
A FINE CITY...1 .............................................................. 21
A FINE CITY...2............................................................. 22
A FINE CITY...3 ............................................................. 23
A FINE CITY...4 ............................................................ 23
BONFIRE NIGHT ...........................................................25
I SPY A TIGER ............................................................... 26
THE ZOO COMES HOME (1995 – FACE PAINTING) ........... 26
DAVID THOMAS............................................................ 27
HIDE & SEEK ................................................................. 27
A CHILD’S WORLD ........................................................ 27
AUTUMN COLOURS AT BLICKLING HALL .................. 29
SAILING UPRIVER TOGETHER ................................... 30
UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE ................................... 31
CRYSTAL TRAILS ......................................................... 33
FIRESIDE CRYSTALS ................................................... 33
WHISPER AT THE HEARTH......................................... 34
STRANGERS ..................................................................35
THE EMPTY PURSE ...................................................... 36
DEATH’S PALLOR ........................................................ 38
MIRROR ON A BYGONE AGE ....................................... 39
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DREAMS OF THE FARMYARD (FREESTYLE RONDEAU) ... 40

FEEDING TIME (BANHAM ZOO) ...................................... 41
BEGINNERS ON DRY SKI SLOPES ............................... 42
SCUBA DIVING ............................................................ 43
SWIMMERS IN A LITTLE SEA (FREESTYLE RONDEAU).... 43
THIS CAKE IN THE OVEN ............................................ 45
EXPECTATIONS ........................................................... 46
GROWING A PEARL ...................................................... 47
NO TIME AT ALL .......................................................... 48
BABY BLUE (FREESTYLE RONDEAU) ................................ 49
THE DAY OF THE POPPIES .......................................... 50
DEAFENING SILENCE ..................................................52
EARLY BLOSSOM (FREESTYLE RONDEAU) .......................53
BATH THE BABY (RONDEAU) ........................................ 54
THE CHRISTENING (FREESTYLE RONDEAU) .................... 55
RUSTY RABBIT ............................................................ 56
PAINTING IN LIFE BLOOD............................................ 57
BIRTHDAY JOY ............................................................ 58
BITTER-SWEET CHALICE............................................ 59
TREAD GENTLY ........................................................... 60
TREADING ON SPLINTERED GLASS ............................ 61
WHERE TIME AND ETERNITY MEET .......................... 62
SHADOW OF A CRADLE ............................................... 63
AT THE EDGES OF THIS WORLD ................................. 64
THE PENDULUM BEATS IN TIME ................................ 65
SPECIAL CARE ............................................................. 66
HOLIDAY TIME ............................................................. 67
BLACK WEDNESDAY ................................................... 68
SSSH, DO NOT DISTURB .............................................. 69
TERRIBLE TWO’S ........................................................ 70
MILKING THE LILY ...................................................... 71
EXPRESSIONS FROM THE HUMAN DAIRY .................. 72
DELIVERED TOO SOON ................................................ 72
IT’S JUST A RURAL SERVICE ........................................ 74
PETER MEANS ROCK .................................................... 75
PHOENIX SEEDS THEN INTO NOW .............................. 76
SHADOW FRIENDS ....................................................... 77
DAVID MEANS BELOVED .............................................78
EASIER FOR A CAMEL ..................................................78
SEA EYES ...................................................................... 79
FLAMING MATCHSTICKS ............................................ 80
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MR MEN ........................................................................ 81
RAT RUN ...................................................................... 82
COLD HANDS, WARM HEART ..................................... 82
STEP ASIDE, MONROE................................................. 83
THEATRE ..................................................................... 84
POPPING THE CORK .................................................... 85
HORSE WITHOUT A CART ........................................... 86
A CLEAN SHEET OF PAPER .......................................... 86
MAKE WINNERS IF YOU WILL (VILLANELLE) ................87
CRACKING ACORNS (SONNET) ..................................... 88
ROSE BY ANOTHER NAME (TRIOLET) .......................... 89
THE REDDEST WINE ................................................... 90
HOME FRONT ARSENAL............................................... 91
CLOCK IN ..................................................................... 92
BUGGED ....................................................................... 93
COPY DATES ................................................................ 94
CONSOLING CYCLES? .................................................. 95
DRESSED FOR DINNER ............................................... 96
DANCE A QUINTET ....................................................... 97
BETWEEN THE PAWS ................................................... 97
WRITERS CIRCLE MEETING ....................................... 98
GROWTH'S GOOD (CINQUAIN) ...................................... 99
BEAUTY SCREAMED .................................................. 100
MIRROR, MIRROR ...................................................... 101
IT’S POWERFUL DARK TONIGHT ............................... 102
IT’S ALL IN THE MIND ................................................ 103
PLEASE RETAIN ENVELOPE ...................................... 103
SPA POOL (CINQUAIN) .................................................. 104
FIREGLOW .................................................................. 104
SCENE CHANGE (TRIOLET) .......................................... 105
BOUNCING BABY BLUES ............................................ 105
CHECK CANOPY .......................................................... 106
TIMED TO PERFECTION ............................................. 107
SHUTTER SPEED ........................................................ 109
FLUSH ON BATH’S TRAIL * ......................................... 110
X-ROADS ...................................................................... 111
JUST SO LONG AS I’VE GOT... ..................................... 112
LUSTROUS AS THE STARS .......................................... 113
MONA LISA’S SMILE ................................................... 114
DELIBERATELY BLANK...FIXATE THE WHITE
SPACE...TASTEFULLY ....................................................... 114
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LEND ME YOUR EARS ................................................. 115

BEANS MEANS... GREENS .......................................... 116
WISHFUL THINKING ..................................................117
BEACHED .....................................................................117
A LOVE POEM ............................................................. 118
CHANGES .................................................................... 119
STATELY HOME .......................................................... 119
SMILE TONIGHT ......................................................... 120
GARDEN CENTRE ....................................................... 121
RIGIDLY ON TRACK .................................................... 121
CHEATING DAY .......................................................... 122
HAIKU ......................................................................... 122
EARLY IN THE MORNING, 2018 ................................. 123
THE NIGHT SKY IN JUNE (OPIATE SKIES) ................ 124
2 LIMERICKS .............................................................. 125
PUDDLE TRIKE ........................................................... 125
SHIPS IN THE NIGHT .................................................. 126
AUTISM POEMS .......................................................... 127
AUTISM POEMS .......................................................... 127
AUTISM POEMS .......................................................... 128
NICETIES OF SPRING ................................................. 128
HARD DRIVE............................................................... 129
LIGHTNING STRIKES ................................................. 129
MOZAMBIQUE FLOODS.............................................. 130
THE GREATER YOKE (TRIOLET) .................................. 130
HAIKU ......................................................................... 131
SPACE ODYSSEY ......................................................... 131
BARGAIN OFFER ........................................................ 132
CATARACTS OBSCURE THE VIEW ............................. 133
DAVID AND THE TIMID DINOSAUR ........................... 134
SPOTTER (IN TRAINING) ........................................... 135
DAVID AND THE NOISY SLITHER SNAKE .................. 135
HEARTBEATS AND STEAM ......................................... 137
LAUGHTER IN THE AIR .............................................. 138
EXCUSING DISABILITY .............................................. 139
THE TALE OF NEVER-NEVER LAND ........................... 140
AVALON MEETS CANUTE ON WHITBY BEACH (SONNET)
.................................................................................... 141
SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER ............................ 142
POOH BEAR LOST ON SODOR .................................... 143
FORM A CROCODILE – IN A TEARING HURRY .......... 144
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PEDLARS IN PAN’S SHADOW ..................................... 144

DAVID AND A FEW GOLIATHS ................................... 145
LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT ..................................................... 146
I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU, MUM ........................... 147
ELECTRIC MOONBEAMS ............................................ 147
LANGUAGE OF THE GODS .......................................... 148
‘EEE, IT SENT ME OFF TO SLEEP ................................ 149
ABC OF THE COUNTRY CHURCHYARD ...................... 149
SWINE OF A YEAR AT LAMBING TIME, 2001.............. 150
DAVID AND RELUCTANT MUDDY MOLE ................... 151
JUST A SPARKLING RED SKY AT NIGHT .................... 153
ON THE WRONG TRACKS ........................................... 153
LABOURING UNDER ARMAGEDDON......................... 154
DEAR CUSTOMER ....................................................... 154
LETHARGIC FOR A SERVICEABLE MEAL................... 155
A THOUSAND GENERATIONS LOST IN ONE .............. 156
ODDS OF A NEST EGG REACHING MATURITY ........... 157
MARCO ........................................................................ 158
TALKING PEDICURES ................................................ 159
STEPPING OUT OF TIME ............................................. 159
MEASURING STRESS BY INCHES ............................... 160
STRIKE A LOWRY LIGHT FOR ART ............................ 161
STILL LIFE ARRANGEMENT - DAISIES ...................... 162
FINE BROADS OF NORWICH ...................................... 163
DRESSED FOR THE OCCASION .................................. 164
PYRES FOR EARTH’S AUTUMN .................................. 165
BACK TO THE FUTURE MOBILE LIBRARY ................. 166
MANY PARTS, ONE BODY ........................................... 167
MR CHEAP CHEAP DRAWS HIS PENSION .................. 167
TELEVISED DESSERTS WITH ALBERT AND VICTORIA
.................................................................................... 168
JUNK MAIL ................................................................. 169
IT’S A DOG’S LIFE........................................................ 170
FIERCE ANIMAL, THAT IS, SLEEP .............................. 170
ONLY A CHILDREN’S TEA PARTY ................................171
DEAR TEACHER ...........................................................171
SWIMMINGLY, DEAR TROUT ..................................... 172
DREAMING A NEW DREAM ........................................ 173
AS THE SPIRIT BROODED OVER WATERS ................. 175
IF IT WERE NOT SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU ....... 176
DANCE OF THE SUGAR PLUM FAIRY ......................... 177
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SOME LIKE IT UP (SOME LIKE IT DOWN) .................. 178

ATISHOO! ATISHOO! THEY ALL FALL DOWN .......... 179
HAIKU .........................................................................180
MAKING BABIES ......................................................... 181
DISHING UP PERFECTION ......................................... 182
MIDDLE-AGED FLEDGLING ....................................... 183
FREESERVING ROBBERY ........................................... 184
WAR OF THE WORLDS ............................................... 185
AUTISTIC SHOPPING TRIP ......................................... 186
IMAGINE ..................................................................... 187
CATCHING THE BRIDE’S BOUQUET .......................... 188
THE WAR IS IN THE PITY ........................................... 189
BIRDS IN THE SATELLITE BREEZE (SONNET) ............ 190
MAJESTIC IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ................ 191
SIMPLY EXISTING ...................................................... 191
I’M JAKE THE PAKE WITH MY EXTRA PEG................ 192
CHANGING HARRY .................................................... 193
MY CAT MISCHIEF (DAVIDIAN, CHILDREN’S).................. 193
ARRESTING RONALD ................................................. 193
O FOR THE WINGS OF A DOVE ................................... 194
HAPPILY DEFROSTING PARADISE ............................ 195
FLUSHING OUT DISCRIMINATION (DAVIDIAN) .......... 196
GENESIS OF EXCLUSION ........................................... 197
RESTING IN PEACE (SOMONKA) ................................... 198
RIDING HIS BIKE WITH HANS ................................... 199
BODIES ROUTINE AS DAY AND NIGHT (P.I.L.F. POEM)
................................................................................... 200
BREATHALYSING DICTION ....................................... 201
PIPPED AT THE POST BY HARRY AND WILL ............ 202
R.I.P. (MINIMAL DAVIDIAN) .......................................... 202
QUEEN ELIZABETHS MEET SUNFLOWERS .............. 203
A LOVE-NEGATING LIFE (SONNET) ............................. 204
TIMES TRAVELLER MILKS AUTISTIC WAY .............. 205
BOYS WILL BE BOYS (AND AUTISTICS WILL BE AUTISTIC)
................................................................................... 206
RAKING THE HEARTH OF SUMMER ..........................207
SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE ................................ 208
DOES HE TAKE SUGAR? ............................................ 209
HAIKU ........................................................................ 209
IF LOVE IS SWEETER .................................................. 210
CANTERBURY TALES ................................................. 210
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THAT’S LIFERS FOR YOU! .......................................... 211

UNSEASONAL FIREWORKS ....................................... 211
BLUES FOR MARY OF THE ROCKS ............................. 212
THE MONTH OF MAY (SESTINA) ................................ 213
HEARTBEAT COUNTRY IN MELODIES AT DUSK ....... 215
AN ARCHITECTURED ALIEN SKY .............................. 216
OCEANIC MIND........................................................... 216
LIMERICK ................................................................... 217
LIMERICK ................................................................... 217
SERVIS NON COMPRIS (MILLENIELLE SONNET) ............ 217
SHEDS ......................................................................... 218
BEDROOM................................................................... 218
KERB CRAWLER ......................................................... 219
THINKING BEFORE I HEAT ....................................... 220
‘SLIDING DOORS’ – COMING TO A SUPERMARKET
NEAR YOU ................................................................... 221
COOKING THE BOOKS ................................................222
HE ROSE TO AUTUMN’S PYRE (QUINTET) ...................222
BURSTING THE YELLOW BALLOON ..........................223
SCRUMPTIOUS STEPS RETRACED (SONNET) ............. 224
PUSS IN PANTOMIME ................................................ 224
LISTEN TO MERMAIDS SINGING ............................... 225
RELUCTANT REFUGE ................................................ 226
FOR A SPECIAL SEMI-YOUTH .................................... 227
NEAT WATER .............................................................. 227
PUDDING LANE AND THE GREAT FIRE .................... 228
SEASONS AND THE LUNAR CYCLE ........................... 229
DAWNING PENTECOST ............................................. 230
ELEGY TO MOTHERHOOD ......................................... 231
VENUS BORN AT SUNSET ...........................................232
MRS HEELIS AND BABY JOHN ...................................233
ABBEY GROUNDS, WALSINGHAM (MAGI) .................233
RINGING THE BELL ON SCHOOL DAYS .................... 234
GAME, SET AND MATCH TICS .................................... 235
HANGMAN’S FREE VERSE .......................................... 237
SLEEPING MERMAIDS .............................................. 238
TITANIC DREAM ........................................................ 239
TITANIC DREAM (REVISED VERSION) ............................ 241
* WEDDINGS AND * FUNERAL(S) .............................. 243
‘PLEASE SUPPLY SNAPSHOTS’ ..................................245
BUGLING WINTER .................................................... 246
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LATE PAYMENT .......................................................... 247

ATTRIBUTES OF LOVE (GHAZAL) ............................... 248
‘HARBOUR WAVE’ ..................................................... 250
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THE STREAM (Age 11)
Where do you come from silvery flow?

Where do you come from and where do you go?
I come from the hills,

I flow by the mills.
I run over heather
as light as a feather.
Over heather I skip,
down mountains I slip.
I honeycomb the hills
and come out near mills.
I dance with the fish,
I curve and swish.
At last to my heart's desire,
I join the river of fire.
PHILIP (Age 18)
I go into the desert;

for why I do not know,
but that the Lord has called me
and therefore I must go.
I travel, for the Spirit

has called me so to do;
for what the aim or purpose?
Yet now I do not know.
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I see one struggling, questioning,

longing to understand;
he needs an explanation...
he needs a guiding hand.
Yet why go to the desert?

Precious time is required elsewhere.
I go for the Lord has called me
to preach his Gospel here.
Would a church be built in the desert?

Shall its foundations stand?
The desert is turned to a highway,
fashioned 'neath the Architect's hand.
(Written for the dedication of a new church; built -

not in the desert - on former farmland, on a new
housing estate).
10
ANDREW
The glare of the light

The long-drawn night
The waiting, inducing
A baby producing
Wrapped up in a blanket of death.
A womb ready to bear

Arms ready to care
The knitting, relating
A Nursery waiting
Wrapped gently for the grave.
The ring of the phone

The drive home alone
Flowers joyfully proclaiming
Card messages stating
Wrapped around in grief.
A baby so cold
So fleetingly to hold
Photos, remembering
Loving yet leaving
Wrapped only in the earth.
Child with a name

With a terrible fame
Your parents time-marking
Enduring night darkening
As you are wrapped lovingly in pure light.
October 1995
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WRAP THE BABY WELL
A blanket for the baby

To wrap him from the cold
So I have been told.

To make him feel secure
My swaddling he’ll endure.

Because it’s cold outside
Because it’s even tide.

So he can kick and play
Because it is another day.

To keep him warm and snug
As warm as Mummy’s hug.
A blanket for this baby

But he cannot be found
One blanket for this baby
Born only for the ground.
November 1995
12
INVITATION
We invited you
To join our home,
You slipped in quickly
And closed the door.
We looked round startled

To find a guest,
Checking, uncertain
That you would stay.
We kept curtains drawn,

Hid secretly,
Not daring to hope
When you moved in.
We presumed you might

Leave suddenly,
Depart unannounced,
Just as you came.
A day seemed a week,

Life in nine months,
Mapped in an instant
Yet uncharted.
Can we publicise
Your welcome stay
Until all can see
It’s permanent.
December 1995
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IMAGES
I dreamed you were leaving

Vivid images
Flashed insistent, seeping
Blood red fantasy.
Do I find you waking

Still tucked up inside
But now my mind blood red
Imagination.
December 1995
EMPTY CRADLE
I opened my present early this year,

whispering with the angel, “Do not fear”.
Glad tidings announced with great hope and joy,
containing the burden of one lost boy.
Yet recognised terrors, unknown, seeped in,
costly, the gift, impossible to win.
I retained your burden inside my palm,
unbearable with diminutive calm.
The loss of the child before Christmas Eve -
grief’s joy cradled briefly, compelled to leave.
December 1995
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MOTHERS DAY A
Soon it will be Mothers Day,

Or Mothering Sunday you may say,
When all the working girls come home
From far and near where’er they roam.
With posies bright the children bring

As “Happy Mothers Day” they sing.
And cards they proudly make themselves,
Or purchase from the shopping shelves.
Tired Dads remember to phone Mum

And Gran is promised the kids will come.
Whilst other ladies watch wistfully
And other scenes and flowers see.
Why is it only on one day

That all the children come and say
“We love you really, Mother dear,
Now keep on trying through the year.”
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MOTHERS DAY B
I’ve made a card

It’s for my Mum,
I worked so hard
It was such fun.
She wants some chocs,

But Dad has said
We won’t buy chocs,
But flowers instead.
And Gran will come

For Sunday lunch,
Cos she’s his Mum,
Well that’s my hunch.
Of course you know

It’s Mothers Day,
So make a show
And have your say.
And if you’re far

Pick up the phone,
Hop in the car
If she’s alone.
But mum or child

Still think ahead
And treat yourself
To flowers instead.
YOU DESERVE THEM. HAPPY MOTHERS DAY
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SPECIAL DAY
Can it be special?
Can it really be here?
Too soon, too precious, too late.
Can I celebrate?
Can I plan some good cheer?
Too late, too soon, too precious.
Will you be near me?

Will you join in the fun?
Too precious, too late, too soon.
Call me your Mother,

I will call you my son.
Not here, not now, not ever.
Call too your brother,

He will know you by name.
Not now, not ever, not here.
Will you see this one?

Know the next one that came?
Not ever, not here, not now.
Mothers Day happy?

Full of joy and not pain?
So precious, so special, no blame.
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LORD OF THE MANOR
The wood pigeon strides

Calmly on the grass,
Lord of the manor
untroubled by fear.
With flurry of wings
He hops on the fence,
Exerting his strength
To land on a branch.
With weighty balance
Sending tremors down,
Trembling leaflets
Inform he’s around.
Unperturbed he peers
Surveying the scene,
Catlike and preening.
So what if he’s seen?
But the man peers back
And takes careful aim,
Swinging cold turkey
For the pie again.
18
COUNTING EASTER EGGS
One, two, three on the mantelpiece.

Shiny and gleaming,
Dazzling, inviting.
One, two, three through the letterbox.

Bright yellow greeting,
Treating or meeting.
One, two, three rings the telephone.

Mother or Granny,
Aunty or Nanny.
One, two, three fills the petrol tank.

Sight-seeing, touring,
Visiting or staying.
One, two, three, service in the church.

Singing and reading,
Praying and preaching.
One for Good Friday,

Two, Easter Saturday,
Three, Easter Sunday.
Happy Easter!
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BEDLAM (1995)
The windows fly open

Then the door slams shut.
A tussle and scramble
And kick of a foot.
A screech from the castle,

A slide and a bump.
Then some feet disappear
Slid over the hump.
A struggle and wriggle

Then a ball flies by.
Then one face emerges
And one bounces high.
One peers in a mirror

Another climbs up.
Whilst one tumbles and slides,
Another gets stuck.
Parents stand hovering,

Or chat and drink tea,
Enjoying the Bedlam
As children run free.
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A FINE CITY...1
“I must go into town today,

my shopping list is growing long.
I hope they have all that I need,
a choice of shops is all I plead.”
“Well Norwich is the place for you.

St Stephens has an M&S,
a BHS and Woolworths store,
an Iceland, Co-Op and there’s more.”
“But have they got a Debenhams?”

“Of course they have, by Littlewoods.”
“But browsing is a treat for me,”
“Then London Street’s the place to be.”
“And do they have a market day?”

“Well, all the time, and covered too.
But drop in Jarrolds on the way,
Or Sally Travel holidays.”
“But what bargains, and where to eat?”

“QD, QS and try the Mall.
There’s Boots and Argos, fashion shops,”
“Let’s go and shop until we drop.”
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A FINE CITY...2
It’s fine for me now I can see

So many places on the way.
The varied little coffee shops,
For all too often I must stop.
My bump, you see, is growing large,

I’ve just discovered Mothercare.
There’s Co-Op, Boots and ELC
And Adams. Now I need a wee.
Toy departments in all main stores

And such confusing choices too.
The Baby Changing is signed and near
And meals for kids, I’m faint, oh dear.
A creche for kids in Castle Mall

And swimming pools with floats and flumes.
A real castle, with dungeons too.
Oh dear, again, I need the loo.
Entertainment with kids in mind

And river boats and parks to go.
Oh no, a puddle on the floor,
The N&N, quick where’s the door?
22
A FINE CITY...3
What a fine place to eat a meal.

But where to start and what cuisine?
A pub all year, I’ve heard them say,
But I could eat out every day.
Perhaps I’ll try Chinese today

And then next week an Indian.
Now Thai would be a special treat
And Mexican a massive feat.
Now always there’s a juicy steak,

Or Pizza and a pancake too.
Dining instead American,
Or Danish down at Andersens.
I’ll Waffle more with savouries,

Or sweets and vegetarian.
Maybe I’ll try a Sunday roast,
Eat by the river or the coast.
For burgers I could try McD,

Or Burger King, drive thro’, eat in.
But best of all, Mall’s Gallery -
I’ll try them one by one for tea.
A FINE CITY...4
What finer place for travelling?

Sightseeing in a special town.
How many places have such choice,
Let’s voice the pleasures and rejoice.
With two cathedrals here to see,

One celebrating many years.
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Nine hundred since the stones were brought

Dragged from the river, what a thought.
And there’s a river through the town

With boating trips upon the Broads
And Elm Hill really is so quaint
And Julian is our local saint.
Then there’s a castle on a hill,

With parking near and shopping too
And there are dungeons down below
And battlements with such a view.
There’s still the city wall remains

And round each corner something old
And Peter Mancroft, such a sight.
A church each Sunday, if you like.
24
BONFIRE NIGHT
Sticky toffee in my pocket

glues warm fingers beside the fire,
crunching shards of sticky mire
damp darkness drifts in evening’s pyre.
Sizzling sounds and rich aromas

wrap thickly round the multitude.
Barbeque-blackened sooty food
quells a drooling and hungry brood.
Crackling sparks streak through the darkness

chilling ice-glass embers ash-white.
Spear-steps shiver, drag out of sight
and slam the doors against the night.
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I SPY A TIGER
I think I saw a Tiger

bounding up the stair.
But he left behind his stripy coat
when he strolled into his lair.
I thought I felt a Tiger

whisker on my chin.
But he whisked across his stripy tail,
insistent as a fin.
I thought I heard a Tiger

growl and lift his paws.
But he soon began his purring
and velveted his claws.
I think I held a Tiger

tightly in my arms.
But he prowled away in stripy coat,
oblivious to his charms.
I think I loved a Tiger,

a Tiger in his lair.
Yet I loved that stripy coat and tail
and his paw upon the stair.
THE ZOO COMES HOME (1995 – face

painting)
Striped orange menace

black muzzle with zigzag stripes
bring the zoo tots home.
26
DAVID THOMAS
David wants his "Thomas" back,

he'll shunt him all day round the track.
Green-engined “Percy’s” in the siding shed,
as he toddles off to bed.
HIDE & SEEK
Slithering and slipping

Sliding and hiding,
Clambering and
climbing
Crawling and dawdling.
Pottering and plunging
Pushing and lunging,
Sheltering and shoving
Swinging and flinging.
Teetering and teasing
Toddling and hobbling,
Sweltering and swaying
Seeking and peeking.
Dithering and diving
Driving, contriving,
Rollicking and wriggling
Rolling and giggling.
Trailing close a toddler

In a kiddies play pool.
A CHILD’S WORLD
We are friends, and you come

scampering across the room,
with your carefree curls and
demands to sit with you, and
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to play with you, and

to make something new.
You open up a child’s world,

for I see through your eyes
that Mummy is busy -
and, perhaps, she might forget you,
and the letters are so hard,
and maybe a squiggle will do instead,
and you say, “Come, every day for ever”.
I love your hemisphere -

where Mummy is always there,
and life is too exciting
to sit down, QUIETLY!
to be tired enough for BED!
She sets the bounds of your world -
the sun, the moon and the stars,
your play, your food, your bedtime.
We share this little earth called “Family”.
28
AUTUMN COLOURS AT BLICKLING HALL
“This way,” he said “and let’s explore,”

I followed him towards the door.
Chimneys I noticed, rising tall,
and windows all around the Hall.
Impressed I walked along the drive,
the house imposing, bricks deep red.
The garden shrubs and flowers thrived,
wisteria hung above our heads.
“Spectacular views around the Lake”.

“Let’s see,” I said, still in his wake.
“The Library was a splendid sight,
so many books, to such a height”.
“But such a ceiling, so ornate,
With rich designs above our heads”.
“The bedrooms like a room of State”,
“But, oh, such drapes around the beds”.
Skirting the Lake, meandering,

recalling scenes, such pampering.
The setting sun set Hall aglow,
the many glinting windows show.
“Your hair, like Autumn,” you told me,
“like glowing embers, bricks deep red”.
Then as I paused and turned to see
you kissed, entwined in lovers’ thread.
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SAILING UPRIVER TOGETHER
Intertwined across the years,

souls brushing shared memories.
Tranquil harbour of our dreams,
anchored on our mooring line -
our rigging tangled, hatch shut,
buoyant in the setting sun.
We sail the tide upriver,
navigating a long reach;
plane-sailing uncharted floods.
Spliced, we steer an even course,
sail billowing in the breeze -
crewing with Captain’s First Mate.
30
UNDER THE CHRISTMAS TREE
Christmas is for the children,

the adults all agree;
so do not buy me presents,
but come and drink with me.
Each year the tree gets larger,

we’ve grown from two to three;
but when there’s four, remember -
oh yes, a bigger tree.
I love the glitz and glamour

(wife’s in maternity)
the carols of the Christ Child
and holy family.
But keep away this Christmas

from number twenty three;
they can’t afford a party,
they’re such a misery.
The couple on the corner

put up no Christmas tree.
Well, Christmas is for children,
they need no sympathy.
They have no decorations,

the ones next door to me.
I did not like to ask them
about their Christmas tree.
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I saw them after Christmas

and yet, there seemed to be
some presents left unopened
beneath their simple tree.
They had a little crib scene -

the first Nativity,
and yet it seemed unfinished;
the manger stood empty.
Well, give me celebrations,

a baby and a tree -
there is NO ROOM at Christmas
for this insanity.
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CRYSTAL TRAILS
Tread in crystal trails;

softly tread mill or mile.
Trail words, drag steps;
past horizons, present hope.
Peel scenes from
barren seas.
Experience the sting of life,
seasoned by salt’s crystals.
Tides ebb and flow,
turning to death.
Rainbows span sky and water,
burnishing earthen hues.
Expressions of the chandelier -
elemental in crystal trails.
FIRESIDE CRYSTALS
Embers glow
dense with ripening darkness,
huddled around a fireside
glinting with familiar eyes.
Crystal sparks shooting
a room of shadows.
Vestiges of laughter,
burning tears,
bright flames of love
or funereal dusk.
Frolicking childhood,
enfolded with gleaming images.
The sparks of firelight,
glimpsing many faces
in the crystal chandeliers.
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WHISPER AT THE HEARTH
Clutching mental crevaces,

screaming in silence.
Whispering interludes,
wrapping conglomorations.
Casually stepping across
the intangible.
Grasping recognition,
words weep in the cement mixer
and set.
Bustling in byways,
insinuating publicity;
pausing for recognition.
Demanding deserts in bloom,

parched beside the oasis.
Words - futile, unconscious,

skulking in bone channels;
confined to whispers at another’s hearth,
screeching in hollow silence.
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STRANGERS
You passed me in the street today,

I recognised the frown.
But now you have a different face
with hair a different brown.
You never passed before today

in such a humble town,
but recognition froze my steps
and stifled my first groan.
A shapeless stranger passed today,

shadowed beneath your moan.
Long-drilled your features in my brain;
such faceless past, alone.
Childhood memories dredged today,

transposed as silent pawns.
Concrete-set your eyes, as stone,
paved dull your harshest tones.
Anonymous I passed today,

your past outplayed and worn.
A silent film, just silhouettes,
dual Credits rolled alone.
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THE EMPTY PURSE
She never went to the new superstore,

her local cost less, "Cheap Stake" bought her more.
Rarely she glanced at each cool display stand,
cheaper each week, always lesser-known brands.
Dredged from the depths of her worn purse, she

found
a lining of coins, pathetic, her mound.
A meagre supply she clutched, in her bag,
denied shops' bounty, or trolly-weight drag.
Pausing, so briefly, by warm Paper Shop,

certain she could not, afford now, to stop.
Her dreams left untouched, with lottery card,
her bills were chance-paid, reminders hit hard.
She reached home depressed and slammed shut the

door,
groceries unpacked, still spartan her store.
Pan-boiled, her cuppa, a tin-meal unmade,
flicked radio switch and heard of a raid.
A great haul taken, the shop down her road,

a full day’s takings, so massive their load.
She muttered, to hear her own doorbell ring,
slammed chain-locks aside, and let the door swing.
A young man, polite, discussed charity,

she fumbled with purse, but knew he could see.
Some paper he pushed, bare, into her hand,
“I’m Robin,” he breathed. “Just one of the Band.”
Purple, brown papers attracted her eye,

puzzled, she looked up, to wish him "Goodbye".
Yet there was no-one, in place where he'd stood,
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just glimpsed, down the road, the back of a hood.
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DEATH’S PALLOR
A deep-gouged chasm through white naked rock,

sweeping insistent through the traffic flow.
The bearded man lies ashen and mocking
beside rolling curves and perpetual moan.
A dark track of tarmac, newly mown,

with rigid purpose plunges down the hill.
Progress pursues him while the old man mourns,
passing chalk-faced in abandoned stillness.
Crumbling in the rubble of life’s choice rock,

the timely old man stares gaping and rude.
In stony silence his white door is locked
and he hurtles past me down the new road.
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MIRROR ON A BYGONE AGE

(Bygone Village, Fleggburgh)
Galloping slowly, painted horses roll;

revolving the race of a bygone age.
They stare wooden-faced as the music strains
to recreate the old ways on a stage.
The alias schoolboy races past in shorts;

black-eyed, grasping the catapult, he leers.
The church tolls his guilt as the Master stands
shadow-caning the boy’s own rigid fears.
Children climb helter skelter up the steps,

grasping hairy mats and giggling with glee;
exuberance lunged down the winding slide,
with screeched delights, ageless as fun set free.
Pause, tourists, and peek in the ancient shops,

with long-frocked women rustling silks and frills;
persuasively displaying crafts for sale,
with modern price tags on the window sills.
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DREAMS OF THE FARMYARD (Freestyle

Rondeau)
Round and round in furrowed tracks. Creaks

the cart behind his back. Weakened
stomachs lurch in time. Dairy cream
clouds vaporise. Farmyard dreamers
cough and gasp. Shudder, jolting, brake.
Fanning turkeys strut and prance - chique

black feathers dancing in hats. Bored cliques
of hens brood the trailing red streams.
Round and round.
Furrows gorged with laboured earth. Sleek

pink noses milk a sow. Bright streaks
of whistling yellow teem. Huge beamed
cart with thrusting horse, crowd the scenes
of bygone tracks. Farmyard dreamers
round and round.
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FEEDING TIME (Banham Zoo)
Hobbling penguins dress in black and white frocks,

treading so carefully through all the rocks.
Orderly in queues, they await their feed.
Belligerent gulls gulp at fish in greed.
Seals twist like eels, making grey waters churn,

flipping laundry aside, they spin and turn.
Expectantly smiling a grubby stare,
pools drooling desire for their fishy fare.
Pig noses snuffle through a rotting pile,

nuzzling titbits, aromatic and vile.
Pink bodies, blatant through their negligees,
suggest stubbly chins in hairy melee.
Distracted monkeys chew an apple wedge,

abstracted and clutching the window ledge.
Old ladies, fur-wrapped, hunched up with a purse,
wary of strangers, young people, and worse...
Ducks quack their dissention, tumbling past,

they scrap with the first, and peck at the last.
Black-necks “swan” past them, with pride and
disdain,
ironing grey sheets and leaving no stain.
Wide-eyed, staring, even hopping around,

with a peer and scratch, they leer at each mound.
Licking their lips, as they wait in the queue -
people join mealtimes, at home in the zoo.
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BEGINNERS ON DRY SKI SLOPES
Splay-footed penguins,
imitation snow.
Precariously flapping.
Balance lost -
flippers crossed -
tossed;
mockingly discarded on the snow.
Splay-footed penguins
crouching on the snow.
Hesitantly leaning,
sliding forward
-
leaning backward -
forward;
awkwardly distorted on the snow.
Splay-footed penguins
slipping down the hill.
Bending and sliding,
rigidly standing
-
stopping, starting -
tensing,
collapsing; netted on the mock snow.
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SCUBA DIVING
Peering into fluid dimness,

dense with fear. Intense foreboding
overwhelms her orbit bubble.
Slowly turning from side to side,

she sees him lure her, gesture her,
until she’s enticed to the depths.
His features masked in tight goggles,

she obeys his signals, lulled and
reassured by finger commands.
Stroking the elements, fin-like,

flippers caress the water. Stirred,
encouraged to flow in motion.
Abandoned to leaking vision,

her mask steams and, Titanic-like,
sinks. Panicked, she gestures wildly.
A bubbling air line - breath, no breath!

The pressure of water and air.
Her thumb raised insistent. Urgent!
Dead fish, floating to lighter realms,

bloated and becalmed. She calms down
and flaps foolishly - a beached whale.
SWIMMERS IN A LITTLE SEA (Freestyle
Rondeau)
Optimism is the best way to see

this little setback. Recognise that we
age imperceptibly. There’s no reason
for pessimism. The body’s treason
is just statistical reality.
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There is no concensus. No tests can be

totally reliable. Odds, you see,
are illusory. Perceive next season
with clarity. Doctored optimism.
Then sperm swimmers thrust to eternity

in a little ball, bobbed uncertainly
on the ebbing tide. Bewildered reason
teems with bloody oceanic treason,
senseless of human sensibility.
Flotsam wreaths abandon optimism.
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THIS CAKE IN THE OVEN
Lighting a candle at eight weeks -

the birthday cake’s still oven-bound;
unrisen in its earthen warmth,
anticipating natal dawn.
The birthday cake’s still oven-bound,

but rising imperceptibly;
anticipating natal dawn’s
wall-shadows in the 12 week dance.
But rising imperceptibly,

the rounding dome’s publicity,
wall-shadows in the 12 week dance.
Partners in time from twenty-four.
The rounding dome’s publicity

grows firm, and now the oven’s full.
Partners in time from twenty-four,
the browning at week thirty-six -
grows firm; and now the oven’s full.

Birthing a cake, this table’s set,
the browning at week thirty-six;
supplicants for this Birthday cake.
Birthing a cake this table’s set,

lighting a candle at eight weeks -
supplicants for this Birthday cake,
unrisen in its earthen warmth.
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EXPECTATIONS
Announce your news with happiness;

and all around you smile.
Glowing with joy, your expression
dismisses every trial.
Words ruminate expectancy,

pregnant with growing hope;
gripe-sharing with conspirators,
enabling you to cope.
Scoring your secret plots each day,

calculating the date;
whispered dreads cross over your face,
discovered far too late.
Uneasiness seeps through your mind,

ripe with the world’s worst pains;
drawing the curtain on despair,
before sanity drains.
Your baby is born on schedule,

in the world’s smiling years -
hiding other futilities
in a round orb of tears.
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GROWING A PEARL
Knit a row, purl a row, knit one, purl one -

knitted together in my mother’s womb,
woven together in depths of the earth.
Slip one, knit one, pass the slipped stitch over,

stitch by stitch, cell by cell - formed yet unformed.
Joined step by step in foetal patterning.
Growing row by row, dated week by week.

Scanning the murky depths for an image,
moving in colourless realms of half-light.
Row of purl - soft flesh yielding to the grit,

a rounded pearl, growing pale yet priceless,
confined rigidly in its ripened shell.
Knit one, purl one, pass the slipped stitch over,

knit - drop, purl - drop, stitching together flaws
through the woven rib of life, Adam’s rib -
wrenched apart in the bearing of the prize,
gleaming newborn perfection, shiny red.
Apple-red in the core of earth’s chances.
The last red strand unravels in the dish,

cast off, the cord is knotted and cut through,
the pattern book is thrown upon the floor.
But on the Eve of windfalls from the tree,

the bitten core of Paradise is lost
and nature’s pearl entombed within the sea.
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NO TIME AT ALL
No time at all to count your days,

in timely sums your hours call,
before the metred chiming plays
no time at all -
and when your Autumn patterns fall,

before your Spring and Summer maze;
timeless you spin a faceless ball.
Would you exist in minute ways
if, senseless of your passing trawl,
your sunset slipped without a blaze?
No time at all.
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BABY BLUE (Freestyle Rondeau)
Baby blue; so pretty in your white-gowned

lace and bows. Blue blanket wrapped tight around
a form with bonnet and bootees. Please take
your first deep suck and feed. I’m here. Now wake -
the broken cord, so intimate. Still bound.
Tracing the lines around your face, I found

hair dark as Daddy’s - framing formless sound.
Lifeless, your perfect frame. Nothing could break
the silence, baby blue.
Abandoning your body to the ground,

comfortless with teddy bears. One frail mound
among so many. Grave pain: yet at stake
decaying hope and death of dreams. The ache
for a baby that can never be found
mortally. Baby blue.
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THE DAY OF THE POPPIES
The phone. I need to use the phone.

Blood red disaster.
Is seeping crimson always
so terrifying? Poppy red.
Why is no-one shocked,
splashing blood on their lapels?
Rushing out into the night.
Muffled grief, wrapped in morbid dread
of a smashed cradle.
Uniform procedures followed to the letter,

disguising the abyss
ripping apart a pregnant womb;
a large round world bloodied and destroyed.
But we need to use the phone,
tell someone, anyone,
tell them - what?
The silent collaboration of heads,

staring at the TV’s cue card,
the frozen foetal screen -
IT NEVER HAPPENS NOW.
Our world revolves
in tortured momentum,
who dares to press the pause button?
Pick up the ball and run.

Smash the punctured orb into a thousand shards,
and drag through the long night
to bear the silent victim.
The sphere grinds into reverse,
shattering our mirrored perceptions
of life and death and birth;
piercing our world in bloodied flowing tears.
Grave cradle.
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This new day is witness against itself,

and every future morning will always be
drab dawn.
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DEAFENING SILENCE
Deafening silence
of silenced arms;
everything becomes
simply nothing.
A baby crying
echoes nothing,
in the silent world
beyond silence.
A baby’s warm smile

pierces through ice -
pausing a shocked world
in nothingness.
Your full arms embrace

a little girl
and scream silently
of a lost boy.
Grave stillness whispers

a frail cradle,
poignantly slipping
to a cold earth.
Vacuous silence
remains disguised,
in a world that’s blind
to nothingness.
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EARLY BLOSSOM (Freestyle Rondeau)
Early blossom heralds the Summer’s spring

of plenitude. Dreams desire everything
in sequence. Golden Summer’s certain bloom
anticipates the fertile ripening womb;
joyous as creation’s chorus, singing.
Expectancy is blighted, as frosts cling

with tightly-iced fingers that grasp and bring
their clutching death; bearing a frozen tomb
for early blossom.
Summer’s guilt limps along with broken wing;

its bedraggled body attempts to fling
away bruised petals, crushed as death consumes
the masquerade - May’s Bride fleeing her Groom.
Stillness of the womb, in death’s final sting -
May’s early blossom.
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BATH THE BABY (Rondeau)
Baby’s bath is ready for the newborn;

the mother nervous of a task redrawn
in colourless shades of grey, the new age
dawning in fear. Strangling a sob of rage
her futile arms hang wasted and forlorn.
Aching to cuddle her child. Ashen pawns,

bone-dry towel and baby’s clothes, never worn.
She opens newborn’s diary. The first page -
Baby’s Bath.
Clutching pictures; snatching memories torn

to shreds. The dawn dresses only to mourn.
Birth’s life was strangled in death’s cruel cage.
Grave washing for a pall. Take centre stage
for this tragic, first and last, bloody dawn -
Baby’s bath.
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THE CHRISTENING (Freestyle Rondeau)
Too late - stillness quenches the Christening

plans, stifled when the world ceased listening.
A lacy gown hangs bereft in the hall.
Shoved into a drawer - bonnet, booties, shawl -
laid to rest before stranger whispering
haunts cold Summer platitudes. Blistering

certainties freeze pain’s floodgates. Withering
glances at the procession of grief’s pall.
Too late.
Is baby’s birth too late for a Blessing?

Silencing the welcome, and repressing
an unknown voice. A name. Do not recall
the grave earth, or the grieving of nightfall.
Strangers censor death in civil dressing.
Words are much too late.
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RUSTY RABBIT
I dressed you in a lacy gown, so white

with ribboned bonnet, tied against a night
tucked in with Rusty Rabbit. Embers bright
with hope from a first Christmas ‘93.
But the Christmas family shall never be
complete in ‘95. Stunned we see
Rusty’s twin is discarded by the bed.
A pale shadow, forming a living thread
between glowing coals of living and dead.
The only gown I knitted now adorns
a lifeless doll, tangled with bitter thorns -
vacantly gazing as a mother mourns.
But Rusty’s embers left their empty husk,
to germinate in morning’s exhaled dusk.
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PAINTING IN LIFE BLOOD
You drew a few sketches,

scribbled them out,
screwed them into a ball
and threw them away.
You had a virgin page;

then ink blotted,
spoiling your lettering -
ripped into shreds.
Are you tracing your plans

in pencil lines?
Rough drawn experiment;
merely first draft.
Should I view the artist

who paints abstracts?
Brush dipping in my life
to paint in blood.
Water merges harsh shades

on the canvas.
Mingling blood and dark hues,
dripping with tears.
What name does this God give,

entering the room -
Designer or Writer
of works of art?
Come only in disguise -

Almighty God.
Show no identity
to this painting.
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When you display your work

in Gallery;
then sign it publicly -
when it’s finished.
BIRTHDAY JOY
No birthday cake, no party hats,

to mark time’s passage. Lustreless
the backdrop of our tinselled fate.
One solitary candle’s glow.
The joyful tryst, of two from one,

foils consummation; cloyed in death.
to mark time’s passage, lustreless.
Discarded wrappings wrap no gift;

empty the box of birthday joy.
Timeless nativity was birthed,
simply to immortality.
to mark the lustrous snuff of time.
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BITTER-SWEET CHALICE
Your certainty brims

confidently to the surface
of your tomorrows,
without the dread
of all your yesterdays,
clouding your life.
You grasp your life

as it joyfully brims
crystal-clear from your yesterdays;
bubbling to the surface,
intoxicated by no dread
of drunken tomorrows.
You plan your tomorrows;

calculating your life,
unhindered by a deeper dread,
as disaster brims
unseen to your surface
and smashes your yesterdays.
For soon they will be yesterdays.

Every one of your tomorrows
dredged to the surface
as the spasm of life
eternally brims;
etching your cup with dread.
Drag your soul through the dread
of mirrored yesterdays,
as your cup brims
bubbles for tomorrow’s
dull images of life,
disturbing the surface.
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Disturbing the surface

of hope’s dread;
drained from a life
poignant with yesterdays,
yet pregnant as tomorrow’s
chalice brims.
Brimming to the surface

bitter-sweet tomorrows, in the dread
of yesterday’s sullied life.
TREAD GENTLY
Watch where you tread!

You do not know what lies beneath
the reaches of your memories.
You have trodden on my grief.
Watch where you tread.

When earth’s forgotten mimes are read,
elusive time has stretched beyond
the blank pages of the dead.
Watch where you tread.

Beneath a plot of dreamless earth,
where searching questions cannot cease
the blundering quest, to plead -
Why? Tread gently

beneath your earthly mire and reach
the grave elusiveness of time -
treading on my grave. My dead.
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TREADING ON SPLINTERED GLASS
Glass shards splinter,

penetrate each step.
Glass slippers shattered
in barefoot dreams.
Mirror shadows,
as a stranger stands
with smashed reflections,
destroying joy.
Grasping blood-glass
dreams, shattered and cold.
Streaming rivulets
with a child’s tears.
Glassy-eyed stares
into illusions -
a childless mother
rocks a glass crib.
Splintered shards raise

stepping stones of pain;
engraving ice-dust
with fantasies.
Enticing glass,
as the children play;
dancing the sunlight
of mirrored dreams.
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WHERE TIME AND ETERNITY MEET
This time last year.

So many years have passed since then;
floodgates bursting with tears unshed,
overwhelming fears fanned to flames -
this time last year.

all finite years were in my grasp
and human tears would never last
beyond the scope of common fears
counted as man’s allotted span -
this time last year.
Why does misery leech so deep,

beneath a mortal destiny?
Is mystery so hard to grasp
with infinity’s solutions?
Within a little span of earth
where death has birthed, in some great plan,
into a vast eternity -
a tiny child before his span.
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SHADOW OF A CRADLE
I own a little cradle

with bedding washed and clean,
a little Moses basket
pristine with frills and lace.
The tiny knitted garments
pile high each passing day -
a ripe and dancing belly
plays with effluent hope.
Yet Moses, in his basket,

drifts with the ebbing tide;
buoyed in a shadow cradle
swept by the flooding Nile.
Tiny boat of destiny
will you moor in the reeds?
Or pristine but motherless,
seed ocean’s plenitude.
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AT THE EDGES OF THIS WORLD
This little one is cradled so tight,

with the brightest hopes and deepest pain
that stain the womb’s greatest certainty -
that there could not be another child
flung to infinity.
This little one is cradled so long,

with a stronger bond than two in one.
Gone is a mother’s deep certainty
that birth’s scarlet thread could never be
spliced with infinity.
Rocking this cradle with just one hand,

bordered she stands with infinity;
believing no melody’s so strong
as the longing for her little ones -
sharing infinity.
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THE PENDULUM BEATS IN TIME
This baby is precious,

cuddled so tight;
wrapped lightly in its mother’s womb.
Heart beating the hours
in the pendulum
of flight, the seasons burnishing their fall
in the struggling sunset
of night’s dense drop into winter.
As the minutes rotate
in the Creator’s sleight
of hand - glimpse the womb’s
tightening. Gently insistent,
swaddling a mite eager for birth
in a brightening dawn.
Too precious to spring forth

in the glorious technicolor
of a flowered carpet.
White drops hang their heads
in whispered herald
of what might be.
Ashamed by frightening images
of a pendulum swung
out of control, blighting
the seconds ticking lullabies;
fighting the frosts of a cold sun.
This baby is precious;

too precious for the dawn’s night
in the pendulum
of Spring’s erratic rhythm.
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SPECIAL CARE
Huge pools of humanity

pleading with anthropomorphic artistry,
like primates sinking
disks of desire,
in muddied reflections
of the helpless infant
called Man.
The curtain torn with a knife

on the dress rehearsal
before the opening night.
Stage lights glare
upon a foetal play.
A plastic womb displays
primal Man.
Absorbing keyhole techniques,
as hands poise to care.
Mother’s milk drains through a tube,

as doll-hands grasp at wires.
A first blurred vision
frowns on a brand new world -
intensive with Special Care.
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HOLIDAY TIME
The Summer Hols are here again

And parents will take all the strain.
They count the weeks and mark the days
And pay top rates for holidays.
They plot their routes towards the coast

And jammed in cars they sit and roast;
Or steam indoors, berate the days,
“It always rains on holidays”.
And when they’re short of things to see

And even Gran says she’s not free;
There’s clothes to buy in so few days,
Before the Term ends holidays.
July 1996
67
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BLACK WEDNESDAY
On Wednesday, black dread crept on Dunblane’s

news,
critics howling blame on a world gone mad.
Image stains of slaughter - innocence stares
as a camera lens shoots to infamy.
Murmurs of disquiet and politic grief
fuelled the flames of journalistic intrigue.
Floral tributes, dropped to the bright flashes
capturing moments - a solitary child
drops a posy. Remaining in shadows,

the mother hovers in uncertainties,
taunted by a hostile world - imaging
the shattered strands of our security.
Waking to a dawn bright with daffodils -
mothers smiled in brief delight at their young,
before play absorbed their bright innocence
in streets now shadowed by a deeper night.
68
SSSH, DO NOT DISTURB
As peaceful as a baby,
is that really what they say?
When the baby screams blue murder
at the start of every day.
He’s sleeping like a baby,

Your little burglar siren
blares as only babies may.
Oh what a cute expression,

As with a great explosion
the gasses shoot away.
He really likes his Grandma,

Until a warmth and dripping
means that Granny cannot stay.
He only needs a cuddle,

When with a jet propulsion
the pooh squidges every way.
As peaceful as a baby,
With pee and pooh and posset,
pray that baby sleeps today.
69
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TERRIBLE TWO’S
Bouncing the bed, with dawn breaking,

Squealing “Day”, he turns on the light;
Insists you know it’s “Next morning”,
As you groan and beg him, “Night, night”.
He knows so well Potty Training

And will tell you, grinning, “Wee, wee”;
Drops soggy pants on the table,
After he has finished his pee.
But, woe betide, when it’s “Poo, poo”,

For there is no warning at all;
Except a silence and straining
And burnt dinner smells in the hall.
He rushes the weekly shopping,

Loading tins and bottles with glee;
Keenly he fills up the trolley
With “milkshake” roast dinner and tea.
Bedtime is just a disaster

Of flannels and suds on the floor;
Sodden hair foaming with toothpaste,
As you skid on soap through the door.
But then you Dose Up with “Bonding”

And vow that it’s really worthwhile;
Your cherub is sleeping soundly,
Dreaming of his next mucky pile.
May 1997
70
MILKING THE LILY
Congrats are rather premature;

sincere expressions of gilded thoughts.
With unadorned beauty the lily exists
in pale simplicity,
its baby newness milking the hues
of flowers brash with scarlet.
No blush taunts the dawn traces
of a rosier child,
angered by the bright lights of birth.
Reach into the pear-shaped vase
and cut the fragile bloom
of the newborn -
transposing it, with wires and bells,
from the nurture of the womb.
November 1997
71
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EXPRESSIONS FROM THE HUMAN DAIRY
The humming of the dairy,

as the chewing of the cud,
in harmless repetition
for Daisy’s fertile brood.
Eyes dazed in damp abandon
of milky plenitude,
she flicks the switch disgusted -
“Bloody stones would do more good!”
DELIVERED TOO SOON
Commission the catalogue company -

reservation’s placed
pay periodically
delivery due on receipt
Catalogue company charging -

part-paid, post-dated,
extra value packaging
discount on delivery
Commit the catalogue company -

imperative timing
recorded, dated, stamped
Catalogue company consignment -

piling pounds over 40 weeks.
Confirmation order ===shade
BLUE ===weight 3* KILOS
*Approximately.
Recall the catalogue company -

delivered early
packaging damaged
contents weighed in ===light
72
bubble-wrapped and curled

like a blind kitten.
Catalogue company calling,

===RETURNS* unavailable
===Item complete in BLUE
*Customised on use.
Foetal fingers curl uncatalogued

toes stretch with piglet warmth
mouth suckles only air -
customised, the baby opens his eyes.
73
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IT’S JUST A RURAL SERVICE
It’s just a rural service

the P.O. said to me.
I raised my hands in horror,
for it was quart-to-three.
Of course we meet our targets

the spokesmen all agreed.
At two the postbox rattled
as letters dropped at speed.
You only need one post drop

to suit your dawdling pace.
The door slammed at seven-thirty
to reach the bus route race.
At seven we read the letters.

Had Postie oiled his bike?
The door had slammed on schedule,
the evening bus route hike.
74
PETER MEANS ROCK
Put Peter down, but score him on the list

Ease Edward early in a secret tryst,
Tack title to the end and it is done -
Each etched in legal bondage for this son.
Remember Daddy’s namesake’s namesake too,
Erased by stillness, stepped so close to you.

Deny no rock chipped from the boulder shore
When courage failed and Andrew could not moor.
Astern watch David in some hidden game
Rich mischief plays, remiss in silent names.
Dragged screaming from your cosy twilight world,
We hacked a rock before it could be hurled.

Earth’s echo caverns hollowed out our dreams,
Brought Blighty home with you still tightly curled.
Bled wires your cradle, stalling bogus themes.
75
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PHOENIX SEEDS THEN INTO NOW
Then.
A heathen kicking the hearth
of lengthening shadows.
Earthen chills, strengthening
with alien litheness,
the traces of white.
Ruthenium-brittle,
the pale flowers seed
their blithe quest
of parthenogenesis.
Platinum-hard
the fertile furnace
seethes then into now.
Knowing
the nowhere
of a winnowed soul,
leaving drifts of white.
Snowdrops unknown
nowadays,
in the stranger warmth

of a platinum band.
Furnace rings fuse
into familiar shadows.
Dripping white, then, the tears
of knowledge.
Hands stretched with maternal warmth,
strengthening maturing years
since then was now;
a heathen with no hearth.
76
SHADOW FRIENDS
A friend wrapped the blanket

securely round my shoulders
swathing sheets of shadow.
A tent taut on the pegs.
In the night it rained

and dried.
The tent tore at dawn.
Death becomes familiar -
as a friend.
77
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DAVID MEANS BELOVED
Danger lurking home, presents wrapped but torn

Agitated break-in, David unborn.
Vault fence, smash glass, is it Christmas on cue?
Image fears released when David was due.
Dates overbooked, with waterline cargo
Terse on a quayside, why the embargo?

Hurried to labour, then labour’s the word
Overdue, overlooked, such crowds, absurd.
Musing in stirrups, here’s Monty Python,
A rugby-tackled plunger type invention.
Such orange hair, bum, a bath full of pooh,
When can I bath, nurse, and walk to the loo?

Excess messiness drains from every deed
Because disasters mean David indeed.
Beloved your name and beloved your nature,
nurture too futile for every dire deed.
EASIER FOR A CAMEL
Twenty-six is too young to die;

the fallacy of a needle’s eye
leaves this camel with the hump.
But was luggage or camel

dumped?
78
SEA EYES
Wild arrows arch between your heart and mine

An arc of promise and a tender sign,
A blush becalms the sea-eyes next my cheek
And beckons heart-buoys as I hear you speak.
A crimson rose now seals our eager lips,
Cool mind-games dance between our subtle quips;
Deft hands dissolve the distance fathoms deep
And, decked with sea-legs, reef the hearts we keep.
Calm echoes reach our eddied verve in time,
Each billowed breeze is stretched with thoughts
sublime.
A fleet now sails beyond the harbour’s reach,
A fleeter crew lifts storm jib, lest we beach.
We gaze beyond the mirage ocean drifts
And glean our own wild arrows, loving gifts.
79
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FLAMING MATCHSTICKS
The green and vibrant florets

Skidded bashful from the fork,
As treacle hands colluded
Damp and sensuous with steel.
The flaming matchstick carrots
Sparked and split across the plate,
As warm caressing phantoms
Settled tingling on my nape.
Succulent canine morsels
Dribbled sleek from a moist mouth,
As tickle trailing spiders
Spun up sheer gossamer heights.
Heartbeat eyes darted arrows
In Narcissus’ drowning pool,
As he glanced down admiring
At two pale and flushing peaks.
His tongue traced wordless questions
Of those deep blushing hills,
As pert and flaming matchsticks
Glowed their amber to the dells.
His cutlery abandoned
On the butter-melted plate,
Those drowned eyes begged forgiveness
And betrayed - cleavage carrot.
80
MR MEN
He read about Mr Tickle

And giggled with delight
He repeated Mr Bump’s “bumps”
And gave us all a fright.
He beamed with Mr Happy
When he was just 6 months
And gobbled up Mr Greedy
As he munched his lunch.
Mr Messy is no contest
As another toy bites the dust
And his Dizzy, Muddle’d parents
Worry with Fussy Mr Rush.
He Bounce’s through the stairgate
Impossible and Strong
His Mischief is so Clever
That his Nonsense can’t be Wrong.
He’s Clumsy, Grumpy, Busy
Never Quiet or Slow
But our Noisy Topsy-Turvy
Loves the Messy Snow.
81
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RAT RUN
This rut, well-run

Works well each day.
But, rats! The school’s
On holiday.
COLD HANDS, WARM HEART
Your feet
bubble cider
chilled in the glass, with ice.
Cold hands stretch out, heart-warm. Are hands
like feet?
82
STEP ASIDE, MONROE
It was no business of hers, a Royal,

an Ex, Queen Mother, potentate-to-be.
Her trophy face, displayed in plastic case,
as she stepped gingerly amid the shells,
her lone catwalk infamous for landmines,
scathing criticism and the Red Cross.
It was no business of hers to be shot,
horrific in a car's shell, erupted
in a Paris tunnel and camera's flash.
Waxen smoke winds daubed a nation, reeking
candles. An effigy emerged, wax-smooth,
damp as newsprint. So step aside, Monroe,
in the wings with gracious, tragic Kelly.
A new princess rose in the firmament,
star-scented public imagination.
Brushing a diminutive blue-white robe -
Diana hailed a saint. The petals fell.
83
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THEATRE
Cut here,
cut a tattoe.
Steel cut the Autobahn;
cut fast in an emergency,
cut now.
Way in.
Exit, green light.
Plane's down, chute's down. Get out.
But the way in is no way out,
cut through.
One in,
"This way" tattoe.
The surgeon trains his knife,
reroutes, and expert cuts askew.
Two out.
84
POPPING THE CORK
A matching pair,
one's for the chop;
they're standing to attention.
The paunchy pair
bulge on the tide -
unstoppered corks lose bottle.
The bath burns pert
extremities,
seals wriggling in the water,
their blubber buoyed,
then sunk beneath
the salt sting herbal ocean.
A perfect match?
as skewered cork,
the seashells split and fleshy.
A surgeon's knife
sliced one toe's breadth
and popped a stray nail's fancy.
85
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HORSE WITHOUT A CART
Baby-eyed with delight,

my heart cantered down the hill,
clattering on the cobbles of unbridled joy,
foal-less as a mare’s hooves, unshod.
No-one stared or smiled,
as unshackled air
danced awareness of a hare’s breadth
of freedom.
Spring’s cares hopped with butterfly steps,
trailing rainbows.
The wear and tear of halting feet,
dragging nursery rhymes -
carted home.
Today, I went to the shops alone.
A CLEAN SHEET OF PAPER
I had no piece of paper,

I flushed it down the loo.
When I mused a little caper
I had no piece of paper,
Until my thoughts began to taper
And the squares were then too few.
I had no piece of paper -
I flushed it down the loo.
86
MAKE WINNERS IF YOU WILL (Villanelle)
It could never make the short-list,

Though most probably it was art.
But a winner is much more smart.
His layout is a crumpled fist;

Handwriting, a cardiac chart -
It could never make the short-list.
Entry fee? Like a morning mist

Or, like a mule minus the cart.
No S.A.E. leaves this judge pissed,

Winners mark “Winners” from the start;
It could never make the short-list.
Foresight failed and we only wished

Anonymity played no part.
The winner plans another tryst,

Preparing thankyou’s from the heart.
It could never make the short-list -
87
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CRACKING ACORNS (Sonnet)
Your wounded pride hides, as a drooping flag,

whose pole surrenders in its Autumn damp.
Hard pavements crack profuse, their acorn brag,
And shrivelled sparrow leaves drift Winter’s stamp.
Your manhood’s rousing chorus puts to flight
Dark hordes of soldier sea ants in your skies,
Migrating to a private Oscar night,
Yet senseless that deft cuts deny their prize.
In sympathy, you’re “rousing chorus” sore,
Life’s walking wounded cut off in its prime.
Performance cauterised at manhood’s core,
You limp offstage, raw tinder quenched, this time.
Your op. was just a snip at nature’s drain,
Before Spring’s tendrils reap a deeper pain.
88
ROSE BY ANOTHER NAME (Triolet)
Night riders race your death cloaks,

tunnelled to your doom,
a dismal lens short-focussed
night. Riders race your death cloaks
to choke the gutter press.
Soft-focus, a rose bleeds thorny
night riders. Race your death cloaks,
tunnelled to your doom.
89
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THE REDDEST WINE
A glass of wine -
I’m on my own,
No need to listen
To the phone.
A courting couple’s
Flame belies
Their shattered glass of
Fireflies.
They share a drink
Of wine, blood red,
A heady, scented
Marriage bed.
My solitary
Cordial night
Would frighten Cupid’s
Hapless flight.
The harp, its haunting
Melody,
Plucks Cupid’s bowstring
Symphony.
My love’s heart’s like
The reddest wine -
He’s with the kids
So I can dine.
90
HOME FRONT ARSENAL
Green sentries line the route.

Precision-placed, these sentinels
gape, unripe in berets.
Black roller blades
revolve around a rink,
their arsenal stacked
for D-Day,
surrendering a home front
weekly.
Stout soldiers line a route,
wheeled in a staggered convoy.
Tank duty boys arrive,
sights lowered,
digesting the green invasion.
Wheelie bins alight for reinforcements.
91
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CLOCK IN
Time ticks,
time tocks.
Late..
Click, wurr,
rewind.
Dictate.
Its harmless banter

dismisses friends,
fosters strangers.
So disen-
gage
your answerphone.
Slow-waltz these hands

and Promenade.
Disconnect your absent,
stranger friends.
Phony.
92
BUGGED
You bug me
with the biggest bug
this bloody computer’s capable of.
It bugs me why
you beggars can’t see
beyond your computation keys.
You mouse!
You drive your dignity hard, floppy with excuses,
now you’ve synthesised and played a soundless card.
Your seedy romps are unsound.
Blast her!
Open the windows and optimise,
screen your analytic skills,
and save her body clock before age 20.
Ripe for infection, before her fun-filled youth,
her platform soul is flawed by design.
Slave driver!
Outdated.
Beware the bug and boot her out,
before Alzheimer’s computates her brain.
She’s seven again,
she’s five,
four,
three,
two,
one.
She’s born today -
MILLENIUM. Too late, the bug is out.
93
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COPY DATES
If I ask about the pancakes

When you’re in your Lenten fast
And, with Mothers Day approaching,
Ask, how long the sales will last?
If I send commiserations
When the kids are back at school
And wish you Happy Valentine
When you’ve just been an April Fool.
If I try to lick the egg shells
When May Day’s almost here
And wonder why such overgrown lambs
Cannot gambol like last year.
If I try to raze the Christmas tree
On the pale and frozen lawn
And wonder where’s the Christmas wrap,
Or why it’s all been torn.
As those yellow bobbing chickens cease,
Lying stuffed upon the plate,
I’ll remember that an editor’s role
Means I’m always out of date.
94
CONSOLING CYCLES?
Wash cycle
spin cycle
dry cycle.
White wash
coloured wash
woollens.
Biotex, Vanish, scrub and soak.
Beans baked in, chocolate caked finger marks, leak-
free nappy leaks, baby-fresh aromas, even puke.
Wash and spin

spin and dry.
Bake, cake, leak, puke. Wash, spin, dry, soak.
As futile as the solo spins, bagged bi-weekly,
at a local laundrette.
95
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DRESSED FOR DINNER
Tied proudly in the dock.

Tremendous as you pledge such facile dreams
Of titan strength.
Full thrust, your knotted hulk
Steams dead ahead,
Bubonic-style your fevered groin swells.
Cathartic your collapse in freezing plague.
Surf-white, your flotsam’s dressed for dinner’s tide

And meets the recce party’s rendezvous,
Unsinkable, unlike your hearse’s hull.
96
DANCE A QUINTET
I tried to find a rhyme, which would not fit

Into the ending of my line. This time
I fidgeted the words until they sat
In neat formations on my page. Too late
The meter ran with dizzied steps, and fell
Beyond the stanza’s end. Female logic
Danced a quintet from a cool quatrain. No!
Go up an octave from my two quatrains.
I stumbled, left-foot, with pentameters,
But liked my verse too much for similes.
As rhymes rose royal, whispered assonance,
I vowed to court and tango with free verse.
BETWEEN THE PAWS
Beauty’s eyes’ beholder,

Perfect, so it seems.
Pride of lions
For the kill -
So still,
Poise
And pounce.
Then pause, proud
With carcass shell.
Happy in hell’s sights,
With perfect symmetry.
97
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WRITERS CIRCLE MEETING
Strangers studied stranger cards

as silence shouted scene on scene
and hardened prints of others’ dreams
formed phantom negatives.
Eve’s inspiration slipped and fell,

wormed to the core of yesterdays.
Her selfish passions left her dazed,
wordless as Adam’s apple.
A sticky honeypot soon buzzed

with Bumbles, Hornets, Queens in hives.
The fizz ceased prompt, at nine, all strife -
expulsed from Paradise.
98
GROWTH'S GOOD (Cinquain)
Growth's good.
It's tender, green
and fulsome, wholesome, ripe,
mature. Exuberantly crowds
and sprouts.
They're weeds!
Control their greed
and rape their ground each week.
Firm succulence, nutrition, brand,
good growth.
Growth's good?
A fertile mind,
fermenting, putrid growth,
is cider-brained and much maligned.
Good growth...
99
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BEAUTY SCREAMED
The Titanic was beautiful, a dream

Of ice dancers skimming across a pond,
As beneath waters, silently it screamed.
Starkly, dinner jackets littered the scene,

Too stiff, too starched to dance as flotsam fronds.
The Titanic was beautiful, a dream.
Maiden white and morbid black were the themes.

Seraph-flames blazed from portholes of the conned
As beneath waters, silently, it screamed.
Our maiden voyage of parenthood we schemed;

Won our passage, so lucky, vision-fond.
The Titanic was beautiful, a dream.
Beauty, beheld, may not be what it seems.

Ice dancers consummate a flawless bond,
As beneath waters silently it screamed.
“Give me a child until it’s seven (blessed genes)”

“... And I will show you the man”? Flotsam-blond.
The Titanic was beautiful, a dream,
As beneath waters, silently, it screamed.
100
MIRROR, MIRROR
Open the blind!

Sun streaming through.
Air richly salient slips through slats
and dances polish on ethereal tiles.
Echoes bathe in sunlight,
silent.
Spluttered, harsh, no tip-taps, unrestrained,

to drench a Venus, vinyl, in her shell.
Mirror, Mirror, on the wall.

You're there - am I?
Where have I been?
A pose is glimpsed in fairy dust.
Sun-bleached a visage, absent, showers,
in gentler shades and strokes of light.
My eyes reveal the face concealed -

Is that reflection me?
Vision, I've been blind.
101
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IT’S POWERFUL DARK TONIGHT
I made the sun go down to bed,

said it was time, turned off the light.
Though it was bright, it went to bed,
and in my head I tucked it in.
Obliging sun, it set on cue,

and left this room so scary, dark.
Yet one thing must be done tonight,

if I remember, work it out -
For, tomorrow, I must make it light.
How will I see, to find the sun,

and make it get up too?
102
IT’S ALL IN THE MIND
Word processors won't make you think,

their screens are blank as this bland wall.
Like commentators, dictaphones
etch sandless dunes with phantom steps.
Slip something cosy in its slot

and plots will thicken, dialogue froth;
Soaps slide aside each thought, like suds,
theme tunes crescendo, uninspired.
Machine-free silence contemplates,

distractions like this sodden thumb.
Print damp, now take text down, undressed,
scrub dead skin free to polished prose
Then when you need to type it out

from solitude, still flannel-dank,
drip peace across the bathroom floor,
towel-dry your muse - all in the mind.
PLEASE RETAIN ENVELOPE
My nectar words are vellum chewed,

on a lace-leafed postage stamp.
Steam carefully, this chrysalis,
to free a butterfly.
103
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SPA POOL (Cinquain)
She sat
with stinging eyes.
Stretched her back, arched her neck,
sank her strain of yesterdays, in
bubbles.
FIREGLOW
Bright ember coals glow warmth into a room,

as shovel-fulls of jewels shine in the fire.
A necklace dropped to fuel a gleaming pyre
and paint walls warmer than cool outer gloom.
Coal-black, a grate domes as a rounded womb,
encased by each tile's blooming sharpened briar.
The mantelpiece a headstone for this byre,
a hearth of jelly beans inside a tomb.
I shiver from the chill this Autumn night

and flick a switch to paint in orange gleams.
The thermostat fails senses, except sight,
as warmth is painted false with amber themes.
Imagined flames are cold, though trashy bright,
mere summer trinkets, now chill broken dreams.
104
SCENE CHANGE (Triolet)
Paint fires of colder dreams

with amber, raked as trash;
grave-dark their flaming themes,
paint fires, of colder dreams.
A flick-switch daubs the scene
of trinkets, bright and brash,
paint-fires of colder dreams,
with amber, raked, as trash.
BOUNCING BABY BLUES
My pen-point snapped before I wrote it down -

I pencilled in the envelope’s blank back.
As baby’s ice cream dolloped on the ground
it left a snail-trail on my dry cleaned sleeve.
The car reversing, bumper-bumped our wall

and, infantile, my wailing woke the child.
Searched thirty yellow pages, then I called
a garage, quick, who did not have my part.
Our builders’ weekend call-out closed at noon.

Confused, should I third-party wall or car?
The number, on the envelope, had gone,
my partner posted it “To help me out.”
Next week, I failed to meet the 14:10

and phoned for messages on my home phone.
Why should the Baby Hotline want to film
my six-month offspring, “14/10!”
(Newborn?!)
105
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CHECK CANOPY
A
canopy
floats full of air,
ephemeral as rope togs steer,
d d d d
r r r r
o o o o
p p p p
p p p p
iiii
nn
g
A jelly fish is beached
106
TIMED TO PERFECTION
I'm a clock,
no alarm,
dial my hands
for play-time.
I tick tock
off to school,
beat the bell
and work hard.
When play-time
runs for "Catch",
it skips by,
kicks the ball.
Goal! Now it's

project time,
then lunch-time.
There's the bell.
School Play runs

rehearsals.
Scene changes,
curtain call
for home time.

I'm sent out,
play-time. Play?
On the streets.
Must not stop,

must not ride,
must not leave,
it's tea-time.
107
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Supper's done,
time for bed.
Don't read long,
dim the light.
Mummy says,
"Go to sleep",
Daddy wants
his play-time.
He calls cars
"big boy" toys,
so why's he
still indoors?
108
SHUTTER SPEED
She
steps
forward and pauses
briefly,
a half-blind
Nelson,
on the
high
board.
Tips
toes to free fall, sways and shoots
R
A
P
I
D
R
A
P
I
P
S
L A
S
H
D
R
A
P
I
D
109
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FLUSH ON BATH’S TRAIL *
Hanging baskets ‘closet’ flowers,

But ‘pots’ for chambers I’d choose,
So why is Bath still ‘privy’
To pigeon-hole hanging loos?
*When flush loos first arrived in Bath, they took some

time to gain acceptance, so the “smallest room” was
bolted onto the back of the house. Some can still be
seen today, perched like “pigeon holes”.
110
X-ROADS
here
bear
from
to
road
cross
a a
cross, road,
your your
I AM
your your
cross- road’s-
roads,
cross,
eternal,
eternal,
for
for
entering
departing
* Printing note: a tab of 0.3” has been set to distance

each word
1.5 line spacing is used for vertical space, to create
this X.
111
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JUST SO LONG AS I’VE GOT...
I’ll never be a poet so long as I’ve got a name,

my reputation’s paramount and bad press is such
a pain.
I’ll never be a poet, I couldn’t bear to be the same,

share my catatonic iambs with Madonna or
Cleo Lane.
I’ll never be a poet as my muse begins to drain,

Railtrack announce points failure or I’m late and
miss my train.
I’ll never be a poet when my radio ‘Blair’s again

and the dregs of all-night parties rouge each sallow
coffee a
t i
s n.
I’ll never be a poet when my mailbag fails to wane,

my phone is always ringing or I watch a TV game.
I’ll never be a poet as my star shoots bright to fame,

when I win the National Lottery or I’m finally made -
A Dame.
I’ll never be a poet, a poet’s much too tame
vain
to shame,
but I’m a writer’s, writer’s writer so long as I’ve
retained*
my brain.
*retrained?
112
LUSTROUS AS THE STARS
Never, but never he asks the reason why,

he tells me what I know.
He always has his words from me
and know’s whatever’s so.
Ever if I falter pause

he pleads to push my thought.
If brain-tired phrases, false, emerge
his world is tense and fraught.
His wisdom is beyond all “Why’s?”

He tells the sun to shine
and when he’s finally worked it out
his star will shoot in line.
His words are not, as ours, confined

within a normal brain.
His grit is harder, greater, dark,
priceless his pearl, unstained.
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MONA LISA’S SMILE
Ought I smile?
Ought I’s tickle my mind?
Misinterpret it
or I
or me.
My ‘auto’s rev and calibrate in time.

It’s me
it’s mine,
it’s synchronised.
My mind’s a synonym;
a first smile, so acrostic.
I dance, myself, in time
and my time’s me.
To you it’s autistic.
DELIBERATELY BLANK...fixate the white

space...tastefully
FINISHED
It is...
(This poem should fill an entire page)
114
LEND ME YOUR EARS
I hung them on the line today

I washed them out with soap,
I cut them out and tailored them
Into a brand new coat.
I shredded them, I simmered them

I boiled them in a stew,
Then, coquettish, dressed them blushing
As ‘salad days’ were through.
I felt them burning yesterday,

We planned a brutal plot,
So I left them aching, ringing,
For Caesar was our sop.
Et tu, my friends, mark Brute’s brief

To surf our Roman bath.
We washed our country linen, men,
Gave ears a public blast.
Our stabs at kingship now desist

For private Caesar’s seized.
I return your loan, an earful,
So daggers drawn decease.
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BEANS MEANS... GREENS
He’s full of beans, he’s full of beans,

he’s full of beans and bounce.
he’s full of beans and flounce.
I’m not so full, I’m not so full,

I’m not so full of beans.
I’m not so full, I’m much more full,
I’m much more full of greens.

of runner beans and bounce,
he’s full of beans, so full of beans,
with jumping beans and flounce.
I’m not so full, nor teensy full,

I’m full of Yorkshire Pud,
I’m not so full, nor weensy full,
I’m much more full of spud.
He’s full of beans, so full of beans,

of green beans baked with bounce,
he’s full of beans and broadly beans,
his florets jump and flounce.
I’m roly-poly full of jam,

not Heinz - you’re mean with beans.
I’m full (not full of bounce or flounce),
you made me eat my greens.
116
WISHFUL THINKING
Morning slips slowly and softly to greet me,

Sunshine is dancing and brushing my curtains.
Peace fluffs my duvet and rolls back to sleep,
Gentle light snoring descends on my room.
When the gate slams

When my child cries
When the doorbells chime,
I wish I was snoring, cocooned in my room,
And then I don’t feel so good.
Hot chocolate’s brewing, the sofa’s inviting,

Weekend uncluttered, a perfect late movie.
Time for a lie-in, all duties postponed,
Gentle light snoring descends on my room.
When the gate slams

When my child cries
When the doorbells chime,
I wish I was snoring, cocooned in my room,
And then I don’t feel so good.
BEACHED
The beach bent, slipshod, at the water’s edge,

As, ageless, ebbed ten thousand grains of sand.
His seaweed beard pooled islets of his dunes
And mussel-gaped his eyes on rippled plain.
His crab-claw talons twitched and turned the tide
Into a fresh-faced infant with his spade.
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A LOVE POEM
You were there in birth and death,

in sex and mess,
in dirth and mirth
and roses blooming with apology.
You were there beginnings, ends,

you made amends.
You smiled your pin-prick stars in blackest night
and lightened with your touch.
Is it too much to mouth the words

of love, of lust, of longings lost?
and found.
118
CHANGES
Changes are good

or bad,
even neutral.
Changes occur in many colours,
styles
and SHAPES.
In changing rooms,
in bedrooms
or kitchens.
Changes complement
accentuate,
fascinate.
Changes live
or die,
age or flatter.
Changes are constantly chang
i
n
g.
So are clothes -
unless you’ve no spare
change
change
change.
STATELY HOME
The stately home was domed and grand

we breathed its ageless soul,
until bright innocence piped up
“The ceiling’s got a hole!”
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SMILE TONIGHT
Beam brightly tonight,

your sky is full of stars.
Whiter, lighter than stinging surf,
your tide retreating to another sea;
another sandy shore.
Relax, cool lips, to curves of satisfaction,
confidence stretching both corners of your mouth;
until a pale face gloats silver.
Please don’t moon -
next month I return.
120
GARDEN CENTRE
A gazebo grabs your attention

while mine remains with the chairs.
Leaning, a Tower of Piza is falling,
a parasol flares,
a swing seat creaks
and the checkout’s in a Conga queue crush.
It’s so, so relaxing

in a garden
on Sunday;
except when we’re here, when it rains.
RIGIDLY ON TRACK
It was a nasty sight

to see him on the floor.
It gave me such a fright,
all blood and guts and gore.
His head ‘home goal’ replaced,

his hands, bright-gloved, alone,
his boots thick-set, displaced,
his rigid arms a pose.
Beside the line he lay,

derailed, in public sight.
His rigor mortis day
repeats each Lego night.
121
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CHEATING DAY
The moon was very naughty,

so dark it came to play.
Mischief moon, go back to bed,
your night’s too deep today.
Is the sun in a different country?

Is it asleep or staying away?
Naughty moon, go back to bed,
I want the sun to stay.
HAIKU
Chicken first, or egg?

Soldier, stand up. Boy or girl.
Cracked, it’s just a yolk.
122
EARLY IN THE MORNING, 2018
I must get up early

when I’m twenty-five.
At six or seven
I will get up;
it must be time for me to rise.
Very, very early

I must begin the day.
So smart I’ll dress,
my wife and me…
I must be grown up,
marry Clare,
when I’m twenty-five.
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THE NIGHT SKY IN JUNE (OPIATE SKIES)

(Events around June, and children’s TV characters)
In June the moon gleamed long, gleamed bright,

the longest day, the shortest night.
A morning bathed in sunshine paused
before a baby’s cry.
In June two crescent orbs ceased sap,

as seven dwarfs tucked in to dream.
A candle danced, a morning star
stirred, blond with infant tunes.
In June our postman, Pat, grew pale,

slept heartless through deliveries.
Two headlamps flickered, one went out;
gaped green, Titanic-like.
Our wherry June rocked us to sleep

as Thomas steamed three signals blue,
pricked brilliant ink-tears into stars;
we sailed, long-reach, to shore.
In June our casual globe, so cool,

blushed proud as James, with royal train.
A codfish sank, and bled his seas,
a phantom ship at dusk.
In June no mystery, no moon,

a clock at midnight tolled till dawn,
then all our teletubbies played
and learnt to tell the time.
In June our lunar pock-marked ghost

beamed senseless Noddy’s candy frosts.
Six candles fingered opiate skies
and planned their next eclipse.
124
2 LIMERICKS
There was a young toddler named Peter

and he was a great chocolate eater.
He stuffed full his tummy
and then looked so funny
he needed a buggy two-seater.
There was an old sailor called Davey

whose grandchildren drove him quite crazy.
He "bow"ed fiercely they'd learn
while "port" helped him act "stern",
was seasick as "starboard" grew hazy.
PUDDLE TRIKE
It was an ordinary trike,

squat, shining in the rain.
Abandoned in a puddle seat,
our sun eclipsed again.
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SHIPS IN THE NIGHT
Bewitch me with the honey of your breath

so sickly sweet,
devour me with the pinprick of your need,
in sensuous mess.
Thrum drumbeats in my ears with seashell surf
and Braille-dot love upon our shifting sands.
Press kisses on a simple rosebud mouth

no scent, no breeze,
stretch fingerprints of dainty little hands
still stained with ink.
Blush wonder in those clustered cherry toes
then howl a love bereft and damned at sea.
Delight and hang on every frail new breath

and bleep and flash,
entwine our fingers in a plastic womb
so sticky, damp.
Stroke down-hair, trembling, fine between each wire
and laugh at nappies armpit length and free.
Stare long as words describe a foreign land

then calm accept,
wipe twenty futile games of sweat and tears,
unsullied yet.
Tip-touch across an ocean with no shore
and flutter lips as ships pass in the night.
126
AUTISM POEMS
Nineteen ninety-nine,
New Year, new age. Old one’s gone.
Will it come next year?
When this world is stopped, rerun
Nineteen ninety-nine or nought.
AUTISM POEMS
Owls house,
tall tree, broken.
Old toys smashed, old bike sold.
The world is aged and earth’s worn out –
broken.
Daddy
repairs smashed toys,
shops sell bikes, owls find trees.
Our broken world God mends or makes
brand new.
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AUTISM POEMS
Wish, I wish I’d been there too

I could have helped him out.
Wish, I wish I’d been there too,
know I wish I could have been
in the world when it was new,
I could have helped God out.
Wish, I wish I’d been there first

I could have made the earth.
Wish, I wish I’d been there first,
know I wish I could have been
in the world when it was new,
I could have been there first.
NICETIES OF SPRING
Piping loud uncouth, innocent your form

waddling keen untried, plump on matchstick legs.
Spring-dance brightly glows, warm as daffodils
careless baby-steps trip on niceties.
Brittle shell your womb, illumined neon glare

delicate bare limbs pimple-kick in sleep.
Electronic bleeps rhythm heartbeats faint,
drain a landlocked sea of deep-breath echoes.
Peck carpet debris, shores of chocolate drops

nip rabbit-ears, Tubby sweet and blunt.
Abandon moons eclipsed when dawn swims new
beat time as sturdy manchild steps stretch far.
128
HARD DRIVE
You ran the download, timed out, late at night

No cosy room for two in sofa tryst,
Toyed late with skittish mouse to drive her home
And downed a beer or two then dialled again.
Your hard computer brain was satisfied.
At dawn your chorus rang a serenade

A love song more familiar, less in code,
Your downtime, then and now, was all for me
Until your body, sated too, could rest.
LIGHTNING STRIKES
His telephone needs wires to keep it working,

his wires need joining closely and with care,
his pylons, out of reach, are safety-conscious
and tape and Blu-Tack add a certain flair.
I wonder when the lightning streaks his heavens,

and parent-wisdom is no longer there,
will he generate calm comfort trailing wires
or will Blu-Tack make his carers pause and stare?
129
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MOZAMBIQUE FLOODS
Your infant wife lay helpless in your arms,

cocooned in desperation and a sea.
No wail of recognition greeted birth
or washed the muddied labour in your home.
Umbilical she hung, an ocean speck,

a first gasp honed to every TV set.
Deliverered to a humming hacking womb;
you stood your ground with patience like a man.
THE GREATER YOKE (Triolet)
See chickens clucking, yolked in line

Slain soldiers whistling, gleaming smart
No girl chicks, boys, just egg-feast brine
See chickens clucking, yolked in line.
And when canary medals shine
As white coats knife bread pegs apart
See chickens clucking, yoked in line
Slain soldiers whistling, gleaming smart.
130
HAIKU
Bodily functions
connect all earthly needs to
electricity.
SPACE ODYSSEY
Last night I scanned a letter bled from birth

Suspected facts, deduced now sure
Cuckoo nest, never land
Transition pains
Spaceship
Gone
Life trip
Star’s dust remains
My genes as shifting sand
All language fails when there’s no cure
An alien drowned in time on planet earth.
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BARGAIN OFFER
A dusty shelf
A sunless room
A pristine box
An air of gloom.
No use in store
Nor on your list
Not instant charm
No chance or tryst.
It grew on you
It throbbed your heart
It desert-bloomed
It’s opine part.
Each spring in seed

Each autumn stem
Each solitaire
Each day a gem.
A discount, love
An offer, life
Pristine no more
Your bargain wife.
132
CATARACTS OBSCURE THE VIEW
Duine le Dia
His life-sap simply bounds,
Duine le Dia
He fails to understand.
Duine le Dia
His joy as daisy chains,
Duine le Dia
Smiles like the morning sun.
Duine le Dia
Mind-cataracts he hides,
Duine le Dia
Change-blurs make him afraid.
Duine le Dia
God Monet-paints his skies,
Duine le Dia
Scared bright by paradise.
Note: “Duine le Dia” is Gaelic for a person of (or with)

God.
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DAVID AND THE TIMID DINOSAUR
There’s a dinosaur in our house,

A dinosaur that roars,
He leaves his tooth marks everywhere,
Chewed T-shirts on all floors.
A dinosaur needs lots of space

Though he’s a friendly beast,
So when in crowds he just sees clothes
And thinks,“Yum, yum, a feast.”
He chewed a leather shoelace hard,

It didn’t calm his fears,
A dinosaur’s great appetite
Leaves room for giant tears.
A Mummy dino’s clever too,

She chewed his pains in half,
He’s cool Ty-Ran-No Saurus now,
A Rex who wears a scarf.
A dinosaur is strong and brave,

When scared by light or smell
He roars no more, or pounces hard,
Instead he rings his bell.
There are tooth marks on his pillow,

Loud roars each night at play,
But a dino veggie-eater
Has scarves and bells all day.
134
SPOTTER (IN TRAINING)
Official red, his notebook, jotted down;

trained cameras, enough for royal tour.
But here is Stafford, not a metropole,
each “signals” mainline entries he can spot.
Officious, youthful books breed red each day;

and though he can’t shoot straight, each scene will do.
His mainline station, Norwich, is his world
and spotting change a sidings, “end of line”.
DAVID AND THE NOISY SLITHER SNAKE
There’s a squeaky snake in our town,

He loves to make a noise.
He slithers fast across the street
And scares the girls and boys.
He squeals when he feels too sad

And siccups when there’s fun.
He siccoughs when his friends are tired
And seep, seeps if they run.
He squeaks and squiffs when in a queue

And coils round each alarm.
Yet if a Ciren-Cester hoots
He freezes like a charm.
He slithers when there’s yummy smells

And hisses when there’s food.
He sucks the aprons of the chef
Then susses loud and rude.
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He sip, sips slowly when at school,

They monitor each sound.
But slurps escape when on a bus,
He sowwwls just like a hound.
At home his Mummy knows he needs

To let his squeakies shout
And then a silent slither snake
Is calm when he goes out.
Some days his sirens howl and wail

Unlike a slither snake.
He coils into a ball of fizz
And calms it to a shake.
On days his slither’s almost gone

Friends call him Wobbly Jell
And then he coils up very tight,
A shiver in a shell.
He squeaks on days he needs to squeal

Beeps slow and does not blare.
When in a queue his bips are “Boo’s”
And “But’s” the chef finds fair.
A Wobbly Jell is much more fun,

His sirens all turned down
And though he wails some days at home,
He’s Slither Snake in town.
136
HEARTBEATS AND STEAM
I screamed the screech a steam train shrieked today.

Weaned bland crowds’ infant sensibilities,
As earth, it seemed, glazed fat accusing eyes;
Beadlam our hamlet satellite’s ‘Bedlam’.
In Goathland, bred to steam and fame and sheep,

Blithe themes of sympathy and Sixties airs,
My son dreamed that all steam was stoked for him,
As signals synchronised to meet his needs.
Our Heartbeat’s bleet shrill-breathed as whistled

tones,
Each skein stretched taut as phantom skins must be.
Who said ‘We bleed a shell to ease dull pain’?
Our joys expired as sweet as seeping steam.
NOTE:
The North Yorkshire Steam Railway runs from
Grosmont (near Whitby) to Pickering, via Goathland
(‘Aidensfield’). Beadlam (Beedlam) is a small village
west of Pickering.
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LAUGHTER IN THE AIR
I laughed today.
A childhood laugh emerged,
more reminiscent of a day
before life’s complexities.
Then I grew up.

Slow, slow – quick, quick
slow, slow – quick, quick.
Dance I lost your tune.
138
EXCUSING DISABILITY
Excuse me, my son is handicapped

And ninety percent of handicaps can’t be seen.
And life, as it appears, means rarely what we think.
And he will play beside your child, theme-rich with
trains.
And scenes change fast when solo labels shock you
dumb.
And, for a moment’s respite, silence seems like joy.
And guiding hands are bricks torn down, when words
reap pain.
And patterns, rich with signals green, cannot switch
red.
And ninety percent of the public cannot see.

And yet ten percent of caring parents wean despair.
Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me …
My child’s beautiful. So why does it seem my fault?
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THE TALE OF NEVER-NEVER LAND
I had a lie-in over suppertime

as Peter cuddled Mary’s lamb
and Pan-like, wrapped in arms of sleep
I drifted with a cat, the far side of the moon.
Remote-controlled, or drug-induced
my clock effaced no dawn
and dropping-mice tailed ether trails
of my lover’s calm caress.
East of Eden, in the morning,

where lie-ins share no tea
and simply childless couples
declare their mornings free -
my bliss is to remember
Remember,
Remember,
the Fifth…
When I can get two thoughts in edgeways

or haiku, press one flat;
my last lie-in, mused past suppertime,
is the Never-Paradise where I’m at.
140
AVALON MEETS CANUTE ON WHITBY BEACH

(Sonnet)
His castle stands, as dreams so often do,

A thousand grains of sand raised to the sky;
His moat, so dense and dry, drains to the sea
And ballast-rocks brood sheer where seagulls fly.
His green-aged lace will waterproof a tide

And bucketfuls of brine mortar his walls,
His twigs, a drawbridge, step from dune to dune
And shore-breeze whips each grain in eddied falls.
His seagull shrills he learnt from Whitby pier

And, frightened, smashed his wings on crowd-harsh
panes.
Canute, his tides, must slack and rise in time,
To fish and chips, his spade and bucket drains.
His castle stands as dreams so often do;

Excalibur, lake dreamer, rises too.
141
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SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER
I’ve long been on the hit list

Of every charity
And Tinsel Town’s sent mailshots
With clockwork clarity.
Stationery suppliers
Ply paper, calendars, cards;
Ethics, fair trade, GM free
Has left my nerves in shards.
My Hallowed peace is shattered

E’en broke by ‘Trick or Treat’
Fairy lights gleam rocket burn
As Guys raze every street.
I’ve boozed my way to New Year

Stockpiled season’s retreat;
Fuelled wild speculations of
Political defeat.
My thoughts are SAD and foggy,

Snowed up with winter storms.
Next month should be X-rated
For Travel Agents’ forms.
142
POOH BEAR LOST ON SODOR
Squeaks Piglet, “Bedtime, here now,” honeyed in his

room
As Thomas tracks changes to signals, points
and trucks.
“Clouds of bees and butterflies,” dances Tigger zest
As James, red, condescends to shiny engine
shed.
“Splash those Pooh Sticks!” from his bridge, joining
cuddly cats
As pens steam points like clockwork, stationary
gloom.
“Rabbit nibbles,” Kanga springs, tasting pantry
snacks
As engines line ceilings, in final curtain call.
“Owl’s House falls,” each night at seven, swooping
down at eight
As programmes guide Norfolk maps,
timetabled in glee.
Changing Rooms splash signals, in honey budget

paint,
Garage forays, diesel-dumped, hum and buzz steel
tracks,
Ground Force rediscovers what Changing Rooms
befall -
Piglet’s wood-hive’s full of tracks, Thomas eats
steamed bees.
Note: This is a deliberate play on “stationary” and

“stationery”.
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FORM A CROCODILE – IN A TEARING HURRY
Peter’s Borough’s not for those of nervous

disposition,
Crowds trail close in crocodiles with shuffle left
permission.
Rigid right and proud, one man, like architect’s

erection;
Tears are bought and sold in towns, in thick-skin fake
congestion.
Joy’s flesh torn, hope’s broken bones, for rights

without direction:
Peter’s four and trails but slow, you pompous
conurbation!
PEDLARS IN PAN’S SHADOW
The fox is banished, Britain’s yesterday,

Humanely he is killed without a sniff
Of hounds or hunters, redcoats, bugle’s bay;
He runs to ground and tremors at each whiff –
Oppressed in newsprint, trampled cold and stiff.
The otter slaps a fish in Never Land,
As seal pups gasp pollution on our sand,
Each Red returns, diseased and tails the sky,
Too late for Peter’s codfish, hooked not banned.
Our Summit’s Tinkerbell asks, “Will we die?”
144
DAVID AND A FEW GOLIATHS
This one is beautiful

He’s handsome, strong and tall,
Not that old crumpled heap
So dumpy, dowdy, stale.
His mind’s a sheer delight

A waterfall of thought,
Not that droned, stammered whine
Drained sewer-rich or trite.
Their children well-behaved

Neat, pleasing, smart, polite,
Not those loud, rude, spaced out
Or nobody’s delight.
She’s pillar-firm in church

Her prayers confetti-fine,
Not that unsmiling bore
Absent, harsh as flint.
So David stood in line

Too short, too young, untried,
His heart brook-clean, scuffed smooth
As stones sling-firm, not tired.
One day our hearts will beat

Through eyes and voice and smile -
Our soul’s Dress Code in heaven
Finds Nazi-views too small.
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LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT
I have learned that as you look: left, right, down,

You’re reading me in harmony: left, right
And, synchronised, your eyes go down: left, right.
Down (mouth), then read me as a book: left, right;
And I have learned to not look down: left, right,
Right, left, right, left. Down, your mouth in your
boots.
And, politely, your eyes go down, down, down,
To check a misfit skirt, or breakfast chin.
So very hard, your reading scheme, I’ve learned.

Your books have taught you left and right, not down
And, synchronised is gene-bred taut and fine,
Except the moon’s dark side where right is left
And fairies dance on pinheads, out of sight.
Left, right, left, aggressive reads: down’s undone;
And darting eyes are impolite or rude.
You check skirt, chin – and let a misfit in.
146
I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU, MUM
A cavern, ageless, from the deepest earth

Haunts baby gaze, to greet his new-formed mum.
It tells of womb-songs, mirth and life and health
And bonds an infant close to mother’s breast.
The first time bedded daisies, with no chain,

And then grief’s cave was sculpted fine as twins.
Worn, rest unfocused, in a plastic cot,
A daisy-dervish, next in flood, was born.
We bred one from a crib into a grave,

His gaze long-gone, as mother’s, hunted, dead.
Until the next, a daisy, bled on cue.
Slept, last, as son was cut to Special Care.
Two strapping boys were hacked into this Age,

One haunts mum, newborn, rocked in Mother Earth.
ELECTRIC MOONBEAMS
Thin sliver of a moon, as sun is set

And sparks grow brighter with impending dark.
As solo car runs parallel to tracks –
Two shooting stars slow motion in the night.
A godlike menace frames across the sky,

His arrowed mercury shoots to the earth.
The evening star, or satellite, gleams cold
While beaming towns enjoy electron’s power.
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LANGUAGE OF THE GODS
I thought all read the alphabet of earth,

Not spoke, as clouds, the language of the skies.
Some say that special ones belong to God
And then surmise that’s very far from here.
The gods, to men, shoot arrows full of rage

And fickle, ebb and flow as ocean tides.
Their harbour is a sea of death to men
And passions pander not to human needs.
One brought a God from heaven down to earth,

Who splintered words, as hands, rough-hewn and
scraped.
With perfumed-death, and pots clay-cast as gold,
His words discipled earth to sky as one.
So genes will answer, in some lives, for much,

While gods and men commune, their dreams
unshared.
148
‘EEE, IT SENT ME OFF TO SLEEP
Bedtime reading’s soporific,

Blank joys and crowded scenes.
Ebooks ravage last our silence
as slumbers ease our dreams.
ABC OF THE COUNTRY CHURCHYARD

In memory of Gladys (Revised August 2004)
A village school,
a horse and dray.
A firstborn son
acts whipping boy.
A country churchyard hides so very much.
Burnt iron-cast will,

brands anvil’s prize.
But man runs slow,
buys shotgun wife.
Brave country grandma hides so very much.
Crinolene-proud,
century’s youth.
Churched post-war beat
curtails stern home.
Child marches to freedom, salutes his dead.
Dealt jilted threats,

(dutiful son)
dices blood-ties:
divorces dad.
Demanding father of the groom is blind.
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Effortless kiss -
engaged grand-child.
Ease canker’s joy:
erase gran’s life.
Eerie birthplace darkens his door again.
False housemaid mate

flings earth to earth;
fast-tucks dad in,
fades teetered Time.
Fake country wake hides such a wedding bed.
SWINE OF A YEAR AT LAMBING TIME, 2001
Shall I mouth bright words of springtime

As cool daffodils dance proudly,
Shall cowed footfalls imprint on late fallen snow?
Shall herd pyres of soot send signals,
Ashen skies stake lambing time –
Shall fevered swine mouth Foot & Mouth all year?
150
DAVID AND RELUCTANT MUDDY MOLE
There’s a Muddy Mole in our house

He just comes out at night,
He burrows in a corner tight
To crouch and plop a poo.
There’s a toilet in the bathroom

A toilet downstairs too,
But Muddy Mole can’t use a loo
Unless it’s on the floor.
A Muddy Mole thinks, when it’s dark

He’ll scratch a muddy mound,
But, clean and neat, this mole has found
A nappy does the trick.
But Mummy Mole has burrowed long

To give poor Mole a run -
There’s music, jingles, books for fun
And toys beside the loo.
Muddy Mole’s now in the bathroom

He runs around a lot,
He cannot squeeze around a pot
Or crouch and burrow tight.
He’s grown quite big for nappies small:

A van supplies his needs.
But Muddy Mole must nibble feeds
To last his poo till late.
A clever Mole’s not muddy now

He’s found a dig and sits.
His Mountaineering Mole bum fits:
Safe handles, firm with steps.
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A growing Mole soon burrows tall,

His tummy wakes at night.
He plops his poo from mountain height
And learns to wipe and flush.
Sometimes Mole’s sad away from home

For tummy grumbles start.
To plop a poo at home’s not smart
With toilet burrows near.
A toilet burrow’s everywhere:

Firm seats in house or plane.
A Mountain Mole can ride a train
And “Plip, plop, choo!” on loos.
152
JUST A SPARKLING RED SKY AT NIGHT
A piece of string, no sparkle, no panache,

A cord to fit the hollow of a neck.
With little room to spare, I wondered why
My lover drew it quite so tight today?
My Valentine he had been, year on year

And bonds were drawn between his heart and mine.
One final noose might slacken or break free,
A tether could unleash a heart chained taut.
But Cupid’s arrows slow-sparked bright each night
And slavishly beamed lighter every day.
His gift, a sparkle, carefully adorned,

A shepherd’s sky delight blazed night on night.
ON THE WRONG TRACKS
The next train from this platform will be late

As passengers, in B-rate movie, mime.
False blinking TV monitor’s on time,
So briefcase-clasping travellers must wait.

Routine delays and journeys snaked in slime,
The next train from this platform will be late.
Immaculate arrival draws in State,

A Virgin, scarlet, pert and in her prime.
Pimp timetables, too slow, their errors chime –
The next train from this platform will be late.
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LABOURING UNDER ARMAGEDDON
A crisis government fears sleaze,

Correctly plays ‘Lord’s mercy, please.’
A deal rough-hand fuel’s Tony’s wheeze,
Gives widow’s mite, ‘Lord’s mercy, please.’
So Opposition fouls just tease,

As fevered swine, ‘Lord’s mercy’, please;
Town floods drive burns of Greenhouse seas.
Effect: new-build ‘Lord’s mercy, please.’
Ace Act of God, though none appease,

Our rolling stock, ‘Lord’s mercy, please’,
And Foot and Mouth spreads on the breeze
Of Har Megiddo, ‘Mercy, please.’
Will Peter’s gate draw back with ease –

“Prime Minister? Lord’s mercy, PLEASE.”
*Har Megiddo is the historic northern fortress in

Israel, more popularly linked with the Armageddon of
Revelation in the Bible.
DEAR CUSTOMER
I was so pleased your order winged its way;

Despatched so promptly, carefully addressed.
I waited for the postman soon to call
And understood delays in processing.
I carefully timed Statements and held back –
The business world is tough and large and fraught.
Yet time is of the essence, payment slow,
Perhaps you could check close your records now.
I’d sooner spend my time creatively
And your account, this moment, stands unpaid.
154
LETHARGIC FOR A SERVICEABLE MEAL
The waitress amply plodded through her chores

With partial sight, to customise each need.
A scream of “Fire!” would less disruption cause.
She squeezed airtight beyond the kitchen doors.

One children’s menu. Would that it could breed.
The waitress amply plodded through her chores.
The dream of food still stenching in our pores,

As bleating kids gulped chips of ketchup greed;
A ‘scream of fire’ would less disruption cause.
Twin straws and fizz were pastured, aired as spores,

And minutes ticked, as stomachs ached to feed.
The waitress amply plodded through her chores,
We touted lukewarm coffee, shrill as whores.

Kids sloshed ice creams, bright with raspberry bleed,
A scream of fire would less disruption cause.
We stood to leave, our meals erupting sores,

Disputing ‘Servis Compris’, dared we lead?
The waitress amply plodded through her chores –
A scream of “Fire!” would less disruption cause…
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A THOUSAND GENERATIONS LOST IN ONE
Your life was gone before its shell had dried,

A helpless body naked on the ground.
Your comfort sheer as shells smashed, for you died;
No brooding hen, to keep you warm, was found.
Your wisdom failed to trill from garden mound,
You should have climbed dull air, a bird in flight.
Bred hapless feathers, now thin-chained, earthbound,
And territories marked in clouds, breezed light.
More robust, favoured chicks - fate nests with cuckold
night.
156
ODDS OF A NEST EGG REACHING MATURITY
Your life was gone before it had begun,

A helpless body naked on the ground.
Your egg tapped open, comfort sheer as shells,
No brooding mother hen to keep you warm.
You should have climbed light air, a bird in flight,
And trilled your wisdom from a garden branch.
Your territory marked, within the clouds,
As hapless as fleet feathers, yet half grown.
A thousand generations lost in one,
Your nest a cuckold for more robust chicks.
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MARCO
You left a Sudan, troubled by its youth and yours,

the blood of Zorba dancing in your veins,
a shrug or tickle of the ribs
and feast of home-grown Greek cuisine.
Your fathered child bloomed with your looks and
stature,
blossomed with your temper, humour, heart.
You turned a biscuit can into a barbecue,

grew beetroot sweet as cherries;
wrung necks of chickens, rabbits,
nurtured marrows huge as your girth
and pedalled to your allotment -
a little Eden in the Harefield crop, of hearts enlarged
or loaned.
One new-trained pastor with a heart or two,

vast and meandering as the Mediterranean Sea.
A belly laugh and bear hug:
friendship rich as olive oil, warm as Eastern sun.
You joked that you were given two new hearts -

one from Jesus, one from Dr Yacoub;
and, as your wife now tucks you in, to rest in heaven’s
arms,
the missive’s rocked by storm’s brash time,
like ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ seasoning the
movies.
‘God moving his furniture’ across the sky;
hail as hothead as June, or a Greek.
And in these days of supersonic news

without concord - or peace -
perhaps even God values a friend who teases
and makes him laugh.
158
TALKING PEDICURES
Oh toe, my goodness, why are you so red?

If you were patient, you’d be sent to bed.
You claim so little in your daily trudge
And, framed in footwear, beauty’s stuffed as fudge.
Ah me, the joys of fashion ache in vain
To give my feet an absence from dull pain.
Ass that I am, in lavender you’ll soak
And pampered, creamed, you’ll plod with other folk.
Until I milk a set of suckling pigs –
My lover nibbles each like fertile figs.
STEPPING OUT OF TIME
I tell you of some friends so recent, known,

In adult milestones, brief as time can be.
You laugh and eagerly say, “Visit them!”
A timetable and dates you fast combine.
My words as grains of sand without a shore,

To undertake this journey, my soul balks.
So soft the steps that drown all hope at sea –
Time’s brief has stopped, our friend of years has died.
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MEASURING STRESS BY INCHES
To destress your day,

With care, read this guide
From cover to cover.
Sheet music may help

Harmonise or tone
Biorhythms’ true pitch.
Food, in the mind, drools

Aphrodisiac,
Or satiates desire.
Lotions and potions

Get you in the mood,
But snoring’s contagious.
Three inches (or six)

South of his navel
Swings warm magnetic North.
160
STRIKE A LOWRY LIGHT FOR ART
Each time I pick my pen to write

My mind enacts a social rite.
I dip into dark ink, my soul,
And draw bright red, a body whole.
In gallery an artist sleeps,

Reclining bare, she dares and weeps.
Transitory, her art will fade
Or age to Monet’s subtle shade.
As Mary Poppins steps inside

A pavement picture dream, to hide,
Coarse public stares, like Lowry sticks,
Will strike a pose, so Tate, as bricks.
A rumbling Underground for art

Dares, on the Tube, each body part.
Shows masses, sardine-fresh and rare,
Strip-painting palettes – artists bare.
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STILL LIFE ARRANGEMENT - DAISIES
“Pushing up daisies is their creed”,

Or so I read
And wonder why
So many daisies pop across our lawn.
“I shall be one with nature, herb and stone”,
As Shelley shells belie belief –
Let fall brave Wilfred’s torso.
A Daisy was not born to me one night,

The moon smiled not, nor beamed dull pain,
Nor harvested a single star
Or face.
You bled my tears in aching loss,

For days and days and days.
A phase so small or not at all,
A daisy chain of bleeding pears,
Wasp-dizzied at the core.
So “Daisy, Daisy,” boy or girl?

For Owen’s creed, bleed not at all,
Just “Give me your answer, do.”
A faceless phase,
or night half-crazed, that life could be so cruel.
Daisies aren’t the same any more,
On the dark side of the moon.
162
FINE BROADS OF NORWICH
All manner of things are well in ‘this fine city’,

With stunning spire that Constable might paint.
A Hay Wain, picture postcard, themes each village,
As mills and fens wend ‘Gateways to the Broads.’
All manner of things, well, fire this ancient fortress,

Old gaol and court now please bright tourist dreams.
A market dons each gaudy season, suq-like,
As Mayor’s Procession drawers aged scenes with
floats.
‘A church for every Sabbath’, once raised Norwich,

‘A pub for every weekday’ once pulled pints.
An age of learning minds our Village campus,
As nurses spy new bus routes, glean sparse pay.
A bus, en-route, entrenches news in tarmac,

One library’s vast heritage is razed;
Smoke belches through Assembly roof’s brash
treasure,
then carefully restored to glorious past.
‘State of the art’, our hospital sheds bed-space,

As ancient walls are sieged in rush hour smog.
Suburban roads breed speed bumps, neon warnings,
And playgroup mums slow-march to ban the car.
A wherry pilgrimage floats to a ruin,

As sacred sites bless arts and cultured stones;
Abroad at night are ladies pulling punters,
One missing ‘broad’ proves search a futile waste.
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A youth new-drunk on freedom, fun and clubbing,

Is dredged from river, parents drowned in grief.
Our Laureate pens verse, of tragic train ride,
As railway forecourts renovate for trade.
At home with mustard, chocolates and turkey,

At kick off time our manager bakes pies.
Closures, play-offs, mergers smoke dull headlines,
Eccentrics, past and present, court the press.
And shall all manner of ages merge in silence,

As Mother Julian whispers from her cell?
Shall all be well, shall all be well, as Manna –
When Cavell’s bones prove politics inflame.
DRESSED FOR THE OCCASION
Love to love may prove

A laundry for soiled garments,
Rinsed and spun and dried -
Till colours fade, thread-weaves bind.
Neither claims odd socks or bra.
Prove me not, my love,

Your weave is coarse, my weft fine,
Dress us not in rags.
Cut out patterns, bright and plain,
A complement for cocktails.
164
PYRES FOR EARTH’S AUTUMN
Neatly-packaged sheep
Are bought, cling-wrapped, in cutlets,
And barbecue pig.
Eggs, free-range, beef for Sunday,
Cod, swimming in parsley sauce.
Even beans bleating

Shelf-life, battery farming,
While Asda eggs cluck,
Bread smells sweet as GM crops,
Buttercups gleam fake, fat-free.
Mount Etna’s fuming,

Floods drench us, ‘made in Taiwan’.
Foot And Mouth beckons -
FARMERS (Alleged) BREED DISEASE,
And pawn-ticket earth’s a pyre.
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BACK TO THE FUTURE MOBILE LIBRARY
Socks –
Woe betide a man wearing them,
A woman buying them,
A toe holing them,
A machine screwing them into separates.
Bra –
Woe betide a strap flashing,
‘Lift and Separate’ plummeting,
Cleavage overstepping the mark,
A machine spinning underwired into self-supporting.
Undies –
Unmentionable as drawers,
Chests, lingerie and bedsocks.
Steamy novels in plain covers:
Machinations, but not in the Library.
166
MANY PARTS, ONE BODY
A big toe is not worth soliloquy,

A thumb may strum, but never sonnet muse.
A navel may supremely charm a beach,
A breast may heave despair, but ode no verse.
An eye may haiku much, its vision small,
An ear may heed refrains, to music deaf.
A knee may feed horizons, dipped or bent,
A nose may drone all night, yet breathe no stars.
A body, wholly, deafens its appeal
When any part draws consonance to self.
MR CHEAP CHEAP DRAWS HIS PENSION
He was known as ‘Mr Cheap Cheap’

With his pounds and ten shilling notes,
He carefully wrote: Typhoo Tea,
And Stork, cheap, lard cheap, Mixed Fruit Jam.
His bread sliced, cheap, and processed peas,
And biscuits, broken, rhubarb, tinned.
He was known as ‘Mr Cheap Cheap’,

The local grocer checked his list.
He was never cheated ha’p’nnies
Till Decimal Currency’s Ps.
Now rent and rates and water’s charged
And only Pension’s missed, er, cheap.
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TELEVISED DESSERTS WITH ALBERT AND

VICTORIA
An almond slice, it seemed so tame,

a long and oval shaft.
It was simply Act One, Scene One,
of his play still in first draft.
The chocolate biscuits, plain and fat,

rotund, dripped sweet desire.
I longed to lick both into crumbs
then, satiate, retire.
As I dallied with Victoria,

Albert plumped home in Scene Three.
My bowl was empty, moorish,
and desserts, at home, were free.
168
JUNK MAIL
It was just a plain paper envelope

with the postmark indecipherable.
A Railtrack cancellation scraped its rim,
one corner derailed through sharp letterbox.
It was just a plain paper envelope,

suffered few common hazards in transit.
Safely reached its postal destination
via mud, rain, elastic bands and coffee.
It was just a plain paper envelope,

fat, neat, pristine, address label stuck straight.
Avid reader, I filed my magazine,
disregarded the wrapping – in the bin.
It was just a fine paper envelope,

Until my editor (on page 15)
reminded me politely (two weeks late)
that subscription info was trashed – too plain!
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IT’S A DOG’S LIFE
The pastry had a perfect crust,

groomed like a gleaming, shorthaired coat,
and gravy drooled in juicy chunks
down his ravished and willing throat.
He dribbled, scratched and doted hard,

watched her baton-floured rolling pin.
Adored his mistress’ preens and smiles.
She dropped beefy can in the bin.
He had no tail to wag, and yet

as she slowly patted his knee,
he whined, for home was the ‘dog house’ –
she’d served Mongrel Chum for his tea.
FIERCE ANIMAL, THAT IS, SLEEP
You’re dangerous and wild at night with me,

I keep you caged each day for sanity.
For ‘Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright’, you grow
Beyond this flimsy conscious that I know.
Some nights your claws are fierce on forest floor,
I shudder when you, stealthy, pass my door.
Yet vibrant symmetry may still delight;
You are my brightest day, my deepest night.
I’m crushed and coated in your thick-set dreams
And, hammered anvil, nothing’s what it seems.
Yet, penned and fleeced, my lamb, you satisfy.
Such darling Sleep’s brain muses as I lie.
170
ONLY A CHILDREN’S TEA PARTY
My anxious son was well prepared,

a little friend would come to tea.
Fun was planned with sure precision,
his fixed world’s calmer certainty.
He’d ironed his mum and dad, pressed neat,

daily smooth-creased both home and school.
Mist-sprayed the world, TV and God,
switched off, he was nobody’s fool.
The phone steam-screamed, to cancel late,

what could one U.S. mother cry?
Now my anxious son knows Tuesdays
naughty men crash planes and we die.
DEAR TEACHER
Dear teacher do not take amiss

This well-intentioned, fast reply,
That lack of PE kit’s a bane
No caring parent can deny.
Perhaps few pupils may not deem

A PE ban sufficient sport,
For failing to come well-equipped
And peers seeing they’ve been caught.
But parents’ troubles never cease

When a child has special needs,
So please return my kit, and son
If you enforce such dread misdeeds.
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SWIMMINGLY, DEAR TROUT
Earth has not anything to show more fair

than you, sleek trout, my lover, lying near.
Your flesh so pink and warm, so succulent
with gleaming butter sauce pooled on my plate.
A slice of lemon squeezed tart on your skin,
firm almonds crunched between my teeth, so fine.
Such scratch of bones are smoothed and tossed aside,
consumed by Midas’ touch of golden seeds.
Yet there’s the rub, in nature’s finest hour,
too faint, worn brass, your dish has lost its power.
172
DREAMING A NEW DREAM
You were tough on us, my son,

and could not hear us from your padded cell,
where all the world was muffled,
except your ego voice.
You could not learn dull words to interest you,

because your tools were not yet born,
to trade as socialite.
You tracked the world’s confusing shunts

to engines lined, derailed at will.
Drift-patterns leafed all videos, books,
and bricks and parents, sequenced by
precision-balanced mind.
You, echolalic, learnt by rote

to intimate your vast concerns
with Thomas, trucks and engines, red,
and daubed your paintings, walls and clothes
one angry shade of plain.
You waved the world, with gestures broad,

an actor’s ghost, you staged your lines
script heartfelt themes ran through your Play,
but far too fast for lesser souls who guessed at
dialogue.
You read a social rite, of sorts,

and rigidly applied new rules.
Your parents’ gaoler, each clocked in
to smooth, soft-padded walls.
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Your mind, with fireworks, daubed your skies;

on cue, exploded, tapers burnt
and, on occasions, failed to light until we homed you,
safe.
You painfully learnt social-ease,

each brick, a rule, to build twin towers.
Your enemies and friends grew too,
a minefield, childhood dreams.
You were tough on us, my son.

We, naughty, confiscated toys,
because you hurled them, missiles, down the stairs.
We, naughty, caused your head’s dull ache,
until you screamed ripe hurt.
We were tough on you, my son; yet gentle too.

We shared the pain of difference,
a Phoenix from the ashes of our dreams.
174
AS THE SPIRIT BROODED OVER WATERS
The unthinkable we have survived,

Though at what cost and with what lies;
Bright sap has drained, poor shoots, our spring
As heavier winters enter in.
We cannot plan our lives of towers,
Or whirlwind-plane to calmer hours.
Emotion’s storms, global, unjust,
Freak winds, incendiary, combust.
Our sun shines still, unfairness clouds,
As Spirit on the waters broods.
Creation’s voice no longer sings,
We trash our toys earth’s Father brings.
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IF IT WERE NOT SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD

YOU
I do not know how to tell you, son,

about eternity,
for in God’s house are many rooms.
“They must reach so high to the sky!”
You fervently hope that you’re on the ground floor,
in case it’s windy at night,
a building so tall could sway in a gale
and your need is earthbound, it’s secure.
You asked, out of the blue, if God had bad dreams,

but meant in the same way you do;
with heaven so good, your whole family
could live there, immediately.
You heard of some soldiers, who killed by the sword,

Bible tales, where they washed themselves clean;
then you wanted to know, from your mum, if you
might
wash your brains out, exactly that way.
Your nightmares were scary, a life full of Why’s,

a head that made no sense at all.
I hated to lie to that rule book, your soul,
about God, in this world, even God –
for heaven must wait, although full of good themes,
in this world, even God has bad dreams.
176
DANCE OF THE SUGAR PLUM FAIRY
So angry with your teacher yesterday.

Beneath the table, trampling, upside down,
A plume of rage, dull ostrich, for you may
Arch wild your neck, red-nosed, a mimic clown.
Into the circus, stocking-legs, your show
Is just a tease for elephants and mice.
Your graceless fears, outspoken, cannot grow,
And gulping air’s considered not quite nice.
You learn to use drab words to rant your blame,

Walk, eyes wide open, with your class, in line;
And when your teacher guides, then you’re the same,
A pupil, uniform, so brash yet fine.
You hide no longer, ostrich in the sand.
Your fairy dance, bright Sugar Plum, is grand.
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SOME LIKE IT UP (SOME LIKE IT DOWN)
This tale will bring tears to the eyes

Of every hot-blooded man you meet
Within a three-mile radius.
Now are you ready? Take a seat.
Once upon a time (the other day)

My son had learnt about the bees,
But not the birds, I’m relieved to say,
As morning alarms began to ring.
In teddy bear pyjamas son looked up,

Dad staggered off to morning ablutions.
Bright as a button, the boy pipes loud,
“Daddy,” with innocent solutions –
“You have got two willies!”* he said.

Lucky woman that I am, I laughed,
As daddy’s cheeks grew very red
And he declared himself “Grown up!”
So now I have your attention,

Perhaps you can answer this ‘Why?’
When boys have a hosepipe for draining,
Why’s the loo seat in our house never dry?
*A young “child’s eye view”, not to be taken literally!
178
ATISHOO! ATISHOO! THEY ALL FALL DOWN
I have a bit of a cold today,

and think I am going to sneeze;
hearing my son’s words to me yesterday,
you will soon understand this wheeze.
Son knew, as a babe in my tummy,

he was born late, exactly the right way,
but the doctor had helped out his brother
with a knife and some stitches, they say.
He asked, all innocence, what exit

had he used, when so small, to get out.
His solution brought coughs and hysterics,
for I learnt why new mums snort and shout.
We then read a book, General Knowledge,

with pictures and arrows in place.
In disgust he declared, “From your bottom?”
What cheek! Guess who had a red face.
So don’t ever sneeze near young children

who think of two bogies’ black holes -
for twins may be ready for exit,
newborn from your tummy, like moles.
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HAIKU
Haiku cites nature,

which G&T enhances –
keeps ladies happy.
Punctuation, please.
Yet Hebrew omitted vowels
and God was nameless.
Poets please no man

and no man pleases woman –
Apple fury’s ripe!
Pox is nature too

And vaccines, like sums, man-made.
Touch and breath’s obscene.
My star and yours – gone.

Writers’ Block may damn the earth,
but Heaven, never.
180
MAKING BABIES
The strangest thing has happened recently.

My poems, bright as newborn babes,
(once borne down hard and long into delivery)
now dilate themselves, in pairs,
as if my brain can ping pong both into a birth canal.
The poem, temporarily in breach,

stops while I breathe to strain its sibling out.
I fear it’s joined, placental, in one wake
and cannot help but think that this,
the one that could not birth in time,
has fled into the skies.
That poem you would now scarce believe,
how bright it helps the universe to shine.
You simply see the afterbirth entombed

and, poet as I am, I wander to that place within the
stars,
the home my child was born.
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DISHING UP PERFECTION
What white and moist young thing I see before me?

A just dessert for kings and paupers too.
So tart, my teeth dance tomb-steps soft as swan’s-
down,
Inviting as a virgin ripe for dreams.
No need to ask, nor whisper sweet my nothings,
Consumed in but a moment’s pulsing joy.
I could spend hours in this recitation,
Describe perfection, utterly devoured.
But you would then slink hungry to your freezer
And, warmed so fast, sink lemon’s rich meringue.
182
MIDDLE-AGED FLEDGLING
Perched on the lawn from dawn to setting sun,

you cried all day for twenty years
and dabbled with your life’s display
of grace and gracelessness.
You could not part with that dull, beaten Ted

and cast your red face down upon
bright childhood dreams, your twenty-first,
entwined with sweetheart match.
So masterly, blend antique furnishings.

Brush new life’s scarlet palette rooms;
entrance each friendship, tissue-lent,
your pecking’s weeping path.
And is it drained yet? All that’s gone before.

Your children grown and partner flown…
Another’s arms. Such bravery;
mature, you flit plump nest.
Spring beckons most when each first Comes Of Age,

and sage youth flushes pride, and green,
disperses down in feathered flight,
as fledglings flee the nest.
Now as the camera fades and credits roll,

dense viewers preen their homely dreams,
imagining each private crack;
shelled as a public game.
When Changing Rooms is daubed across a life,

relief smiles bright, or fears the worst;
Life’s Laundry churns Heaven and Earth,
as Lewis’ ‘Great Divorce’.
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FREESERVING ROBBERY
We must not make it too easy

For naughty burglars to call.
We’ve increased our security
Set password protection’s hall.
We’ve thought of every secret code,
Reconnected, hour on hour.
They couldn’t steal our computer,
It is mains-run, needs the power.
But if, perhaps, they steal our games
Then they might just pause and play –
So how can we arrest them, Mum,
If they steal our surfing day?
184
WAR OF THE WORLDS
Remember, remember,
Eleventh September –
Can our war-weary world now forget?
Remember, remember,
October, November,
Red Cross shrapnel, food parcels and bombs.
Remember, remember,
December, starved babies;
Afghanistan, can war-worlds forget?
Remember, remember,
As June suns our winters,
This earth’s empire, amnesic, forgets.
Remember, remember,
Bold fighters, grim flight lines.
So politic to never forget.
Remember, remember,
‘Brave NEW World’, post-Easter.
Just Eleven – forget - start again.
Remember, remember,
Every autumn and fall,
We plane hope in the wake of Twin Towers.
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AUTISTIC SHOPPING TRIP
A lion’s pride is not polite,

runs for the kill, then lazes long.
Apologies for nature torn
are simply technicalities
of beastly human etiquette.
So why does ‘wildlife’ stalk these aisles

in supermarket trolley-rage;
and why, packed for ‘safari’ shops,
rage natives, cannibalistic?
Primeval rules owe less to roads

or suburban traffic-calming.
Walks on the autistic ‘wild side’,
where the slow kill is simply game,
and beastly language, technical –
the problem is understanding.
186
IMAGINE
I heard of an office block

filled with more human beings
than I could ever know.
I heard of some fire-fighters,

they had to go and not return
even in body bags.
I heard of a Duchess,
she escaped by arriving late,
much too late.
I heard of Cliff, ageless Cliff, on tour.

He heard from his U.S. hotel room,
when night was hardly born.
I heard of the day, so long it seems,

when John’s bullet could shock us all –
Imagine.
I heard when the world was small enough

for plane-hopping business trips;
tucking children safely in their beds.
I heard of a world that could not call

evil, good – good, evil.
When press and politicians knew the difference.
I heard on the news today

and then my mobile screamed.
Imagine all those people.
187
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CATCHING THE BRIDE’S BOUQUET
My son saw, rare, a bride leave parents’ home,

A dazzling swan, proud, sweeping to smart car;
Rich posy bridesmaids, budding in her train
And mother of the bride adorned with smiles.
My son, autistic, could not bear bright change -

Could dress, or guests, or car provoke such pain?
He roared to scare blush flowers from his door,
Arched back disdained, he leapt like Simba’s Pride.
At twenty-six he knows he’ll be a groom,

Set rigidly in concrete, ‘Rules for Life’;
And should his expectations blossom, flare,
I hope his wife will grow a heart in bloom.
188
THE WAR IS IN THE PITY
We must to war,
I know not why.
The sun still shines
and flowers bloom.
More falls than rain
and yet again
more war, now there’s the pity.
We must to war,
last year and this.
No time at home,
nor peace, nor bliss.
I cannot tell
why I must go
to war, now there’s the pity.
We must to war,
defend our realm;
each foreign field
and hill and dell.
We cannot trade
our loves in death,
so sell our course
for war. Now there’s the pity.
189
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BIRDS IN THE SATELLITE BREEZE (Sonnet)
Simply, the garden looks beautiful now

And, if not this year, next year, or the next.
I plan each season’s bloom and fall, and how
Each seeding breeds a poet’s musing text.
Small birds sing for the ending of my day –

I hear one boy reads language in the breeze –
Creation’s song at sunset has its say;
My words as twigs and branches etch my trees.
Returning to a dim electric earth,

I hope the moon shines yet in nature’s night.
The world, in broadcast news, shows death not birth
And politic, raised voices screech to fight.
O little town of Bethlehem still lies,

When heaven’s star takes satellite and flies.
190
MAJESTIC IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

(Queen Mother)
With her smile
One woman spanned the century that’s gone.
Tilt of head,
Capturing graciousness as a Royal.
Peace in war,
Dressed fine in dusky pinks and blues, she bloomed.
Ancient soul,
Broadcast live; lost, a nation grieves for one.
Mother, Queen,
Slow-sound a forty-one gun dirge salute.
For souls lost,
Mobile, pause the twenty-first century.
War in peace?
Perhaps we mourn, for England’s past and gone.
For lost souls?
Perhaps we mourn for Europe’s sovereign states.
Heaven’s earth?
Perhaps we mourn bright stars no longer shine.
SIMPLY EXISTING
You want to not exist.

You barely know
and I know less
of how to win that smile within your eyes;
and I can only guess
the pain that shatters everyday
into a tempest of your sense
and senseless floods this muddy now –
a shipwreck of life’s joy.
191
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I’M JAKE THE PAKE WITH MY EXTRA PEG

A ONE-ARMED BALLADE
(Post-Op re: carpal tunnel syndrome)
There are few things more disconcerting to lose,

Considering body parts useful to me.
If I had it my way I’d certainly choose
The tip of my nose exclusively free;
Although I am sure you’ll be asking to see
If this offending member breaks the flow,
Contouring my face in wild absurdity.
I bet you are all dying just to know.
My foot in plaster would certainly confuse,

Jake the Pake would balance with his pegs, all three;
Laboured, shaky gait would passers-by amuse,
Just swaying in the breeze, a fruiting tree.
Hysterical scenario - not “To be”,
To hospital, quite whole, I had to go;
This pre-planned bandage didn’t require a fee.

I could have been quite blooming, fast dropping twos,

Or failing, coy, to mention – Hush! Ops for ‘she’.
Stitches, sure, your dressing down I might refuse,
Tell of injured movement’s dulled mobility.
Won’t keep you in suspense, leave you all at sea,
Just listen as your life-raft now I throw.
To calm fierce apparitions - feint shades and flee
With bandaged limb and sling, my simple plea:

Dear one-armed bandit, competence is low.
Can’t cook, can’t dress, or – failed temerity…
192
CHANGING HARRY
Watched Changing Rooms on our TV last night

Llewellyn-Bowen’s grinning hall of fright
Alan Titchmarsh, large, lounged in pride of place
A row of bathroom ducks with Smillie face.
I’m framing Harry Potter.
MY CAT MISCHIEF (davidian, children’s)
My cat is up to mischief all day long,

He chases birds, he’s fast and sleek and strong.
His muddy paw prints trail around our house,
Dad’s laces chewed and, hush, sometimes a mouse.
What a fine pet my cat is!
ARRESTING RONALD
(autism outing and meltdown)
Sirens – sirens – sirens

‘Restrain the bastard now!’
The long arm of the law
Before he kicks the seat in.
Drive – drive – the padded cell,
Siren hell – bleep – sirens – bleep
Click indicate, click indicate
‘He kicked me in the face!’
Quick keys, quick now
‘Inside!’
It’s time to phone 999
Our boy is only NINE.
McDonalds gave him the wrong toy.
Please – is there anybody out there?
He’s autistic.
193
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O FOR THE WINGS OF A DOVE
You are not obsessive

as you tick off your shopping list,
check your Birthday list,
pay your bills as clockwork.
You are not compulsive

as you delete your emails,
delete your ex-correspondent friends,
buy your weekly beer and curry.
Obsessively, compulsively inane,

you cannot claim to know your mind,
the jewels of human Fabergé
engraved in rote conformity
to socialese and human sleaze.
Excuses, excuses,
his OCD an eiderdown of doves
to keep a mind encased within its skull -
without it he can’t fly.
194
HAPPILY DEFROSTING PARADISE
Happiness is a sneaked kiss at the checkout,

A girlish holding of hands and queueing for ice cream,
A meal for two outrageously sublime
As others consider children, beer or sport.
Happiness is love on ice, on the edge,

A meeting for chilli and rice.
Strange how wedding bells and white soon gleam
Confetti-bright with life in rainbow’s prism.
Happiness, as a child, chases the butterfly,

Poeticises each slice of life,
Cares not a fig for bearing Euro fruit -
Creates an Eden full of apple cores.
So strange that consummation’s lesser known

Than knowledge as an evil good, a loss of Paradise.
195
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FLUSHING OUT DISCRIMINATION (Davidian)
He fails to grasp discrimination’s ire,

His outrage loud and lusty, full of fire.
‘It’s so unfair,’ he screams, he wants to play:
Electric, mobile, it’s his turn today.
The wheelchair girl is crying.
‘Hit that boy too,’ he fails to understand,

A bully’s tactics are his foreign land.
They think to tease discrimination’s rage,
Though primer leaves have never reached that page.
He rotes, ‘Two types of toileting are found

For carers to assist the wheelchair-bound.’
Do playground bullies learn he is no toy?
Discrimination fails, autistic boy.
196
GENESIS OF EXCLUSION
It takes a long time to diagnose exclusion,

vast Genesis of little deaths each year.
At the first sign of disease a leper
is branded, outcast, made to ring a bell.
Stares rise but a moment after delivery:
if a baby is labelled ‘Downs’.
So how long does it take to diagnose

a wide-eyed smile, a high-pitched laugh,
a Monty Python life or gait?
Supermarket tantrums rise in flames,
as Phoenix from the ashes of toddlerhood.
Autism’s unspoken pain, through little deaths each year.
Baby’s empty cry, toddling into sounds,

a clicking of points and signals without a Thomas
smile;
revolving doors of pre-school’s failing play.
Speech therapy, phonetics, rules;
tick charts, time out and calming strategies.
Praise, rewards and firm, clear words;
reports and Statements, boundaries
and stars for school and home and out.
Penalties, home goal, red card,
a little death each year.
Staring rises a moment after playgroup:

parents, professionals, pedestrians, pensioners,
a bell rings behind their eyes,
‘Unclean, unclean, protect my Project: Eden.’
A high-pitched laugh, a wide-eyed smile,
a clicking of points by rote,
until children are shunted into sidings.
Tumbling of empty sounds,
one day the family’s excluded - a little death each day.
197
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RESTING IN PEACE (Somonka)
“Rest well this weekend,

you have our fullest support
and forms, procedures
ensure service does not fail:
social, nine to five, service.”
Please, anybody,
purpose-prompt your answerphone,
pick up the phone, please
prompt Prime Time tomorrows, please.
Point-blip, pointed-bleep, point-less.
198
RIDING HIS BIKE WITH HANS

NOTE: Hans Asperger, who first diagnosed Asperger
Syndrome (c1940s)
He learnt to ride his bike today,

pedalled hard around his Close,
cycled in time with six and five,
but couldn’t keep pace with Hans.
He bravely lost stability,

balanced on two wheels not four,
bent to the curve that helped him grow,
He turned to chat on cycle track,

politely fell, grazed his shins,
fought hard to calm his young boy’s pride,
He learnt to ride his bike today,

balanced taut Asperger’s curves,
found syndromes hardly paced or fought –
and couldn’t outpedal Hans.
199
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BODIES ROUTINE AS DAY AND NIGHT

(P.I.L.F. Poem)
My curtains dare to breathe, each morning new,

opening to a scene, though old, yet raw.
Closed doors fling wide to routines, fresh as day,

I mutely taste each word that’s gone before.
Digestion patterns as the midday sun,

package meals convenience foods once more.
Laying upon my bed so late at night,

My aching flesh and bones, long-wintered, thaw.
200
BREATHALYSING DICTION
The rain in Maine

falls plainly on the sane,
the sane in Spain
fall gamely in the rain.
The rain in lanes
falls tamely on the game,
the games in Spain
fail, namely, due to rain.
The rain falls pitter, patter, Officer,

my words are plainly, routinely in line.
Plain clothes and plainly sane,
if sanity’s in gamely Spain.
Walk tall or faceless,
I did it ‘My Way’, plain,
and I can still walk straight
if you’re insane.
201
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PIPPED AT THE POST BY HARRY AND WILL
‘All this useless beauty.’

Ah no, Greensleeves:
it may lead to the scaffold,
a basket of straw.
But ‘What are we to do
with all this useless beauty’?

Until it becomes as straw,
as powder, as rouge.
But what are we to do,
when the scaffold slashes through our youth;
leaves us green but far too ripe?
Greensleeves, your beauty buds a Virgin Queen,

inspires blank verse, to bard upon his boards.
But what are we to do?
A king may wear his heart upon his sleeve,

but green the poet, now, who versifies,
for green hill, Greensleeves, green and pleasant land
–
a ‘Silkie’ Bard’s long-shadowed every word.
References:
‘Greensleeves’ attributed to Henry VIII (Ann Boleyn);
‘Silkie’ Bernard’s ‘ghost’; ‘All this Useless Beauty’
Elvis Costello.
R.I.P. (Minimal Davidian)
Progressive, step-by-step, creating form,

Imagist, vivid yet, her bright mind’s storm,
Lyric, for poetry must flow and sing,
Fusion, each title bonds, yet there’s the sting –
Penelopeanne Dalgleish.
202
QUEEN ELIZABETHS MEET SUNFLOWERS

(Meltdown at the Garden Centre till)
It was an ordinary afternoon at the Garden Centre,

a quiet time when the kids were at school.
Gardening, it seems, is for the elderly, the leisured
classes.
It’s for the stressed as well.

Pansies neatly declare order out of chaos -
for lives bordering insanity.
It began precisely on cue, like snowdrops,

creating angles on spring and the year ahead.
Trolley, plants, patio tub, checkout.
It’s sod’s law (suitable for gardeners digging in):

three short queues reduced to a trailing lobelia,
dotted with ‘Queen Elizabeth’ roses, thorn or
thornless varieties.
Its splendid sunflower display drooped, stakeless,

no-one realised primary flowers grew tall, loud,
bright and solitary.
Prize bloom could not shine among pruning stars and
moon.
“It’s OK,” the checkout-bored gnome confided,

“I saw you on the telly.” The queue melted in
sympathy,
returned to ‘mundanity’ – staff shortages and service.
203
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A LOVE-NEGATING LIFE (sonnet)

(to spinsterhood)
Never to feel the wonder of first love,

counting stars, wrapped in courting’s firm embrace.
Never to give a self so he may prove
your soul mate more than all the human race.
Never to fight so that his worth excels,

to play a little cold so fires may burn.
Never to vow quicksilver’s dross repels;
your love bands bud - each rose plucks his concern.
Never to drape around his friendly voice,

to banter on the phone like chores are dead.
Never to know this home is his first choice:
your parting only near as life’s fine thread.
You could have sparked bright orbs, joined to your

man.
You could have birthed his children’s bubbling span.
204
TIMES TRAVELLER MILKS AUTISTIC WAY
You were meant to be at school.

I felt such a fool as you told the checkout girl,
5 x your age,
to look out for bargains.
You shouldn’t have been at home.

I felt so alone, your carer late
and you 5 x impressed
with penny slot machines.
You took a shine to the hotel lobby.

I felt your hobby wild as dreams,
5 floors x 5 rooms, a lift,
card entry; kitchens, restaurant.
You have me booked and registered.

I felt honoured as a guest of yours:
Before (1) carer (2) receptionist (3) checkout, and (4)
girl.
Now for Mum’s ID and DOB (5).
205
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BOYS WILL BE BOYS (and Autistics will be

Autistic)
You didn’t understand what he was like.

You could relate to his great appetite,
for he enjoyed the finer things in life.
Your flesh and blood, his Aunty’s type –
until he kicked the door in.
You thought his nature like the summer sun.

You could not see his parents wilt and burn,
for thunder charges fast into a storm.
Your flesh and blood, bolt lightning strikes at home –
until those hinges buckled.
You thought his mischief simply boyish fun.

Your mind disabled by his perfect form;
conditioned, like your son, yet soon outgrown.
Your flesh, his blood, could germinate as sown –
until he smashed that Fire Door.
206
RAKING THE HEARTH OF SUMMER
Raking that hot summer, which seemed to never end:

Stoke-sending postcards; applied suncream; insect
bites.
Rake light-sparking laughter at Garden Centre wares:
Stoke flabbergasted stares, at early Christmas cards.
We cannot resist a bargain.
Raking spring’s bright packaging, months to glow in

hope.
Stoke throats dry as sun dust: bulb planters gouging
earth.
Rake-searching for new blooms, as embers in your
fog:
Stoke crackling Yule logs’ flumes, Boxing Day,
chocolate-rich;
We cannot resist sales bargains.
207
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SOME THINGS NEVER CHANGE
‘Grandad with the beard’ has remained

precisely that.
Baby never explored nostrils, pinches, beards in
general.
Grandad exchanged sweeties for Fish ‘n’ Chips.
Grandad remained precisely,
absolutely bearded.
One day, the boy will buy Fish ‘n’ Chips

for ‘Grandad with the beard’ -
even when there is no beard to pull
and fingers pluck, autistic,
his own fine grandson’s beard.
208
DOES HE TAKE SUGAR?
They didn’t know what hit them:

Van blocking the quiet Close,
kids unpacking energy, adults – furniture.
They were so polite and new,
keen to keep friendly boundaries.
They didn’t count on haggard parents,

recycling kids, dodging cars,
heat rising, like hedges, by degrees.
They were puzzled. ‘We’ve lost a son,’

until, Lowry-like, all littered the Close:
Children, bikes, water guns and carers.
Dante’s Inferno steamed on their brand new
doorstep.
They didn’t know why he screamed,

kicked cars, screeched of broken Rules,
refused, in a meltdown of anxiety,
caring fun, clipped box-like as topiary.
It seemed churlish to welcome them by rote:

‘Do you take sugar?’
HAIKU
Human nature’s droll.

Haiku grasp etermity:
fools can count and write.
Nature seeds humans.

Anthropology’s cool as
cucumber salad.
209
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IF LOVE IS SWEETER
If you can savour love as others fall foul,

and lose your heart, yet blame no female charm.
If you trust again, throw in no wimpish towel,
but let your family see you reach no harm.
If you echo-sound the depths of Windermere,
or climb Ben Nevis and return by dark,
or visit Eden, yet keep your love sincere,
tease thistles, leeks, not roses in the park.
If you taste each dish, claim not to be the cook,

yet super-star one mistress in your house.
If you warm to friend or foe through mirrored look,
to save shame’s face, read culture in a mouse.
If you coo dull seconds, lightly as a dove,
with wit and stamina to match life’s span.
Then earth is clover, wrapped in a mother’s love,
and – what is more – you’ll bless your woman’s man!
CANTERBURY TALES
I looked up rhymes cooked in this book,

since I yearned for my poem to win.
Quick-thinking vicar chanted sin,
now my ‘Nun’s Tale’s’ stuck without fuck.
210
THAT’S LIFERS FOR YOU!
Surely life’s for sharing,

it comes round yet again:
More for her and him and them,
quite driving me insane.
Your wefts are warped to other’s lives,
loose strands ‘ave th’air bereft.
If your self returned ‘Identikit’
a finished tapestry would be left.
UNSEASONAL FIREWORKS
He’s setting code locks on his door tonight

and bleeping like a microwave
and cutting cardboard keys in sequenced shapes.
Outside the wind is whipping round our court,

as storm clouds gather in his fevered brain
and gusts may bend the oaks, but not his fear.
Tonight a storm of fireworks fills his night

and cracks and bangs keep shattering his dark.
His pitch is raised, like seagulls on the wind
and every night repeats until New Year.
211
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BLUES FOR MARY OF THE ROCKS
Betrothed with three rings, engaging tale of

something old, something new, something
borrowed…
each blue as her eyes, deep as the ocean.
Librans celebrate birth, a New Year gift.
So virginal, the sapphire gleamed first love,

encircled by each sparkling diamond star.
This ring, withdrawn to take a band of gold,
enclosed a clutch of infants, each a prince.
A pregnant, gleaming topaz, ripe, brand new,

conjoined at finest points in twining gold.
Love’s letters knotted, they would never part
and romance shone, a comet in its course.
A cache of borrowed vouchers, now well-used,

another topaz, firmly set and blue.
‘Crossed lovers’ garnished synchronicity
and accent jewels, as ‘Mary of the Rocks’.
Romantic novels told engaging tales,

quaked loving assignation’s cocktail match
to consummate, in prose, erotic blues.
Yet as the stars that never failed to shine
and as the oceans, deeper than first love,

and as New Year, a gift of constancy,
first ring, unasked, was washed and strayed its hand
and faithful love burned, bought another orb
which snapped after a season, well insured,

and so this Heathcliff rushed to Argos’ moors,
a safer gem was slipped on Catherine’s hand.
No Linley had a chance to steal his love.
212
Think of the gleaming stars, they were her eyes,

insurance, simply paper from the store.
Sea’s breezy smile, her face, for three wise men,
her lover crossing sails on gems, not rocks.
But I will end as good rhymes always should,

leaving sensuous hints of consummate blues.
Assistant wisely asked, ‘Will you insure?’
‘You bet!’ they laughed… sealed love with peck and
pen.
THE MONTH OF MAY (SESTINA)
It’s the morning after - tulip petals

are dumping gaudy colours on the ground,
lips pouting and taut with satisfaction
as it swells with all nature its summer
and seals the memory, as wax, its mark,
or parchment into print, a photograph.
Morning’s late, a sepia photograph.

Stiff images poise, motionless petals
of grey generations leaving no mark,
until pruned harsh, to bud from barren ground.
Rose on rose on rose, to bloom all summer,
russet shades to scenting satisfaction.
Blades fatten, unseen, to satisfaction,

in a soft-greening woodland photograph.
Bright bluebells peal to long wedded summer,
as the May buds light in bridal petals.
Dandelions service picnics’ lush ground,
daisy chains linking sentiment’s aged mark.
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Magnolia leaves admiration’s mark:

passage of the stars to satisfaction.
Confetti waste, as snow, to bleach spring’s ground,
till afternoons are but a photograph
for eyes bathed in tears, not feasting petals.
Almost gone, we dote on lasting summer.
Forsythia, hot as sun’s long summer,

yet fading fast, to evening’s shaded mark.
Winter stems bloom bare to sunbeam petals,
then greenly thicken with satisfaction:
digitally printing a photograph,
enhancing and removing the background.
All flowers theme the sunset of May’s ground:

thirst for sun and rain and verdant summer.
Computers scan each garden photograph
and run a slide show as a virtual mark;
gracing winter’s sighs of satisfaction.
Feasting tired eyes, newly bathed with petals.
Night-ground is luminous, with white its mark,

scents of summer offer satisfaction
and photographs don’t fade, unlike petals.
214
HEARTBEAT COUNTRY IN MELODIES AT

DUSK
Do not go to bed with your thoughts

in the crowding darkness,
or sense the wings of owls or bats
or thrash the lamp, like moths, to seek your light.
Do not count heartbeats’ arrhythmia

or pause and gasp in case they are your last.
Do not map tomorrow
or dematerialise your ghostly fear
or rock to sleep your yesterdays,
your childhood or your children’s tucked up wraiths.
Do not meditate on REM or SAD

or listen for the melody of stars.
Do not think at all –
for there lies death… or poetry.
Note: Thanks to Gerald Hampshire and Sidney

Morleigh, for their inspirational poems.
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AN ARCHITECTURED ALIEN SKY
An architectured alien sky

can breathe no life if we pass by
and fail to see the tranquil limbs
of past millennial living things.
All land and air and seasons tamed

to mechanistic times are strained
and fail to dance upon the breeze
of oceans leafing land - our trees.
Ash as the firewood fuelling woods

like printout embers, modern books;
a round recycled world ignites
organics’ natal earth-tree sprites.
OCEANIC MIND
My son will not remember how, that day,

he tried to stop the tide and dig a trench
to meet, entrenched, the waves - yet could not shift
or build a castle dug from shifting sands.
And he will not remember long ago,

or sail those brilliant oceans of his brain,
when whipping winds and winds of change were
moored
but left us with no reach to sail home.
And when the sun was harboured for the night,

his night was built with routine dunes ashore,
and sleep was never deep as silence gained
by anchoring a skittish craft – my son.
216
LIMERICK
My guinea pig pined in the hay

till teacher sent Lily to stay.
We blushed when we found
how two cages sound
when ‘His and Hers’ pigs scent ‘the May’.
LIMERICK
My guinea pig’s sibling had died.

He hid in his cage. The staff cried.
His sad history
bred our sympathy.
Now carrot ‘Whee’ nurtures our pride.
SERVIS NON COMPRIS (Millenielle Sonnet)
The restaurant is getting full,

its ample fayre is too replete;
more modest meat and price compete
next door, although the food is dull.
We tempt the chalkboard menu fat

and morsel bite-sized brain food snacks
and moisten drinks/desserts like facts
so he will stay as child, not brat.
We squidge, like ice cream from a cone,

and splat around the service door
as customers sweep up the floor.
Their entrance is his hazard zone.
Food cannot tempt his body’s needs,

until his brain’s changed where he feeds.
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SHEDS
Come rest within this little shed

At the ending of the day
And let your soul stray to the sky
As it sheds its mantle, light.
BEDROOM
Come wake the dawn upon your bed

And stretch those comfy folds.
Hold warmth and sunlight as you rise
To flesh-embedded prose.
218
KERB CRAWLER
He sat beside a green recycling box

on the kerb;
a gleaming stainless steel bin
polished, as a private on parade,
standing in line.
He sat on the kerb in the car park – waiting -

his purchase pristine for a modern home.
Why a Corporation green bin,
like camouflaged supplies?
He was on a sortie of sorts:

supermarket trolley dumped,
awaiting the pick-up.
I wondered would he bring his wheelie bin

next week…
219
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THINKING BEFORE I HEAT
I am feeling my age
and that is menopausal:
thinking twice before I dare
be myself,
act freely,
relax;
relate to modernity.
The last time I felt this slow:

old ladies overtook me,
climbing hospital steps to gynaecological wards.
Recovering limbs to stand up,
stand still, step forward,
climb a little, never bend
and avoid twisting like suspenders.
I feel like an invalid,

watching what I eat and drink -
waiting, fearful I might think at all -
slow wonder that my afternoons soon fade,
yet jaded by the island I’ve become.
I feel less aids to agelessness of soil

and fail to earthen up my body’s need
to ache and toil and leave the race of time.
It will all come, and all be well, too soon
I’m slowly thinking menopause is mine

and now that I am middle-aged, it’s fine.
220
‘SLIDING DOORS’ – COMING TO A

SUPERMARKET NEAR YOU
(Dizain)
A vast food supermarket closes down

to furnish fast food restaurant instore.
Customers’ shopping habits move uptown
before they junk convenience for more
than they can stomach in this Sliding Door –
So children will dash parents’ nerves each time

they shop for groceries, but quickly chime
“I want…” and then the shopping list is junked,
the trolley’s filled with slime, oh, what a crime!
Why was the coffee shop so – trashing – dumped?
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COOKING THE BOOKS
I have a book in deepest red,

I keep it closely by my bed.
In gleaming gold, for all to see:
the author – there in print – is me.
To bring to book my wondrous tome

I had to mortgage half my home.
Its spectacle suggests a view,
though rooms are blind and readers few.
I’ve booked a venue, vainly great;

my Writer’s Block’s in such a state.
Those tickets sold fast – not my book…
my name sounds like a famous cook.
HE ROSE TO AUTUMN’S PYRE (Quintet)
You, lovely, rose

in timely joy to sweet desire
and, in ache’s throes,
you satiated my dark pyre
and quenched your smoke to dust, to seed my words
with fire.
Note: Inspired by the Quintets of Edmund Waller and

Algernon Charles Swinburne.
222
BURSTING THE YELLOW BALLOON
Sunset like some yellow balloon,

a moment after its burst
of laughter, vanishing as
so much hot air.
Contentment settles in for the night,

to scents of the lily,
Madonna-white. Immaculate
as conception’s bliss.
Night wraps no peace

of safety, as a moth flotilla
flutters on the still-damp air,
and yet a peace of sorts wraps souls in sleep -

for dawn will come so soon for each day’s war.
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SCRUMPTIOUS STEPS RETRACED (Sonnet)
A restaurant improves the second time,

appealing to dull senses slow to meet
untempered scents of sight and smell so fine,
tuned as the clock, dictating when to eat.
Refined, Just Scrumptious tempts the palate’s mood

and whispers tastes so succulent. Unfair
to eateries displaying choicest food.
Mouth-watering, their meat seasons no fare.
In Stamford’s pretty village streets we wage

a war of sated yearning for each plate.
Absenced too soon, as players on taste’s stage,
their bill of fare has baked our tender state.
Repentant: sumptious table greets our trust.

Raw pilgrim stomachs, groaning fit to bust.
PUSS IN PANTOMIME
I sat at table in a dining room

as my poor ears mused in and out of time.
Delightfully, the cat-half mewed and purred
and stirred my feline soul to prowl with rhyme.
In shocking contrast, from the other half,

a boudoir in John Lewis’ thrilled hindsight.
A cat clawed silk delights in pantalettes.
Oh my, this Puss in Boots is wearing tights.
224
LISTEN TO MERMAIDS SINGING
We live in terror of insidious threat

and whether we can calm the crowding storm:
Olympic, dowse tornado-wreaking debt
before our weather brews into a form
of sea-gods seeking vengeance as the norm.
We read the daily press for every threat

and flick the switch to calm each newsdesk’s storm;
consider paper-bill Ads for our debt
before deep Neptune bailiffs rise and form
a B-rate movie of our country’s norm.
We fly to destinations fraught with threat

of knife-attacks and bombs; staff calm each storm
at check-in, as the price of safety’s debt.
Prepared for each emergency, we form
an ordered queue – accepting terror’s norm.
We die in every age and state of threat

as Neptune sinks his calm to force a storm.
Our paper-boat, mortality’s World Debt,
breathes fleets of terrorists to shore who form
veiled mermaid wails to rock-drown custom’s norm.
We metamorphose Neptune’s sea-green threat:

bright Triton’s seashell trumpet-calms our storm;
Poseidon’s love affairs spring nymphs, not debt,
and Pluto shades the dead till heavens form
a brotherhood of earth as sea-star’s norm.
Note: Roman myth: Pluto (god of the dead) and

brothers Jupiter (god of earth and heaven) and
Neptune (god of the sea).
Greek myth: Poseidon, son Triton (trumpeter of the
deep). Ovid (Metamorphoses).
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RELUCTANT REFUGE
No place to call your home,

no words, no bags
to welcome you into my ordered street.
I do not want to meet you or to pace
my town or country to your foreign state.
Surround me like an island with no sea.

In me there is no refuge
to house a refugee.
226
FOR A SPECIAL SEMI-YOUTH
You’re almost there and son you want to rise

to life as it will be when you’re mature.
No-one can show you all I need to tell:
I’m so afraid of what you need to know.
The world out there has quickly run downstream,

you don’t know how to bolt a youthful door
or welcome friends, or those who may cruise in
and, cunning, padlock your flawed nature, steal
the self they seek, when you’ve not yet become –

you barely float this world submerged in fears.
You’ve grown too big for hugs and for safe arms
and nurture’s strength is helpless to let go.
My son, you grow in mind, your heart’s a babe;

your muscle’s bulking fast, my ageing’s slow.
I can’t design hulk safety to your build:
home mooring’s so uncool, youth harbours foul.
NEAT WATER
Water is not fizzy,

water is so cool,
water comes out of my tap
and sinks into a pool.
I’m glad when I need water,

I don’t run to a well,
I’m glad I need no bucket
or a large and salty shell.
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My water’s fresh, my water’s clean,

so when I want a drink,
I only need to lift my glass
above a kitchen sink.
PUDDING LANE AND THE GREAT FIRE
If you go down to Pudding Lane,

look for tall Monument
and climb the tight and winding steps,
breathing loud and long.
You will reach the coolest views

of London all around.
But don’t look down,
just count the steps,
for ground is far below.
You win a prize when you come down:

a neat Certificate,
to show your friends how many feet
reach Pudding Lane in London Town.
Then you can tell them of the fire,

date where it all began,
read why great London’s paved with stone,
built after the Great Fire.
228
SEASONS AND THE LUNAR CYCLE
They used to think the sun revolved

around a static earth;
the land was flat and, domed above,
all planets hung in space.
***
In gravity we orbit,
calendars counting seasons,
and for a Leap Year’s extra day
we reason why the earth rotates
- calculate a year, or so -
day and night’s kaleidoscope.
Bright moon keeps pace and orbits earth,

racing with the sea,
as sailors mark charts of their route
from lunar months and, every day,
two tides turn routinely.
Records of Latitude, Longitude,

date morning’s cruising Time Lines.
Magnetic fields, volcanoes,
Global Warming’s unpredictable weather.
The sun, always expected,

gives light and warmth and life.
I’m glad the earth’s not static
and, though it shows its age,
I would not wish it round and flat –
we need revolving space.
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DAWNING PENTECOST
A deer, startled, darts into tree’s cover,

wild rabbits twitch their ears and run for shade.
Early morning walk exhilarates sense.
Climbing to a garret room of windows,

house martins dance a new day on the breeze;
faintly howling wind whips round the tower,
a pleasing aspect everywhere I look.
Teuton’s solitary belfry at dawn.

Sun comes beaming through eastern gothic arch;
bright chandeliers, aflame with light, seem dim,
yet dance in tongues of flame at Pentecost.
I sink into a comfortable chair.
I leave into a rushing wind of God,

recalling age of trees, dynamic limbs.
A pleasing aspect everywhere I look.
230
ELEGY TO MOTHERHOOD
You were so small, a mite, when you were born

too soon to leave my womb, too fine for home.
Your careful nurturing could not conform
to routine parenting till you had grown.
I could not ask, not then, what you’d become
‘And now you live, and now my life is done.’
You were a small-framed child, with words writ large,

a code to tease and stress each break and dash;
your patterns read each stage with sounds less harsh.
Watched close, you shone conformity’s fine badge.
I could not hide the pride now you’d begun
and now you live and now my life is done.
You fill my dream-mind with your peopled state

and laugh and play and make each game a start.
Too early, not too soon to be, nor late,
developing fine style, a work of art.
I could not ask, not now you have become,
and now you live and now my life is done.
Tichborne’s Elegy, 1586, ‘And now I live, and now my

life is done.’
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VENUS BORN AT SUNSET
As bright as morning, sun sets

in juvenile earth rays,
dust sheen of finest gold leaf
seeds fertile gloom-ripe days.
No virgin host arising,

to evening’s burnished night.
No joy on dark’s horizon,
just denser, deeper sight.
As dark fights sunlight’s bathing,

seems wild, late-born as youth.
Dawn broods right’s midnight watches,
fermenting day’s lost truth.
232
MRS HEELIS AND BABY JOHN
‘John floats in a meat basket’, fast asleep;

Beatrix scribbles pies of dumpling kitten,
rats lick their lips and sharpen knife to slice
a share, as feasting eyes taste ‘puppy fat’.
John does not float for Potter’s infant tale,

though Hawkshead schools the father of this son.
Cosy voyage rocks a cradle’s faction,
where tourists meet historic writers’ yarns.
John floats to Grasmere’s island in the lake;

his lady sinks her journalled pen in ink
to snuggle ‘Moses baby’ in dull reeds,
till William scribes a feather to her wit.
John floats, within a basket, in a boat

and Dorothy admires the spectacle:
an infant, rocked on journey, fat with sleep,
fulfilling love’s maternal sisterhood.
ABBEY GROUNDS, WALSINGHAM (Magi)
Snow had fallen

snow drop snow
snowdrops dropping snow
immaculate grey day

blue with cold
robed virginal sky
earth, leaves, buds

shivering pregnant goosebumps
to spring fulfilment
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RINGING THE BELL ON SCHOOL DAYS
School days, more familiar in old news reels, than

memory.
Insignificant things rewind the cine of my mind,
the bell jolts back my beating heart
to routine, duty, ordinary life.
They did not have door entry systems then
and strangers were unmonitored, like milk duty,
bottles half-full, tops and silver foil
recycled for charity, rustling from class to class,
shiny silver badges, freshly washed.
Tragedy fell the day our aviary was blighted

and every budgie received its death-sentence.
Routine was Christmas Panto, ladies dancing, lords
aleaping
and, ever-present, school nativity.
Hopskotch and skipping ropes,

innocuous as children’s comics, waiting for shiny
conkers:
post-war medals for each warrier boy.
Cindy dolls were blond and Barbies brown
and nothing sounded better than the bell,
the ringing four to send us home
to Coronation streets, black and white TV.
Assemblies, hymns and rounders games,

where girls did cooking, sewing skills
and boys did woodwork, metalwork.
Seasons blended classroom walls
from Harvest, Bonfire, Halloween,
to Easter chicks and summer holidays.
234
Pea-shooters – then – the greatest weapons

and Jackie pin-ups back at home,
girlie vice of chewing playground sweetened
dummies:
dire warnings in assembly, penalties,
in days when The Headmistress was still feared.
Everyone went home to mum and dad,

divorce was still a mystery,
computers simple as a 12” rule.
To ring the bell on school days always
bring uniformity to days long-lost
in black and white of senses’ every shade.
GAME, SET AND MATCH TICS
Gravel hurts. Course and chafing grit between the

toes,
rasping summer’s sun and sand and sea: it’s OK
to go bare, wet, gritty, without stout shoes. A test
soon washed away, rinsing off childish naughtiness.
Sand’s cool, gentle rubbing particles ebb and flow,

tides of a pleasure beach, worth a sack of playsand.
Decking trimmed, close-fitting lid, witches’ broom to
sweep
modern stainless steel chic to bed, for adult games,
like wine, nibbles; bare toes in a patio hot tub.
Mud is sexy, squelching underfoot. Intimate

massage, pins and towels. Sticking, belonging,
shaping;
like an aggressive hippo on lunchtime stampede.
Muck’s anonymous as faces’ squeezed therapy:
sets of nails, pairs of eyes and seas of squiggly mire.
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Half of outside’s left on the doormat, spreading fast

as a cold in a centrally-heated office.
Impromptu, she insists, shoes left on the doormat.
My shoes. Face tics. Bare toes, peeking through
comforting
reinforced tights, poke lurid humiliated nails.
Mudpacks plod laminate floors, carpet’s jungle life.
Porkers unshod to public scrutiny. Last time

I was graciously provided slippers, choices,
feeling neither disadvantaged nor stark naked:
like sharing deck and hot tub with strange intimates.
Carpets deep-piled, customs perfectly minimal,
natural as a Japanese home; white shag-pile,
textured barefaced luxury, not British reserve.
Sit twitching irritated, intemperate air.

Next time I’ll ask – serious – if they keep flea powder.
Guests wear a pair of courts to serve a harder game…
play ball and heel, ball and heel. I just love tennis.
My team slip… slip… slippers away, minimally.
236
HANGMAN’S FREE VERSE
Sometimes poets misshape a free verse poem

for no poem at all.
Cutting fabric to shape, seeing weave and weft,
feeling texture of verse;
shocking to pattern’s imprint.
No rough edges remain, fraying.
The last snip permanent as vasectomy;
or a hung pair of curtains.
Sometimes poets wrap cloth round a misshapen

earth,
bulging formlessness to a cow in aspic,
serving rare delicacy, or artlessness.
Poems hang,
paduasoys to heaven’s walls,
or Padua’s Renaissance.
All ‘Paradise Lost’ and ‘Found’
to earth’s form and rule.
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SLEEPING MERMAIDS
Poetry’s not private, like a germ-rich cold

that spreads by default when sardine people
sneeze in accidents of distribution.
Prose sings in diaries, now lost to the world,

where correspondents fail to blot ink-thoughts
for generations of journalism.
Performance swims time’s recorded moments

of dying seas and shoals of gleaming fins.
Unrecorded, history’s rewritten.
Plays’ seamen cast vast overwhelming nets,

imagination savoured, staged by chance:
chill visions flipping tones for public taste.
Proud future spumes in public intercourse,

jingling rhyme and Sixties’ loving freedom.
Feint whale songs spread, aid accident’s design.
Poets make love not war, enemies sleeping

24/7 since 9/11:
all freedom lies if mermaids lose their voice.
238
TITANIC DREAM
I did not want to look at her, at first;

the terror swirled down circling corridors.
Each time, my psyche close, I could not run,
but screamed tornado-motions from the room.
So was this all? A patient bound in rags

of staring suffragettes and books on shelves?
‘No, Iris, you are drowned.’ The spectre sighed;
wraithed figurehead of ice and chandeliers.
I fell (fell, fell) into a chapel’s ancient well,

her death-pale face unwound, so ill, so ill.
‘No Iris?’ Bloated Iris. ‘Iris drowned?
Then fish for pearly necklace - two pale eyes.’
Faint Cadfael herbs arose to senseless nose,

feigned Rosemary and Thyme, who floated by, by, by;
but their bell jars seemed well and not so wise,
till Plath screeched suicide; her bulb-lit hell.
Ace fighter squadrons droned, ‘Remember me,’

Remember Me
one nurse aspired in vapours, needle high.
‘She’s not yet dead (not dead), she shall be well, so
soon,’
a voice cracked sound and light, my sight was
drained.
I stirred (and stirred) and froze, yet dared not wake,

for then the truth would kick my splintered door.
‘Fraternité, fraternité,’ I croaked
and choking coughs brought consciousness, not
sense.
My morning in the garden slowly chopped
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its healing herbs, to calm my dream-tossed scent.

I saw my Iris’s mind, a drowning cell.
No brave Cavell could bring her liberté.
One day, I knew – not long – the phone would ring,

egalité, her women’s fight, deceased.
Bereft of choice for Sylvia’s gasping chains,
her brilliance floating, Murdoch’s severed head.
The well, a monk, a Mother’s soothing voice,

well all manner
‘All’s well, this well is deep, yet she is well.’ of well
things
Her body fading slower than her brain, shall
be well
Alzheimer’s raised a brute to die at death.
240
TITANIC DREAM (revised version)
I did not want to look at her, at first;

the terror swirled down circling corridors.
Each time, my psyche close, I could not run,
but screamed tornado-motions from the room.
So was this all? A patient bound in rags

of staring suffragettes and books on shelves?
‘No, Iris, you are drowned.’ The spectre sighed;
wraithed figurehead of ice and chandeliers.
I felllll into a chapel’s ancient welllll

and her pale face unwounddddddd, for she was ill.
‘Is that a splash? Then IIIIIIIIIII am drowned, not
you,
so give to me the necklace o-o-o-o-o-o-o of your eyes.’
Feint Cadfael herbs rose, senseless, to my nose

aFnd RCosemary and ThymSe then floated by,
butF theiCr bell jars seemed wSell and not so wise,
till PFlath sCcreeched suicide; heSr bulb-lit hell.
Ace fighter squadronsZZZ droned D-D-D-D-D-D-D,

‘Remember me, ME ME ME’
One nurse aspIRED. In vap O U R S. Needle high.
‘She’s NOT YET Dead. She shall be. Well. So
sooooon.’
A crAcking voice broke down, my sight wAs drAined.
I stirrrrred anddd frrrrrrrrrrrroze, yet could NOT.

DARE. To wake. Tuwhit.
To woo.
for Kthen Kthe Ktruth Kwould KKkick Kmy
Ksplintered Kdoor.
‘Fraternité, fraternité,’ I croaked
KFKFKFKFKFKFFKFKFKFFFKFKFKKFFK
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anNNd chokKKKKing cough-GH-GH-GHs brought-T

consciousness, not sense.
My morning in the garden slowly chopped

its healing herbs, to calm my dream-tossed scent.
I saw my Iris’ drowning cell, her mind,
no brave Cavell could bring her liberté.
One day, I knew – not long – the phone would ring,

égalité, her women’s fight, then
deaddddddddddddddddddddd…
Left without choice of Sylvia’s gasping chains,
her brilliance floating BP BP BP BP, Murdoch’s
severed head BEEPPPPP.
The well, a monk, a Mother’s soothing voice,

‘All’s well, this well is deep, yet she is well.’
Her body fading slower than her brain,
Alzheimer’s raised a brute to die at death.
242
* WEDDINGS AND * FUNERAL(S)
* weddings and * funeral(s), it must be fifteen years,

and now my suit, although it’s best, is mothballed full
of fears.
I cannot open wardrobe door and wreathe its dust in
sheets
without recalling trousers creased into such varied
seats.
If I could live my life again, a new suit I would buy

so that my bedroom no more lived endangered by a
sigh.
I would ensure a jolly cloth, to make me laugh out
loud
and to each ceremony skip, less starched but much
too proud.
The vicar’s quip, ‘You’re much too late,’ – or

‘Wedding’s booked next week,’
and I could grin from here to here, as Fred’s most
festive freak.
My granddaughter, most whitely miffed, by my
recounted tale,
might pat me on my ageing pate, hiss ‘ That suit’s now
for sale!’
My walk, unaided by a stick, though serious gait might

show
if I turned up with mournful stare for mother’s
Romeo.
The ex, now there’s a thought, so fine, such sport
could flow so free
if I chose right: annoying grief; or smile and whoop of
glee.
* weddings and * funeral(s), I think I know the score,
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it seems to me the voting’s rigged, now I’ve passed

sixty-four.
The sums grow more conservative, so when it’s time
to go,
I’ve slept through wakes till no-one’s left - but vicar -
for my show.
I’ve made a deal, I’ve now struck gold, there’s one last
special gig,
if I must wear my suit again, I’ll dress it with a fig.
My birthday suit will suit me fine; don’t dress me in a
shroud.
I’ve spread the word to guarantee my launch attracts
a crowd.
Meanwhile my suit’s upon a Guy, that soon goes up in

smoke,
I lost few pounds for charity, a stylish hippie joke.
* weddings and * funeral(s), my ratings can’t go down;
hip jazz and jive, hop’s beaming nude: the finest
swinger in town.
244
‘PLEASE SUPPLY SNAPSHOTS’
Dear Blob, I’m sure you’re very nice,

though I can’t see your face.
To leave your work unpublished would,
I’m sure, be a disgrace.
But as you see from others’ pics,

no justice can be done:
there’s so much beauty in their verse,
which monochrome’s undone.
No disrespect to printers, ink,

but what the eye can see
is grey, 2-D and nothing like
each poet’s deeper ‘me’.
The writers’ lot is always hard

when visage looks so grim
and yet our verse, so heavenly,
misguises poesy’s dim.
So please send snappy dinosaurs –

in this museum they’re fine:
each sooty page holds kodachrome,
your radiant muse – and mine.
Inspired by Eleanor Rogers’ ‘Museum Piece’,

Linkway, Nov 2004.
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BUGLING WINTER
As soon as the clocks were turned back,

a sad and tacky damp crawled in,
drifting skin-thin with wretched leaves
and heaps of worm-casts on the lawn,
now worn down dank as mud’s rich slime.
Dark encroached its final traces;

afternoon’s sad light shivering,
chill winter’s clawing nails stretched out
too soon to say goodbye, to fall:
engorging embers, leaves to ash.
Yet summer reared its glorious fight

and kicked the air of freezing dawn,
to flush a lasting colour’s mount
upon the winter’s saddle, sound
the final hunts of redcoats, hounds.
White trousers muddied, beating rain

and flowers bushed while in full bloom.
Yet, beautiful with damp perfume,
the rose of England’s halcyon days
all gone to monochrome winter.
246
LATE PAYMENT
‘You tiresome verse-reciter, care –

I will pay you in the grave.’
But till then just watch me rave;
although your passage is unfair.
In endless repetitious ways

I will wrap your course and hide
underneath stiff patricide,
till finer verse lies down and stays.
In echoes of great need and rights,

no enfolding time to care,
rarity is not less fare
to ferry death within our sights.
No payment will delay the grave

- ferryman will never wait -
great excess will not pay late,
nor cancel debt if we behave.
So Shelley shells out as he may

- debt’s misfortune gravely long -
mourning’s dirge, yet not a song
and all of breathing life must pay.
Quote from ‘To Jane: The Invitation’ by Percy Bysshe

Shelley.
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ATTRIBUTES OF LOVE (Ghazal)
Your cheeks are wide, your welcome long,

your eyes dance, green, your nose formed strong.
Your lips adhere, so warmly fat

beside the fire you’re happiest at.
Your brows mock-shock, your welcome long,

your ears, though large, can do no wrong.
Your stubble chin, though rough and dark,

shaves smooth as milk: licked, sipped – a lark.
You hide your teeth - they fail to please -

which I will part, to please and tease.
Your raven hair, your nose formed strong;

your heady brow can do no wrong.
Your hands caress to love’s intent,

enfolding arms so heaven-meant.
Your feet so large they fail to please,

your legs fine-rigged to please and tease.
Your bum’s not neat, but it’s still fine

and, best of all, it’s mine, all mine.
Your lids as bags, they fail to please,

so rest and dream, don’t wheeze and sneeze.
Your midlife gut, not prone to beer

but curry feasts we share, my dear.
Your frame is fine, to please and tease,

but poor frail chest don’t wheeze and sneeze.
248
Your love, it’s true, can do no wrong

while this heart keeps your welcome long.
Your tide will wash to beach-pure sand,

parched sailor – love – you drink my land.
Eyre’s driftwood praise – Broad nose formed strong –

my vessel tides your welcome, long.
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‘HARBOUR WAVE’
(Tsunami)
They asked for little:

just sunshine
to cheer their lives, their homes.
Chance to return from an absence of news
24/7.
The sun barely failed to shine.

Ocean-calm
perfect sea;
beach.
Except for a brief, unforecast, break in weather,
a tidal wall of life and death.
And the sun shone,
shocking as Tsunami.
The stench unimaginable;

if only, unimaginable;
nothing at all.
Needing no imagination,
just home.
THE END
A RATTLEBAG OF UNTHEMED POEMS 1995 TO 2004
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RATTLEBAG OF POETRY

Published by the author. Distributed worldwide by obooko

This edition is available free of charge exclusively to obooko members for

DREAMS OF THE FARMYARD (FREESTYLE RONDEAU) ... 40

LEND ME YOUR EARS ................................................. 115

PEDLARS IN PAN’S SHADOW ..................................... 144

SOME LIKE IT UP (SOME LIKE IT DOWN) .................. 178

THAT’S LIFERS FOR YOU! .......................................... 211

LATE PAYMENT .......................................................... 247

THE STREAM (Age 11)

Where do you come from silvery flow?

I come from the hills,

PHILIP (Age 18)

I go into the desert;

I travel, for the Spirit

I see one struggling, questioning,

Yet why go to the desert?

Would a church be built in the desert?

(Written for the dedication of a new church; built -

The glare of the light

A womb ready to bear

The ring of the phone

Child with a name

WRAP THE BABY WELL

A blanket for the baby

A blanket for the baby

A blanket for the baby

A blanket for the baby

A blanket for the baby

A blanket for this baby

We looked round startled

We kept curtains drawn,

We presumed you might

A day seemed a week,

I dreamed you were leaving

Do I find you waking

I opened my present early this year,

Soon it will be Mothers Day,

With posies bright the children bring

Tired Dads remember to phone Mum

Why is it only on one day

I’ve made a card

She wants some chocs,

And Gran will come

Of course you know

And if you’re far

But mum or child

Will you be near me?

Call me your Mother,

Call too your brother,

Will you see this one?

Mothers Day happy?

LORD OF THE MANOR

The wood pigeon strides

COUNTING EASTER EGGS

One, two, three on the mantelpiece.

One, two, three through the letterbox.

One, two, three rings the telephone.

One, two, three fills the petrol tank.

One, two, three, service in the church.

One for Good Friday,

The windows fly open

A screech from the castle,

A struggle and wriggle