MOMENT


It is as though a loved one

passing swiftly in a train

turned, smiled uncertainly

COLD


   cold

the sense of never knowing

how another sees; though each human eye

can fold about the stars, project

a kind of homespun order on the void

and though our features flow

in other veins, still

remains the cold sense

that even skin to skin a space divides us wider

than the sky; is this shade of blue

your shade of green, my world

your world? Each child alone in darkness,

father, daughter, son

conjoined by love while every sight and scent

is formed by memories of what alone is ours

   cold

frightening



I'm so fortunate to have had this poem and 'Now' wonderfully performed by Sonia Vilimova at www.soundcloud.com/sona-vilimova

Two Haikus


cold enough for snow
the wild wind rattles branches
on an iron sky


distant hills are pink
the window-pane is ice, leaves
drift on empty land

 

December, Fawley Down

From here
the downs look flat

their cold lines
converge on Liddington

one strip of pink
beneath a roof of cloud

these hills know
that snow is coming

even now
the earth folds in upon itself

no sound
of birds

NOW

The clock beats among the rafters,
here time becomes a rhythm, here in silence
rhythm holds the point of timelessness;
as crows in silence out across the moor
on outspread wings float upwards on the wind,
as clouds along the distant skyline
move, transform, accepting sunlight, shadow
now
this moment, now
is caught without the abstract
forward look of hope,
the backward look of pain or warm nostalgia,
now
imagination, memory are drawn within
the orbit of a single consciousness - the shadow lengthening,
the golden sunlight deepening to bronze
no longer move towards
inexorable night, no longer move towards
unending darkness, vacancy
but in acceptance of the darkness
turn eternally within a rhythm of their own,
the rhythm of the beating clock
which holds the point of timelessness
and sanctity
and silence
now

This is one of many quick sketches I made in a very ancient and abandoned vineyard on the outskirts of Paziols about twenty miles west of Perpignan in the foothills of the Pyrenees.