WINCHELSEA STATION, MARCH

Spring
is the thorn burning
in the dark wood,
the sky's chasm
slashing green across the hills;

spring,
the freshly gleaming
speck
of each unfolding leaf, each blade of corn
incised upon its own shadow.

Spring
is the crow suspended gold above the cold
field,
furrowed trunks aglow beneath the hedge;
dogwood, willow, bending booming writhing
in the east wind, the sky soaring,
driving sleet.





ON  A WALK WITH TERRY HULF

Secret lanes near Snargate,
hazy February afternoon;
pausing, twigs of hawthorn mesh in sunlight,
moving on, the mesh dissolves, resolves;
someone has cut some firewood,
stacked it neatly,
leaving it to moss and woodlouse;
here the fence is broken, through the hedge
some bullocks stand around a field
motionless; beyond lies kale
and beyond
the empty Marsh.





FEBRUARY - TWO HAIKU


Dying winter sun
glints and glows on thorns probed
by frail infinity


One sheep sharp upon
the skyline; winter sunlight
floods the scarred valley


7/2

Crows calling
in the vast hollow
of the sky





DUNGENESS

Wind
in rigging,
gulls
erupting,
crash
and boom
and thump
and hiss
of sea;

the shingle shimmering
beneath our feet.





LONG-TAILED TITS

Sudden sunlight,
sounds that barely brush the silence,
flitting silhouettes on webs of twigs
with pencil tails
everywhere

then gone
in bouncing, chirping squadrons grouped
on gleaming clouds; a mist before the sun,
a crow
calling on a cold
February day.

PARTING AT ST PANCRAS STATION

(Before the refurbishment)

 

Iron

and its monstrous sweep

defining emptiness

 

the echoed

throb, roar

of voices, sliding feet

to dim glass

 

against the sky's

gape.

February winds

on empty platforms

 

coal, diesel,

not in words

the cold

absolute reality of things

 

 

 

 

 

MEMORY AND MEMORIES - THREE HAIKU


Notes float through blossom
from his old pipe - drapes drifting,
slipper beating time.


Wooden stairs climbing
to the dark loft, scent of hay
and dry apples gone.


Where does time carry
all the substance of our lives?
Even stones dissolve.





THREE RUINED CHURCHES ON ROMNEY MARSH



HOPE, ALL SAINTS

As you reach,
through wiry, waving grass and scattered trees,
this rubble henge against a vacant sky,
it forms a church's shape.

Forgotten Hope
now shelters only huddled sheep and ghosts,
restructured only in imagination
on a mound among some roofless walls and stones.



MIDLEY

Wild grasses wave
where knees once bent in prayer,
bones are scattered on the harrowed earth
where bread and wine were shared.



EASTBRIDGE

As the daylight fails,
as the ruined tower darkens
on the fading clouds,
as the blackbird, scolding,
swoops among the bushes,
in remembered voices and in silence
comes the moment of reconsecration
on this empty land.





SLOW-WORM ON THE ALLOTMENT

lifting
of a sheet of plastic,
flash
of silver-bronze;
the surreptitious slithering away
from light and scrutiny -
a length of living braid, her tiny head
in glimpses probing, parting weeds,
so clean
within her home of rotting compost,
gone





DAWN AFTER SNOW

The room
dignified by pale light,

a bird chirping very softly
on a neighbour's lawn;

by the vanished path,
tips, stumps of things

beyond the window.
Earth

new, poised
to be discovered

by the cold
sun





A DREAM

Such a small
thing to ask

such a large
thing to gain

simplicity -
the surf breaking on the sand

the cry
of gulls