SUMMER POEMS (from 'Glimpses')
PENTRIDGE
Three
trees
upon a far
hill,
a road leading to them
green
green.
Hot fields of corn had drawn us onwards, upwards
and the clouds cried and skies
soared with buzzards
and earth below lay wide beneath our feet
and distant seas bore ships of sunlight
vanishing. I thought only
how to understand, enshrine,
in each moment of this life,
this moment.
SMELL OF SUMMER
Smell
of summer
smell
of dry
dung, the fleeting dragonfly
alighting on my jeans
smell
of barely beaten air
eyes
beaded by a mirrored sun
not meeting mine
smell
of dry
earth, of husk and dust and death and briefest
life
NORTHIAM HAIKU
In the churchyard, here
behind the hedge, lie flowers
for the dead, dying.
IN A MARSH CHURCH
Cries of sheep and rooks,
the drone of tractors turning hay,
reach here where cut flowers in a plastic vase
have not been changed
and Christ is always crucified
in dim glass.
MIDSUMMER NIGHT AT TYNEPITS COTTAGE
The curtain stirs
against the bright west
a moth purrs
WASHMORE HILL ON THE BERKSHIRE DOWNS, JUNE
Wind moves
unhindered on these open, empty hills,
its ripples, tides and currents
echoed in the convolutions of the turning corn;
now deepest green is swept with silver grey
and warmer green with russet, russet gold
and gold with cream.
The downs are swirling, seething like the sea
about a stillness held within the grain
of everything.
IN AN ANCIENT WOOD ON FAWLEY DOWN
Sunlight only
penetrates, transforms
this tangled mound of thorn,
the wild clematis.
One leaf
bears all the sun's radiance,
bears all the shadows of the earth
about itself.
ENTERING A WOOD ON THE HIGH DOWNS. SUMMER
Sudden coolness
sanctity
each footstep snaps the silence
vision
bone
a stone
engrained by sunlight;
ancient Liddington
a speck beyond the farthest far horizon
silhouette
of cones, of branches,
foliage
PETT LEVEL. JULY 5th
A heron
just
riding on the wind
TRAVELLING IN AUGUST
West
a hot wall of light
snapping ears of corn stand static
in the throbbing air
iron tracks converge, evaporate
among convolvulus and buttercups
setting off,
the journey stretches into possibilities,
the rockhard road
leads into mirages
AUGUST
Cobalt shadows
crosswise
over white dust
the harvest valley
out beyond this cage of coolness
burns
THE ESTUARY
Dead
land,
a shattered window rattles in the wind
where gulls rise
above the dead water and the dead sand;
dead land,
the city murmuring
across the sea exhales its columns curling
to the clouds;
the earth burns -
one ship
specked upon the blue
emptiness
IN A WOOD ON THE DOWNS
Thorn on thorn on thorn,
this web of sunlight holds
the spider spinning in its universe.
