Grey Wood Swing

Not The Bearer

Sometimes Love’s amphoras
Overflow, enriching
Not the bearer
But everyone below,
Until Love’s ceramic
Sun-glazed jugs
Finally become discoloured,
Emptied, and in shadow.

And although
I hide my losses well
You can always tell
When I am struggling –
I forget
To cut my toenails
And I forestall
The days of the week
Which I have changed
To names of trees
Extinct by thirty years;
Monday’s Ash,
Tuesday’s Elm,
Wednesday Oak;
Poplar’s heights
Touch Thursday’s toes,
Willow’s Friday’s river-cloak,
A weekend fit for toasting
Alder and Horse Chestnut,
Cold kidney pie
With mustard mash
I misplaced from last week’s lunches
Before returning to ash.

You can also tell
When I am unwell –
Chores do not interrupt and
You can hear the sounds
Of chaos from somewhere
Down the hall –
A thousand years of loneliness
To only end it all.

Love can pour back upwards –
See the citadel’s sorrow;
Place a lid upon the urn
And try again tomorrow.

Haiku #780

780.

Trees with sequin leaves;
Glittering, confetti snow;
Icicles for teeth.

Pine Cone Lakes

A snow-coated forest,
Fall petal-like flakes,
I live for scents flowing
Over Pine Cone Lakes.

I heard fragile firs hurting –
We all make mistakes –
Some perish, mine open,
Like those endless snowflakes.

Ice-lava, my forearm,
A moon without lovers,
Forgetting to swallow,
A frozen lake covers.

Haiku #770

770.

Weighty horse chestnuts,
Falling like muddy snowflakes,
Explosive as dreams.

Pallbearer’s Song

There is a light transcending,
I broached its dappled fall,
And though I neared the ending
Such light left me in thrall.

I carried him on my shoulders,
Flowers spelt my name,
Relatives somewhat older
Gave all hell to blame.

I lowered myself by an altar,
Hymnals in a hand,
And though they sang with gusto,
Silent was the land.

However low I travelled,
Misguided wrongs recalled,
Sunbeams on a glady gravel
Seek to be my pall.

Verdant Sky

Sunlight faded
As soon, it seemed,
As Dawn announced her yokes,

Transitions in a jaded sky,
And a verdant sky as
I write, from sunshine
Burnished over willows and oak.

I had a winnowing dream within,
Where trees slowly revolved
Into people, and people
Into sainted trees, and
Every furnished suburb
From here to Chertsey,
Crawley, Teddington,
And every housing estate
Inbetween the manifest gaps
Of parliamentary teeth
Was suddenly green,
And then green,
And then green.

Green

When We Were Giants

Revitalised by rain
And changing directions of wind,
Supercharged by
Their grey and warming manes,
Reminded me that I am a giant
And I only took this smaller form
To be suppliant, as ever,
To the Goddess of Discretion.

The southern farmers are churning
Mounds of Friesian manure again;
Even my dandelion friends
Hold their delicate noses,
Those whose seeds
Gave birth to Time herself
Before disappearing injudiciously,
Slipping through their progeny’s fingers,
Disintegrating as swiftly
As a conscientious objector’s hopes.

I have a greater affinity
With the dappled fingertips
And gold-green keys
Of silver birch
And willow trees,
Those all too slender
Harbingers of water, of Life,
And my favourite, my old friend,
Those Lombardy Poplars
Which grew through my youth
Until they touched the lower sky,
Fastigiate-shaped as my soul
With burry words and
Blackened folds inside.

I sensed all this on my evening walk –
The scale of the task,
The age of the talk –
Before returning with my homeward self
And losing, until the next new winds,
The memories of way back when
We few men were giants.

One Pigeon