donkey rock
it was the smell
the bloody animal of it
the donkey days of summer
walking to the end of life’s pier
the grit in the icecream
the warmth of soggy cornets
chips that fingered the end
of days and days and
journeys home to the stars
with more grit closing eyes
ahhhhh’s longest breath
went on for ever and ever
lost to a garden of blossom
everywhere there is blossom
the paths have vacated their hard days
softness everywhere leads the eye nowhere
streams meander slower in their pulse
just the breath of a breeze’s sigh
stirs the move along footfall’s trepidation
that this is all a dream
a token is placed in the temple’s offering box
the gods are appeased i’m a minded to sit
in the permission of heaven’s garden
a moment where eternity is in every direction
my eye sees blossom even when it is closed
my ear travels with the stream over the pebbles
the green bamboo is tomorrow’s cane
hush
did you hear that sight
do you see the silence
touch me not
for i am dreaming of you
peradventure
smoothing the cat
we leave the solar system
she is steering the lap ship enterprise
engage purr factor four
synchronise breathing
jazz music softly fills the sails
on a stanchion of the solar wind
upon the twitching of her ears
the whisker antennae turn
but the immobility is transient
the force field is rent asunder
we jump ship
i make tea
she licks her plate clean
with my hand upon the door handle
the galaxy turns upon its axis
doubling as a singularity
we cross the event horizon
ahh pussy cat
pussy cat
what a pair of doppelgängers
we really are
the seasoning of times
the seasons
we reach for the scenes of nature
to capture the feelings we have
when all the subliminal sensations gather
to create that life moment
the moment when we are alive to the emotions of now
we look to nature both to place us in that moment
to describe that moment
to explain that moment
we call it poetry
when we write down our attempt to capture the moment
to be lost in the finding of being lost in the nature of that moment
and we call that the seasoning of times
for it is natural that we are almost lost for words
the would from the trees
fallen
from conversations of the forest
no longer a tree
blocks the path
truth chooses another way
predestination remains
just that
note the saplings nodding
whatever the direction of the wind
prevailing their will
the one and only sun transverses
the seasons come and go
through the morning window
above the grape hyacinths
proudly the corkscrew hazel opens
beneath the flowering cherry’s dazzle
between them glows the sedate camelia
to the left of an errant flowering currant
further to the right find the forsythia bright
under all of these a rose well on its way
next to the azalea that is about to explode
but the daffodils have gone over now
blue bells and lily of the valley will follow suit
so subtle in undertones the lavender moves
and far the japanese anemones slowly grow
all off to a goodly start are
the potted geraniums
the lobelia the hardy daisy yellow
soon soon oh soon my beloved will come
to my garden and sit with me
the tenuousness of stretched time
recounting
embarkation leave
a doleful ring to his voice
embrocation
rang in my mind
ne’er the twain shall meet
across the cleft between war and peace
my uncle
torpedoed off ireland
one week survivor’s leave
that doleful ring to his voice
incendiary bomb
he climbed through the window onto the roof
down the house near the docks
a close call
from across the water
i did that
ringing in his voice
a true hollowness
of times that forgot to be forgotten
when the exclamation of oh no was done
the armies in their theatres
the navies on the seas
the airmen of the sky’s limits
the loneliness of the scapa flows
where everyone knows
someone who was stationed there
recounting in their particular voice
the dolefulness of times long past recounting
now that their time is done
how hollow they ring
despite the tears that fall
sparking in the matt nights of grief
how that embrocation stings now
but then the gulf swallowed all
let’s play cowboys and indians
in reply to a poem that compared a shed to a train
the same fly in the window
of a shared train of thought
the same peripatetic spider
hiding higher riding hither
and thither me timbers jim lad
they have pirated my posts
and become their own hosts
on the runaway media
of these slithering rhymes
the one
oh to be a standing stone
alone when the wind blows
and the rain flows
shining on a morning
or under a high moon
when the frost tickles
and the standing stone
cannot stand it
a laugh embedded deep
in the histrionics of it all
poet me not
today
a true poet
thinks that the poem
written yesterday
which was the best poem ever
is actually crap
for a true poet
there is always tomorrow
even if that poem will be their obituary