frog spawn

 frog spawn

up to mattie’s gutter come on mun

run past the pub and the chapel run

past john shop’s chicken run run

fast past the pointed wooden pen

oozing the tar called bitumen 

full pelt down the grass to clay

the stream sped over where the

caddis fly lay and on up

the dampness flowing from the well

three red bricks high and square

to look if there is any frog spawn where

on this febuary morn of a boy borne wild 

upon the heels of a growing knowing child

oh yes knowing that the white grasses

blowing under spring’s bluest the sky 

and why oh why is the spawn so late

scare raising the crows of walk back’s fate 

all is windward on these wayward days

and days and days of visiting the well 

again and again until one day yell

it’s there! it’s there! and

handed home to my tank in my shed

where the stickleback swims alone

i said here is the spawn that will bend 

and grow and do you know 

in a few months time if we feed 

and throw in a rock or two

the legged little ones will know

that it is time to go and i will wait

all of winter’s waiting wait

until spring is once more at the garden gate 

and wings on heels we’ll run and run

to find the frogspawn under a low spring sun

its black bright eyes are blinking blinking

and thinking how the warmth returns

to a new year long in its running wild 

of that well borne wistful february child 

 

the cigar

 the cigar

and all the suns that are wrapped tight

long in days in leaf and rolled 

into one man’s pleasure 

the thoughts ashed and curled

sky mooned drifting milky in the whey

they settle the mind   if mind it is

to float this way and that 

time and again it simply is 

ahh it is   it    simply       is  

I am not a diabetic!

I am not a diabetic!

Now repeat that after me,

and maybe you will see,

that whatever my glucose status,

it is me you see - yes me!

So please don't stick a label,

for now you know and see,

that I suffer from diabetes,

as you might, one day,

perhaps, maybe. 

orientarr?

 orientarr? 

The year is spinning faster and faster

towards a cold Lang Syne.

Christmas expectations of all time’s children.

No shops open, or work, just silence.

Silence abed this Christmas Eve waiting,

awake, an awake, that sleep steals yet away,

to startle the dawn of a Dandy and Beano,

burrowing me down in my own bed of fun.

For it is! It’s a Christmas Day of smiles.

Nativity in the chapel.

We three kings of orientarr?!

A hot sticky road in China?

At Christmas?!

The word still winks at me down the years.

Stuffing and dad’s cigar smoked Boxing Day,

and satiated fireside snores.

But is there not something sad in the air,

that is squeezing the cold year tired out?

The pregnant pause of that old man scythe,

as the child of time at last takes centre stage. 

bandofhope (to be pronounced at speed)

 bandofhope (to be pronounced at speed)

band of hope handed down long chapel light

with old mrs crandon on a cold winter’s night

widowed and thin and turned now to prayer 

i went of an evening with others heading there

to the back room boarded and chaired all in rows 

with electric heaters loft high in the throes

of a congregation of children poor as mice 

singing of abstention that sounded so nice

yet meant nothing to many of the short trousered boys

or the plain dressed girls all mixed up in noise

that chairs scraped with patience finally fraying

increasingly restive while earnestly praying 

for an end to this evening for it is going to snow

and the pedantic recitations are going so slow

release us dear god we earnestly pray

and we’ll be ever so grateful forever and a day

then at last the side light has gone to its bed

and we are rejoicing in snow balls instead 

but all of these days we have let slip away 

and one day one day we’ll be sure to say 

i remember bandofhope with fondness my friend

and all my life i have striven to amend

the naughty boy thoughts that were not really meant

for indeed all those days were just heaven sent

so band of hope handed long chapel light

i will never forget you on a dark winter’s night

sing of tomorrow’s glad confident morning again

for the little boys have grown into sober old men

nothing there

 nothing there

you can see it in their faces

the ones who are going to die

their inability in their frailty

to generate that smile

they once had it you know

but it is absent from their eyes

there is a look beyond eternity 

and then off they goes and dies

you saw it you saw in their eyes

and yet you said nothing

but they saw it in your eyes

in hock to october

 in hock to october 

see how the mornings darken

as the october sun comes up

as the rain comes harder

and the wind begins to blow

the leaves sodden them hardly move

from bowing the lavender down

and how we wish and how we wish 

that summer 

was here again once more