The Leafing Game

Cycling up the hill to work
A stray leaf swirls before me
And almost by instinct I reach
To clutch this first faller.

First form, lunchtime, top field
We line up in front of unnamed trees
And wait fro the wind to whistle
Through and start ‘The Leafing Game’

This simple contest would thrill us
As we chased a leaf to catch
Before it hit the ground. We’d hurtle,
Twist and leap in their sweet rot
Until we were the last still holding.

As if it was our World Cup.
As if we were great sportsmen.

And maybe we were. Our great game
The perfect match of boy and nature,
The random and the skilled.
Now leaves are to be raked, cleared
They clog gutters, discolour lawns
Where once they were all our pleasure –

We prized the withered leaf and
Allowed for no more than a breeze
To ease our youthful hearts.

Moments In Love – The Art Of Noise

As I walk to the railway station, I slip
The buds into my ear and press ‘Play’.
And there, as the Estuary reveals itself,
I am eighteen and back in your house:
You’re back from visiting University
And you’re a Marco Polo to us,
Unpakaging your riches to rubes.
And there it is:
A twelve inch track into another world.
It gleams and is modern and electric,
Its subject, no more than life to be had,
Out there,
Now.
It looped and looped around the room.
Ten minutes stretching out of the old,
Expanding into Experience and ourselves.
No going back. Never, as the man said,
Such Innocence again. Again.
And we heard that it was good
And this Art mattered and was more,
Much more than merely Noise.

Fracture.


The fig is in full fig, last summer
the fruit hung like light bulbs
Bright beacons for the greedy birds.
Summer’s heat was tempered
Within its spreading palms
And beneath its cooling canopy
I sat, leg in plaster, and read;
“Sweet are the uses of adversity.”
A suburban Arden, for me, maybe.

This year it’s taking over
Our paltry postage stamp patch.
I am mobile again and cart a chair
To its green and thought filled shade
And remember Clare crying on finding
His favourite tree cut down.
And like the tuppeny Romantic I am
I think I know how he felt.
But I don’t. But I think I could.

This why there is no poetry.

Service, of some description will be resumed shortly

D~

“Be silent unless what you
Say is better than silence.”

Easy for you to say Sal,
Looking like a rock star
Who doesn’t have to talk
To the press.
Second album, platinum,
All success assured.
But what of the rest of us
Who cannot paint ourselves
Mute?
Words are our work
Our bulwark against
Meaning less,
Meaning missed.
So haughty, dark Sal,
You hover as if from
Out of the sky.
A clear eye.
Who would not blink
When forced to face you,
Stammer and wish for silence
Beneath your powerful stare?

Father and Son.

I keep coming back to Titus,
Beloved son of the man who watched
Everyone die.

Fourth born but first to survive,
He’d seen Rembrandt’s rise
Yet he also saw both wives die
And heard the bailiff’s unwelcome arrival.

A witness to the master observer,
From the workshop’s corner
He’d learnt to measure a man,
How to shore up mortality
With hired furs and white collars.

And then

At twenty-six he’d married Magdalena
The gilded scales finally tipping,
A child on the way. At eight months,
Did the old man close his eyes in praise
Only for them to be prised open by a cough
As the plague claimed Titus.
Dead at twenty-seven.

Had this father looked at him
As if he were a mirror –
The boy who drew dogs so well –
Only to find no silvered glass,
Just an empty frame.
Nothing left to picture.

A Present From James


In my pocket, worn bright by daily touch,

I carry a conker. A strong brown nut from

My long legged boy who threw the stick,

Who kept his eye on where his target fell,

Who placed his heel on its spiked shell

And twisted with just the right weight

Before giving this gift to me.

"Look, dad," proud, he said "It's a good 'un"

Yes, son, a good one, the best. Proudly,

I lift my head at my desk, remembering,

As I stop before the reassertion of work

To see the neighbour's chestnuts sway.

Their conic blossoms like candles

On the most ornate of birthday cakes.

A promise of more fruit for next year

For children to covet and collect.

Other pockets to fill.