CELESTIAL MIRROR
I fled the poolside bar, alone -
away from deck chairs and cologne
as hotel ramparts stayed the salty breeze,
and nothing there was foreignese.
Not even food and drink –
imported; or the colour pink –
supporting ample breasts but hiding little.
Not even song and dance
or half-baked notions of romance
that spark and fade in nightly noncommittal.
Cicadas played the high-string section
in my fugue of insurrection
as bony walls and dust depicted night,
mirroring a celestial site
of skeletal arrays
picked apart by time and space –
the fractured image of an ancient nursery;
of rebel nature spelled
by stars attracted and repelled
like memories on a painful anniversary.
I watched as moonlight smithereens
recycled light and lunar genes
in myriad evolution on the sea –
a glimpse at possibility
for one who left behind
his poolside neighbours, to unwind
and vacate for a moment his vacation;
for one who still explores
beyond the bar room, by the shores
of foreign places, night, and inspiration.
++INDELIBLE++
World-wise, roughshod tongues, avert you!
Shyness is his gentlest virtue;
tread it softly, name it not,
forget it and ‘t will be forgot.
He’s open wide from cheek to soul,
he has a rare and future role,
for what was once so raw shall be
courageous sensitivity.
Enthusiasm by a teacher
will in every pupil feature.
A stranger’s smile when all is woe
can a second chance bestow.
To a starving child, all charity
affords a breath that would not be.
Kittens kneading bed and mother
will always recognise each other.
The rug is soft, the snuggle bliss
beyond each anniversary kiss.
The underdog that shows its claws
can supersede all human laws.
The tiniest dog might save its master;
the single nod avoid disaster.
The nursing of an enemy
is the neutralising remedy.
A pretty nurse to the ebbing soldier
stops the tide when he beholds her.
The last bend winding homeward bound
heaves the heart and smoothes the ground.
Affection for a childhood toy
no cynicism can destroy.
Though ink and time and sweat are poured,
the right to write can’t be ignored.
The dolphin sighted swimming free
is eye to eye with ecstasy.
The kiss goodbye is a lament;
the first kiss has no precedent.
The lasting taste of self will be
the fruits of spontaneity.
Is choosing thus so terrible
these positives indelible?
A TOAST TO THE FADING OF THE SUN
As dims the sun, so goes the moon
from clockwork vantage, and right soon;
three billion years A.D. and yet
we’ve never known the sun to set...
This is the moment brother Mars
is red no more but by the stars
and hearth-less like the asteroid –
returned not to, but is the void
like Earth and, so, the daffodil,
with all the grace and strength of will
we star-stuff rendered for a while
in infantile, unknowing style.
But we, in vastness, did exist
as glintings in the cosmic mist,
and each, in all of time, unique
in chance or choice or mind’s physique.
So join me here, we’ll toast the sun;
the fading sun leaves of us none;
but still that star must ask the same -
where goes a light no more aflame?
THE DEEP SWELL OF THE SEA
-from Odysseys of Time Travel-
1884 (When I was 7 years old)
His sea-pruned fingers gently shook the page;
he tried to hide it.
My gramps was on the bowsprit of old age
but still denied it.
I loved to snuggle in his wise authority;
his creaking voice pressed every word’s priority
and I was rapt
in stories he’d adapt
from hand-inked illustrations
in a book about the sea.
And as we both wore glasses
it was him and me
alone, alone on the deep swell of the sea.
1892 (When I was 15 years old)
The vicar’s fingers found the dog-eared page
and eased it over,
while a cheeky conker landed to upstage
those words in
My gramps was lowered beside a chestnut tree,
an easy stone’s throw from the restless sea
and I was lost -
by bitter breakers tossed
beyond the wise old bowsprit
and a book about the sea.
And as we’d both worn glasses
it was now just me
alone, alone on the deep swell of the sea.
1816 (When I was 27 years old)
My anxious fingers eased the lever’s steel
as I exhaled;
the promise of the time machine was real
as I unveiled
a
a painting I’d unpainted to the flow
of oil from brush;
‘twas my heart wrung the gush
of memory upon it
from a book about the sea.
But as I still wore glasses
it was still just me
alone, alone by the deep swell of the sea.
My blistered fingers gripped the masthead tight
as I looked down.
Softly, 'six bells' tugged the yawning light,
and all around
a roll-call of shape and colour gave promotion
to a pride I hadn’t worn before the ocean;
and little did he know –
that First Lieutenant down below -
how much I’d loved his stories
from his book about the sea.
As I put on my glasses
it was him and me
alone no more on the deep swell of the sea.
DECIPHERING THE SURVIVAL CODE Deep in the briny, aloft in the skies Everything battles lest everything dies. Call it survival, label it life, but Instinct demands at the point of its knife: Polar bears’ power (and numbers them few); Hares in the millions (and most in the stew); Eagles be hunters to swoop when they need - Rarely, lest nothing remains for the feed; Infants be born with mechanics innate - Necessities primed from birthing to mate. Gone is the appetite over the winter - Time is no more than the prick of a splinter - Hibernate now and replenish in Spring; Everything needs just as everything brings. Survival is random to those in the hunt; Under the skin, though, the code is more blunt. Rank is determined by size and locale, Volition the servant of one rationale - Instinct to carry a piece of the code, Verily even against its abode. Ants construct blithely in spite of the hunter; Laugh if you like, but beware Marabunta! Crawlers or fliers or swimmers alone Offer this instinct they feel to the bone: Dainty or vicious, with strength or surprise, Everything battles lest everything dies. ASCENSION The floorboards clench with the tick of each tock; each step has the aim of a hopscotch rock; my heart on the landing goes skip, hop, skip to the click of the fingers of the deafening clock. Stretch… stretch with the tip of each toe on the neck of the night with a size three slipper. Feel… feel where the creaks don’t flow; lean with the poise of a dash-end dipper. The carpet’s a tongue for the throat of the stairs; floral designs are its bad taste buds. My dressing gown tightens as I look downstairs to the writhing of black that leaks, then floods with lightness, softness, breaths of ascent. I lean from the edge in a reckless descent but the skip, hop, skip touches nothing but air and I am a little lord, floating there by the wall and the banister, north to south on a cushion repelling the magnet’s own floor, for I’m over the tongue and I’m into the mouth and it’s smooth as I swallow my fear of the door. No wind but a breeze of imaginings’ flight; the rooftops of and the pulse, pulse, pulse of a quickening mind has a ravenous plug in my conquest of height. A sensation erodes like the heat on the wick and I’m lighter than light over chimney and brick; I’m the curl at the end of calligraphy’s ‘y’; the down from the pillow aloft as I spy over sleeping factories, fields and spires; over tarmac mazes and telephone wires. I haven’t the net of a swooping trapeze, but I’m floating, soaring as high as I please. A dream is a dream when you’re one with the act - when the real of before and beyond is intact; but I can’t see out and I can’t see in and a wondrous thing is about to begin. I’m over the moors nearing Winter Hill mast. I’m the whim of the future, the skim of the past. If clouds cross continents, why can’t I? Where’s the edge of the map for the power to fly? It’s miles and miles since I skipped and hopped; the tick of the clock has long since stopped. I’m not in the wake or the slipstream of time; I may wander the winds till the eons chime. Far, far gone, over mountain and cirque; I’m an eagle at peace; there’s a constant at work - it’s effortless, buoyant, cartography’s bubble. I’ve the power and the reach of an avian Hubble… … tock, tick, tock… and the leaf has a branch; adventure is buried by a dire avalanche. The pillow has down and I’m ready to cry, for I've lost it forever - the power to fly. Click on these links to read:
