eternity is a roost

First there are fields...
Then hedgerows...
Rose bay willowherb -
Fireflowers, soon a smoke of seed
Flying on the wind.
Meadowsweet -
Garlands near a stream
Strewed white,
A taste of mead.
Wood avens -
Five yellow petals, scent of cloves;
A burr to travel light.
Above ... the ocean sky.

(Collecting seedheads of love-in-a-mist)

I arranged them in a cup,
looked them up:
those tentacled lanterns,
maracas of seed,
are fused follicles; apparently
unusual for the Ranunculaceae.
But it wasn’t that.

I remembered the sepals
that look like petals,
white and blue lanterns
in the mist of filigree
they once hung above, rivulet leaves
browned, now, to furze in a frieze.
But it wasn’t that.

I thought of their beginnings,
genes that read out origins
like alphabet lanterns,
guiding them blind,
lamps held by other lamps behind,
constellations growing over corridors of time.
But it wasn’t that.

The sound as they rubbed and brushed,
running water in a rush,
those rustly lanterns,
was something between
a crackle and a squeak -
a creak, of a mouse that steals unseen -
perhaps. But it wasn’t that.

It was me. Spurred and rising
to be, in lonely surprise
at a few dry lanterns.
Every striving thing knew,
the glinting web, the spidery dew,
the fresh face of the breeze that ruffled as it blew.

(Joseph pictured)

Those clouds are proud Polynesian war canoes
Angry faces to the easterly wind
Thunder later, thunder through purpling blue
Grave to cradle, waka to where we begin

(for Alison)

Is it the fluff of thistledown floating by?
Or the green, the green, the verdure everywhere?
Is it the crow, so plush in flight as she goes?
Or, is it the kerfuffle of clouds up there?
Or perhaps it’s the brash nasturtiums as they vie,
Scarlet and gaudy in their chasuble rows?
Is it the shape of summer,
The way summer’s melody grows?
Maybe it’s because we’ve got ugly and old,
And now there’s nowhere for vanity to run:
So this it is, blue wash at dusk, pipistrelle
Acrobats, the wonder of being no-one.
The way in the end the drawn pages fold;
And how good it feels to be invisible.

The sun roams across the sky
By day, and at night
Swims the sea path of the moon.

Swifts travel north in the spring,
Arrive with a squeal,
Sleep on the wing and bring young.

Life is open, lives are closed,
No answer complete.
Parallel lines never meet.

In the throat of the wind,
Your voice a garner
Of the years of the tree
You sang within.

The cumulus,
Shadowpools,
Elvers of light
Waves on grass.

The books say
You sing for sex
And to keep trim,
In their monochrome way.

It was not why
But how a songbrook
Flowed down to me,
Slowing, by and by.

Spirit, forgive the world and all that it may bring,
For you are a wave which beats upon an ever-shelving shore.
Circle of time, once more beginning,
At every turn, a new return,
And every rest, the lapping tide restores.

To Emily, on her locked down 31st birthday

Stonecrop shoots frothed up from the soil,
Ommatidia of the waking earth;
Aconites beaded like breaths of butter oil
Out of the rimy air.
Snowdrops were a little prim,
Spurning the droopy catkin.
But the doubtful bleary creak of day
Shrugged off winter's unyielding grey,
Stretched a wide and opal eye,
While the practising sky
Rolled the clouds to the wings again,
And remembered how to sing again.

Every January brings lovely things anew,
Like you.

The days recede, telling the myth of me:
The I that never was,
The so many people I was,
In so many passing worlds;
The I that nearly died of need
And not once did a truly good deed;
Who, once awakened to the I,
Did nothing but the I observe;
This non-existent I,
Watching, listening, as the days recede.

The non-existent man walked out to see,
Took a simple pleasure
In the morning colour,
The warmth of the word
Brimming over tulip cups;
The large flow of light, and the luck
Of the absent I;
The cat which purred,
Superfluous and benign,
Bang on top of his newly planted leeks.

There is a rock juts over where the sea seethes,
Whipped by currents through the narrows, runs deep beneath;
As high tide turns, the water channels in reverse,
Twists and spires, sucks on itself, dives to break loose,
To overreach the kneading grip, to deny what bound
Then racked it, refused to slacken until the open sound
Bring its harvest of supple rest; until the moon
Inscribe once more the spinning ocean with its massy tune.
The last time I saw my Dad he was hunched and stiff,
Ruined by Parkinson's, his eyebrows still smiling though;
In the end he threw himself in, finding silence,
Something he would not want known, but preferring to risk
His memory, than to withstand the incontinence.
My boyhood love: his 'by then I'll be six foot under' joke.

Friends who are sick of the sight of you after an hour
And are always preoccupied -
You get used to it.

Looking up and seeing the trees and lake,
The sloping lea beyond -
You get used to it.

Clouds and wind and rain, everything moving at once,
New things, always new things -
You get used to it

Though not quite.

Now you are yourselves and strong in all you do,
This bright window moment and you alike,
As riding off down the storied road you go,
Graceful, precious, receding on your bikes.
I cannot look at you but think of all the years
Of your growing, your earth-dark and wheat-light days,
But see those fertile fields and wish them near
Always; only to let them turn away.
In time, you too may be divided
Into two, three, four or more, into boy and girl:
All you are, dispersed, effortlessly sown,
Baffling and indefinable, unguided,
As you spread your balm upon this aching world,
Yielding me restful, lucky at what I’ve known.

Music only

It will be a lost world -
these solo views and searchings,
rationalizing words,
exasperated urge
at meaning. The dirge
follows after a flickering, is dense as earth.

God lies deep in my green garden:
star of dahlias (aphids coat the stems);
profligate daisy unburdens
a thousand seeds; one or two of them
may grow. Life falls hard,
but its waste falls harder, on the heart.

Late summer is goosegrass burs in socks and shirts,
Smells of male sweat, cut lavender, dry earth,
Still sounds of pigeon wings and cooing,
Riches none can from the present bring;
Yet all is safely gathered in.

Lift up from the ground so the wasps can’t have them -
Purple plums and apples spreading pink, pears with stems
Snapped short by August’s muggy winds,
Hard fruit that splatter, viscous when I strim;
Gifts of moments gathered in.

September colours are the ghosts of green,
There all the time, but masked and rarely seen,
Until at last gold shows, then orange,
Season’s end; shuffling brown their long haunting,
As all is safely gathered in.

Still there you lie, brother, only bones now -
Where autumn lowered you, contusion on your brow -
Desolation ‘round the coffin ringed,
Out of silence, life but a borrowing;
And early yours was gathered in.

Grief grasps at the past but fumbles and cannot wrest
Any hope from the flow; a stranded love is left,
Searching for signs that ends re-begin,
As from a fallen fragment fresh growth springs;
But all we knew is lost and gathered in.

Thank you Jackie Doe for all your patient help