The Egg that Rolled

The Egg that rolled

Just an ordinary egg

Came out of a chicken

On an adventure away from the kitchen

Down cobbled road

And Shaftsbury’s Hovis hill

It bowled its ovaloid body

Driven by an inner will

Narrowly avoiding disaster

As it crossed the road

This egg was its own master

And had destiny under its thumb

Like a Prince who came out of a toad

It missed each pram wheel by inches

Then evading the horses hoof

This was a living reminder

That life lives on a knife edge

If ever we needed proof

And trundling like a lost general

In search of his egg army

He seemed self important to the untrained eye

When what guided his blindness

Was courage and faith in his Life

So there is the irony

It was just that this was a fortunate egg

In that every move he would try

Came out a sparkling success

This was no shell-shocked guy

His formaldehyde soul

Grew very cold

Like Jekyll and Hyde

He was an egg of two minds

Brought together in the oxygen of his shell

Albumin and yolk

Played some practical joke

To make him indestructible

Meant he could not die

And so on he rolled

Down the tragic road

That was his life

Being an egg that could not crack

Meant likewise that he could not hatch

So to be spared the ritual

Humiliation of the chicken

On the pecking order

His will told him to leave the kitchen

And find another abode to board on

The ocean was his calling

From when he was a foetus

And soon he came to the ocean's cusp

In a land named Lyme Regis

He pervade the sea for all it was worth

From a top a cliff top and there he did perch

But as soon as he had settled down

He found himself in an albatross' town

Where busy gulls, guillemots’ and puffins

Were roosting and laying eggs ten to the dozen

And by chance a bird named Harold arrived

And plucked this egg so that he may survive

So, on they fled across ocean swell

Well into the evening and things were going well

Then down he landed on the coast of France

And said to the egg, you are free now take your chance

So the egg trundled on down roads that were familiar

He heard the faint call of accordions, smelt onions and the sky that was vermillion

Past hawthorn nests of owls

And smiling white cows

He alighted himself upon a hay cart

Pulled by an ox

Then travelled on there

With less a wing more a prayer

Until his wanderings brought him to the Alps

Now by this time he had made many friends

There was Alphonse the fox

And Bernadette the owl

Stephanie the squirrel

And Miriam the mouse

They all were dressed in berets and striped jumpers

And the egg dressed like them too

And they all said "it suits you"

So not out of place did the egg seem now

When he journeyed up the foot hills

Of the Alps with a cow

More the traveller with means,

For many things had he seen

And made a small fortune

Displaying in a circus

Where a strong man named Roger de la Forte

Tried to crack him with his muscles

But all that cracked were the piggy banks

Of the circus goers he would hustle

So saying “fair well” to the Ferris wheel

And “so- long” to the Ring Master Monsieur Devil

He journeyed on into Switzerland's fair Climbs

And soon found the time

To visit the sights and squares of Geneva

One day he stopped by the lake's great fountain

And watched a long time thinking it as tall as a mountain

And what sprang to his egg's mind was a plan

He began to hatch

A dream that one day he might fly

So at the dead of night

He took on a gondola to alight

Amid the luscious lake of the fair town

And boldly going where no egg had gone before

He nestled himself into the sleeping fountains core

And there he waited until the next morn

When the fountain man turned the water pipes on

: Then to everyone's delight

In the crisp morning light

The egg was shot clean into the stratosphere

Now feeling less earth encumbered

This egg went through the ozone

And around the earth

He orbited like an orb

Some clever folk from NASA said

There goes a UFO, proof that life

From another planet has arrived

And much was made by Europe

Of the flying eggs orbit

And it put to bed many wars

For the people of earth saw that they were not alone in the universe

So they no longer felt lonely or frightened anymore

Then the egg left the Earth's gravity

And was pulled by positivity

Out to the furthest region's of the solar field

Where he settled on Pluto

Feeling all was going well

A miracle then occurred

This Egg who could not hatch

Finally did just that

And the first extraterrestrial chicken was born

He went by the name Prince Pluto

And spent many a year going to and fro

Discovering what else could be explored

Until finally alighting

In a cave away from lightening

He found another chicken who was earth-bored

Together they made a family

And are living still quite happily

Raising many Plutonians abroad

Last Year's Poems

A City Walk Down Under

Fitzroy to Brunswick St

Smith’s to Johnson’s Rd

The lanes I walk are many, with

Many a heavy load

Shop windows are light as a fairy’s

Though without the rains are cold

The people are blown verily

Up and down the streets of gold

Bronze statues offer avenues for the brave and bold

Snatches of photographs of bookshops

Signing autographs

A St Kilda Builder of autobahns

To a coffee house strode

Jazz in a bar off Blessington St

Rose in the arm’s of chessington meets

The mauve army of the black and white sheep

Who sail their newspaper ships to work

The metro creeps like a worm underneath

Trams as blood clots are forced up the veins of the street

Corpuscular people disembark and greet

Then form fresh tissues in cells of cafes

The city’s cognitive organs are its university and schools

Its stomach is its shopping centres and mauls

Its liver or lungs are its business districts

Skyscrapers, factories that hum

Shipping yards of cargo make for a mouth and anus

Where it imports cars, exports grains, oil miscellaneous

If it had legs it would get up and run

But this city is Melbourne

It is an octopus which spreads itself in a rock pool

Under the sun

Frost

The icicles tortuous hang

Below the bridge as if a fang

And the cold, cold air

What made man in this frozen spirit land?

What sacrosanct communion can him to Nature conjoin?

Is this Lent enough

To be reminded of his Love?

The Hawk soars above

But a shadow is what we see

What is this absence of essence

This non-being

Less than the sun, less than the big sky

It is unbeing – the ice of the land

Unbeginning Eden’s Rivers

Unbeginning time and man

In the chill depths of understanding

In the frozen waters of despair

I feel your love still surrounding

Through the ice layers I see you there

When the cold clasp of evening has gripped

The saffron sun in its palm

Then the ice winds moaning

Comes as an arctic fox

Prowling about the farm

Beneath the arch of the bridges fangs

Where the icicles of a jagged tooth hangs

Gawping at the abandoned fields

Where the moon white river runs

Solicitous in its death dance

The earth puts on its frost mask

To entrance

Life out to its last waltz

Its last moon light tango

And Jack is tripping,

Is slipping on the ring of the horizon

In its embers of hedges

And brittles sedges

It is the eye-line of a fox – sharp and cold

And I know I am too late

I wish to give up my soul

To that harsh relief

Of the fox, whose slinking loner figure

Is wily to this life’s lease

And beneath a wooded dry hedge

His eye is bright

And his heart still beats

Ode to a Toad

The toad is more akin to muddy holes,

Lies in wait beneath a mossy stone

He is Charles Atlas

Always wishing to be lifting weights

Carrying the world on his shoulders

The unfortunate thing

Like a Shakespeare’s King

Ugly as a broken plate

All warty, ill-seeming to company

Apart from one or two nights a year

When he must mate

Then out on a midnight stroll

Solipsist, the harbinger of droll

Should have been born to the Mafia

And just sat there

Stayed there with his Fairy Queen

But when she kissed him

On that midnight road

He arched his crooked, boiled, rumpled back

And remained a toad

Sidcot Swallet – Burrington Coombe Nov 9^th 2013

Down, down into the deep

Into the depths of the hills which sleep

Earthly death the temporal bowl

The bowels of the earth

The hell hole

Dark and black

Damp not cold

Warm as bark

From the fires below

Down we go, down, down, down

Down to the depths of the pits dark pole

Rock that’s round, slime and mould

Warm and black don’t lose your soul

Farther back, farther still

Reaches the slack of the Mendip sill

Subterranean rivers run

Inside the place hid from the sun

Farther back and farther still

Runs coal black the rocky gill

Breathes the stone lung

Its wet warmth not chill

Yet eerie stack upon stack the boulders fill

When so far down

Beneath the crown of the hill

When above you lay the weight of a hundred ton sill

What drives you down is an impossible will

It draws you down

To the world beneath

To cavernous clowns

Who hurl your belief

Into echoes around the hideous relief

Where a voice may drown without knowing a grief

Where the fantasy stalactites like acrobats stow

And chastened as sleeping bats roost under bows

Of roofs a thousand feet below

Below, below, to and fro the arches bend and breech the throw

They lend a spectacular frieze

As in a cysteine chapel we fall to our knees

And reach such wonder lust as only heaven must know

A man must be humble, crawl and lower like a snake

Slither on belly, on back on sides between cracks

Around bends without using his eyes

Just feel with his feet

Trust to the unknown

For it is in refusing to accept defeat

That for our greater sins we atone

Next generation of poets

http://nextgenerationpoets.com/
An interesting website relating to recently published poets and newly appreciated.

Flat Holm

https://www.pinterest.com/o7To/flat-holm-ottographic-artists-book/
The link above concerns the book on Flat Holm
www.ottographic.co.uk
This link is to Otto's website his Art books including how to order a copy of the Flat Holm Book.
After spending afive months on Flat Holm island I collaborated with the graphic screen print artist Otto to make a book about the place. It contains my word and his pictures if you are interested and they really are very nice pictures and not bad words then go to the link above and order yourself a copy or at least take a look at the samples thanks.

https://flatholmisland.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/a-poem-by-philip-gross/

Above is a link to the Flat Holm word press blog, follow it to find out more interesting news about the island

Selections

ermine

The fox

The fox stalked across the field in the late afternoon light

A ragged and thread bare specimen, ravaged from the cruel cold winter

That lengthened into February

He stops looks round searchingly

Yet distracted, somehow fidgeting with his own dire experience

His own state of affairs

My mother points out the starlings swooping above him as they ready to roost

Among the levels further down along the reeds

The fox moves sleekly, slinking like a chain of bones concertinaing

And then squats to lay his scent or shit

I have almost lost interest as he becomes the grey of sky, the brown and pale yellows of winter hedgerows

May be he was the fox that ate our chickens I say to my mother

All those years ago

He is an intruder, yet somehow respected for his cleverness despite this. And I feel somehow very safe and sanitized in this my mother’s house but seeing him also vulnerable. Like seeing a thief from behind the confines of a ‘CCTV’ camera – catching him in the act. It is the interest in his survival, his spirit and hut spa. Confidence in wildness, somehow he will always be there, in the back of your mind.

Otter

Otter sleek, Minky whale black

Bitter as beer, the coal black water

Mirrors as obsidian

This corpuscular form

Meiosis divided itself

From the jelly mass of the lake

Yet never breaking the meniscus

- it bobs it's whiskers appear damp

And shining

Back rises and slinks back into the black

Great Breech Wood

I went to walk in Great Breech wood

And found myself where trees abound

The North wind blew between dead twigs

And curled the leaves that lay on the ground

My nose it twitched, my ears they itched

I felt the presence of deer and hounds

I saw a squirrel run to a trees furthest reach

And heard the forest birds song of sound

The nettles stung, the beeches browned

The Oaks were strengthened by the ground

The leaves curled in the winter furls

That twirled the wind and around me wound

And my love did call from beneath an ash’s eves

Like a satellite I was drawn to its planetary crown

Then Great breach wood was torn asunder

It gave forth lumber of Larch and pine

All of it under a winter storms thunder

Which rattled the bones of all those near

Their toppling heights and treacherous climbs

My dear lady was struck by a bolt of lightening

A love dart from the Gods struck her in her prime

And the planetary dark that ensued was a wonder

To walk in this park I felt was a crime

My romantic soul wished to lurch in search of a number

By which I could dial then bring back the time

But the forest which was wiser than mountains

Held my soul fast so alone I did climb

To birth the last hope I had of my loved one

And set her soul free her one God to find

Now alone I walked through the forest alive

Badgers scurried like bank clerks collecting

Their wad of twigs and worms like knives

The wood pecker sung the pigeon cooed

A single black bird alone mewed

And rats slumbered beneath

Rotting tree limbs

As foxes cavorted singing howling hymns

Then the forest was then quiet as a graveyard hushed

As greenery flourished

And foliage lushed

The sandal wearing saint was knighted

The night began its game

Half housed between this world and the next

Advantaged

As in the eves called the owls

And many Stations of the Cross were planted

As herbs and forest plants were avowed

Into sacred celebration

Of the moon lit majestic cows (boughs)

Who’s alien forms besmirched the landscape

And past the night with heavy sounds

Until in the dawn rose the single starlings

In the flock of chorus loud

And beneath the canopy of heaven

Wrote the names of those in shroud

To be remembered by the martyrs

Who had seen and died,

And lived then bowed

And this I saw while I was walking

All this was mine of to be most proud

Inside the Breech of the Great Wood Vaunting

And opened its vaults to the sun and the cloud

The Garden Stroll

In the early light

When witches candles turn low to smite

The earthly walkers on a stroll

Beside an ancient garden wall

Then one says to the other

“How strange!?

The brick work of Eden has been rearranged.”

As they ponder mortar and stone

They feel the feeling they aren’t alone

Then an archway becomes clear

Designated this way; ”Do not Enter Here!”

They hold hands then cross the threshold

Into a garden bright and so bold

The green’s of willow

The lush of Ash

Oaken avenues stand in stash

All look starkly like someone’s preserve

They feel darkly like they do not deserve

And then a hare and next a rabbit

Come by close as if by habit

Disarmed the intruders are quite standoffish

Then they realise they appear quite selfish

And pet and talk kind words to the mammals

Feeling next they may meet some camels

As they stand and pervade the view

The garden’s paradise changes hue

And far over a foreign hill

They see Cain fight Able, until one is killed

And open under heaven’s skies

They see rains fall and flooded lies

Noah’s Ark is there by chance

But many a bad creature takes death’s dance

And suddenly they too are running from the flood

By this they find the ties of water

Much stronger than those of blood

All washed up now on heaven’s shore

They think of their stroll to the garden’s core

And they think to themselves, but neither comment

They should not walk in wherever they wanted

Sing oh Lord

Sing oh Lord to the moon and the sky

To the land of the Blind

Where the pity birds fly

And bees buzz merry like the fruits and the flies

In the land where the pity birds fly

Sing oh Lord to the ones who have many

And the ones who are lost

But have not crossed on the ferry

Sing oh Lord to the Queen of the sky

To the Land where the pity birds fly

Hear their song, like a balm on the cherry

Like a sweet salve to the unchained mind

Hear oh lord how they sing you a tune

In the land where the pity birds festoon

Hear oh lord how their hearts are not heavy

With the price of their lives or the hanging moon

Hear oh Lord just what they may stir

In the land where the pity birds flew

Duck Pond

Deep in the duck pond

Where the green weed grows

And the straw is yellow

Next to the track,

Where the ivy creeps beneath the Alder and Willow

Which brush their stems and stem their flow back

Deep in the duck pond

Where the green weed grows

Ducks fight and splash about

It could be a war or a turn about

Or a pair of lovers in a spate

One who loves, the other who hates

But deep in the duck pond

They see to their deed

Where the willow weeps in the green duck weed

Down in the duck pond,

Where fellows blow their horn

And the little spirited sprout

Sings for the sweet summer corn

While the West wind blows

Then across it the Easterly is torn

All along the deep duck pond

Where all the birds were born

Severed heads on severed spikes

All seem dead but go ask the tyke

Shadows shake in the shallows like

The deep duck pond

Of the bad old Pike

He swims about, he asks not twice

He sees a snout, then snaps his vice

And there he has you, pulls you down

Into the depths of the duck pond to drown

Where hell is a spirit on the water

And the wind chills the slender necks of swans

And the rails with the moor hens daughter

Falls to the pails and the sweet shorn sun

Where the kale sways in the shallows

And the bulrushes blow their seed

Deep as heartache over the water

Of the deep duck pond with the green duck weed

Nature Poems - Birds

Birds BTO

Poems about Flat Holm Birds

Ode to a Buzzard

Oh Buzzard

Harbinger of death

Augury man above

On your miracle, spiracle of breath

What did the Roman’s make of you?

You man of War, of ides

The soothsayers look up to see you crossing the sun

Of their dark days

Skull as a battle warriors helmet, visor down

Omen days

Buteo, buteo

Occipital holes, below heavy brows

Beyond is the world

Within the oracle of her mind

The subuteo men go walking beneath

And she is like a goddess

Who holds their belief

Come visit this isle of the dead

A suitable repose

To make your hunting ground

And roses’ bed

You are always above roses and poppies

Scavenger, scanner

Of starvation’s horizon

The hunger circumference of your vision

Which fades with the sunset

And its ring is set by the stone

Of the moon.

Ode to a Peregrine

Forward, forward all ye sea cannons.

All ye barrages of the swell

Here I stand in my cliff cabin

Knowing ye intruders well

Forward, forward screech

Ye of impossible reach

The scream of alarm into your soul

So schooled in the art of the fooled,

I am a witch on a broom

A thorough bred racing down a fell

I am an instant in your time

I wear the disguise of death,

My hues and clothes demark me well

I am your first and last breath

Peregrine am I,

The Lord of the sky

The high Sultan of the Salty Perch

In my crow’s nest

I am scare crow, caw, caw

Black the congregation of my high church

Fall in ye gulls, ye gabbling ranks

Commoners take turns to fish the sea with thanks

I thank not the gel,

Nor its green brown pell-mell

I am as quick as honey, I smell with my flanks

These eves of rocks I chose for the view

Those shore leave in the docks show

Where my shadow sheaves

And time me on clocks

I make land fall before Eve

May pluck an apple for Adam

And let it fall from her sleeve

Hunting a pigeon on the wing

It is a smidgeon of a thing

For what I enjoy

Is to play with this toy

As a train racing track

When I attack

I smother and sting

With Talon and Beak

I rend skin from wing

Then back to the nest

I deliver the rest

I am the postman with the fastest letter

I am the messenger king

The carrier of carrion

The bringer of tides

Don’t shoot the messenger if you dislike what he brings

Whether evil tidings

Or indiscernible things

The message did not return one evening

The bird was not heard

The vital war time correspondence

Fell silent in my mouth

Yet its secret I kept safe

For I did not speak a word

Questions Where AM I?

On what enlightened bay

Do the tides of time descend?

On how sweet an afternoon

Of light astray

Can the scarlet pimpernel festoon?

Where do the oysters catch?

And where do the gulls loom?

In the fasted Lapis sky

Beneath the hay making sun

How does the bracken grow?

How weaves the stinging nettle?

Through what thistle do the finches whistle?

Or over what cliff is heard

The peregrines steaming, screaming kettle

How comes it that I am here?

For to tell what enters mine ear?

And why for do the black birds mew?

Or the crow caw, caw

Or why do the rabbits run, lapis lapidary

Lapin lapping the blue from the sky

The yellow from the chicken sun

The silver from the harvest moon

The white from the clouds undone

How comes it the temperate chain lies unbroken?

The wind to cool, the sun to heat

How is it that words left unspoken?

Best describe this nature’s beat

Birding

Can you catch an oyster with an oyster catcher?

Or shank a red, red shank

Can you shell the shell of a shell duck?

Or dun a Dunnock to his bank

And are you the one to witness the whim of a Whimbrel?

Or take cool turns with an Arctic Tern

Oh please tell me what Birding is in the end all about

Will you buzz a buzzard out on a panel show of ornithological knowledge?

To be cock of the walk, rank high in the pecking order of chickens in the run

While the sun is out

Will you gan at a Gannet, like you may gander a goose

Or might you take a puff at a puffin

Before with a sly smile turn him loose?

Might you throw a wad at a wader

Or take a snipe at a snipe

With your lens he is in the eye of the beholder

But do you see an eye for an eye

Or a tooth for a tooth

Can you turn over every stone in your search for a Turnstone?

Will you turn tail and run from a gull

Or gull at him back through the clear light of truth

May you lessen his black back?

Simply by painting him grey like the weather

Or fledge a fletch of his juvenile feathers

In the arrows of a Robin’s Hood

To hoodwink a Starling who sparred with a Sparrow

Tell me kindly if you’ve understood

Did you put the black bird down in your little black book?

Or put down the lark as a clown with a stern black look?

Did you flinch at a finch when he came around?

Was it you who took the voice from the mute swan?

Do any of you really have a choice in your wan?

Or like the grey goose do your clothes have some use?

You may hide in your hides, ride down your rides

Or follow the moth and the fly

For an insect is a gift to the very fast swift

As a wood pigeon is

To the peregrine or the Lord of the Sky

And not forgetting the crow

Who you too well may know

For his corvidian cousin the Raven

Has driven you stark raving Mad

With his gang of dark vandals

Who are no strangers to scandals

In amongst the nests and eggs of the coot

And should you hold a full suit

Or a good gambit of feathery friends in your hand

Please keep them safe and

Sound advice is this :You may remember it is best

To believe you are blest

And unlike the cuckoo who intrudes on a nest

For the others eggs out he will push

But know without doubt

Your life is not worth a short snout

For a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush

Dead Gulls

 Dead gulls on coal beach

Black lulls the green sea’s reach

Spreading fingers through

Pebbles beneath

Lifting their bodies in tow

Their bodies are flung

Down to the gems in the sand

Where sea nymphs stove treasure

And fairies make foam cakes

And they carry the sleeping birds escort

Out to sea

To the watery grave to sleep

With the tides eternal deep

Buteo

Buteo, Buteo

Where for art thou Buteo?

On what holy wooded hedge

Where you make our hooded ledge

And wherefore do you fly?

Forever a convict of the sky

And conviction yes

More is the less

As with auspices make your pledge

Your blood bond to swear by

Vow your vows

Bow your heads

Here comes the vouchsafe

Of your lives

Give money, give roses, poses of heather

Black is the beak, brown is the feather

The air in some torpid atmosphere

Breaks like breakers of a wild sea

Snapping like a belt of leather

Sends up vapours

On whose thermals see thee

Oh how grubby are the praying hands

When they come together

Beneath wedding bands

And marriage yet between

Sky and land

Though thou art unknowable times of sand

For where do you come from?

Who is your mother?

Thy father is every falcon

Every hunter back to the age of man

But how many mothers can

Give birth to your skill

Your art is the destroyer

How learnt thou to kill?

Who taught you? Treacherous sky and wind

Tempest belly was thy womb

But land that keeps your harboured pledge

Vouchsafe in him

Your meat and bread

Father provider to a son born of the air

Always crossing the sun

But what cares the sun for poor Buteo Buteo?

He is forever a traveller

In search of his carrion loot

In search of dead gold

When the sun is treasure chest

Enough for this pirate

Who sails blue pastures

What more wealth can be searched for?

When wisdom is the treasure the sun has in store

And he but transmuted

The vessel of nature’s law

Sign giver and guide all those

Who worship him and him adore

Yet his auspice given, rewards

Neither love nor hate

But like the majesty of heaven

Reigns down equal upon those from His pearly gate

Reflections on an Island :Letter from an Island

The wind is howling now

A gale out to sea

The gulls all look pale

In a marked misery

They are petals

Collected on the flat rocks

Which lie who knows why

When around them

Are all jagged vertical alumni

I’m writing home

On a Saturday

To say

The visitors never came

The sea it was too rough

Hopes candle dwindled

To a low flame

We occupy our time

In occlusions from the high eye

Victorian built bunkers

Where are stored work tools

Where we make driftwood benches

And walk along the shore

On our feet are Wellington boots

In our hands are bow saws

We topple and slip and hop

 Over the newly wetted rocks

Look in at rock pools

By the white sea-foam fringes stop

At first I thought a bird had died

But it was not feathers

Rather lathered up plankton water

Aerated by the belts of wind like leathers

Across waves as if chastising unruly sons and daughters

At night we wait until the last light from the sky has gone

Before turning on

The bulbs of electric

And a fire is a blessing every few days

Because there is nowhere to go

We become important to each other

And habits of meal times are sacred things

Not to be broken

As marriage vows and rings

Conversation usually goes well

Few things stand as tokens

Except doing unto others as you would have done unto yourself

The unwritten authority of the warden in most things

Is left unspoken

We defer to him as lost sheep

Sometimes he is our shepherd

What he has an abundance of is confidence

And a love of food

In some respects we may not get on without him