Puffins

Puffins on Sanday

The gulls are gliding

The cormorants plunge

The sea is sliding

And squeezing the sponge

The rocks are like cakes

Absorb and crumble

Soak and bake

In the shores rumble

The cliffs of morn

Are wild and free

With the whiffs of a storm

And the breath of the sea

And the puffins dangle

Ship-worn and mangle

Where the white veins bleed

Unearned sworn in profile

Against the gathering cloud’s mobile

They swarm like bees

Agile turgid, tight of body

Like the fish they eat

Rainbow biters

Crunching the colours of the silver scales

Heathland

In the supine truth of his mercy

In the lauded king of the earth

The sallow willow wallows

Down in the mouth

The peat mounds sting in the rain

And damp bark shines black against itself

Sordid sinews of brambles

Conspire to bring

The snakes from beneath the beaten panel

And cowering low the bindweed winds

Soundless to the Sires’ minds

Of the headless hawks

And scruffy crows

Which spread across the old rail road

And chainless seas

Which toss and turn

Far beyond the chalice stone

To comb the pond

And pound the bone

Of dead saints as of badgers

Their scent of flowers pearling crust

In the hallowed graveyard’s dust

And they cheered in transient sun rays trust

That call them to their meaning

And far beyond gravels cliff

That gives rise to the ghostly mist

A fern is praised

As a dew lipped kiss

And candle light draws another Eden

Petitudes

The Darling Pets of May

May:

The legs of the Elephant

Not scare at a mouse

The eyes of a cat

Not burgle a house

The ears of a rat

Not abode any louse

Nor the fever of a dog

Run hot as a spouse

May:

The nose of a rabbit

Be tickled by a trout

The kindness of a kitten

Be smitten by a stout

The radar of a Russian

Be rattled by a lout

Or the uncle of a Kingdom

Be carbuncled by a bout

May:

The hubris of a herbivore

Be preyed on by a quail

Or the vertigo of an eagle

Be debedded by a snail

The notion of a cuckoo

Be knocked by a tail

Or the hailing of a whale

Be disgruntled with a nail

May:

All these and likewise

Never come into fruition

Or else the trees upon which they grow

Be banished from Eden’s Kingdom

May never a more saintly brow

Be mopped up by a vet

And therefore good kind Gents and Ladies

Do look after your goodly pets

Australian Reflections

Notes from a train

In the Out,

The river bed stout

Dry and dry again

Never fall the rains

On the potbellied plain

Of the crumbling green of tufted grasses

The crinkling leaves of trees in copses

The sapphire blue of the infinite sky

Against the dark green of the mountains

The peppered fields peopled by sheep

That peep from a green sea like fish out the deep

And forests, oh forests of spectacular stun

That reach to keep the splendid sun

And jack in the Marsh, rabbit on the hop

The kangaroo is filibustered in the election of the sun

Wallabies hid in the wheat

Spray of yellow rape at his feet

In the afternoon light

That is a delight

Upon the mottled plain

The mountainous lumps

Are stony stumps

Which lie in timeless stages for ages not in vain

The stirring rills which catch and spill

In pearly, swirly swills

Where swallows swoon

And boys fish with a loom

From their mother’s knitting room

Upon Cow Hill

Upon Cow Hill

What a thrill!

The moo of the mountains

As they kneel in the Sun

The pockets of forest

That bristle erect after fog

The dark cloud shadow

That blackens their slopes

Then the face of the loch

The whiffs of steam or smoke

From a factory in windless sky

Hanging like souls not yet ready to depart

Not yet willing to die

The Sequin Sea

Sequin claws

On sequin draws

The rope of the hangman

Hangs heavy on the door

And seasons come and seasons go

As the weather cock does crow

Into the heartland of the fire

Were burning embers glow

Seasons come and seasons pass

The love of a lost one

Leaves its cutlass

Aboard the ship of privateers

The stowaway steals the ship’s chest

To bring his heart to homeland

To sacrifice his death

John Drummond – the merchant Whaler stands

Upon the ship’s crow’s nest

And spies one eye onto the ocean

To fill his glass the best

The mud that lets the river pass

Is melting like the snow

But cracks as ice so the skater knows

He’s walking on thin plate glass

Merchant whaler rolls a drum

That explodes his current bun

Into the arms of James the First

Whose messenger there had come

To lead his navy into further lands than kingdom known

The merchant pledged his life to this messenger’s tongue

And onward now his life must run

Always in bondage bound o this King’s thumb

Down to the heart rug

Of certain pins

The hat that covers up is face

Is the same that ruins his whims

The sadness that holds his joy

Is that which will in him soon destroy

All hope of love all caste the iron men of Troy

To iron curtains rides the horse

Saying giddy up good boy

What’s to come can be no worse

See there’s land I spy, Ahoy!, Ahoy!

One too many mornings

Will you laugh, laugh in the morning

Laugh til the lady bird sighs

And cry, cry for the mourning

Is yet to be gone from her eyes

And love is terrible speed

When it impels our desire and need

To be gone with all fashion

Decorum just leaves passion

And Men are compelled by their greed

So lets chew, chew in the morning

Chew on the terrible cud

That we all must be gone by the morning

For love to be buried in the mud

And the lies that bond us are many

The chains that shackle are few

But they are won by the toss of a penny

And lost like a shipwrecked crew

We will dance, dance in the morning

Dance til our feet soles are worn

Dance in the seas in the morning

Dance for the oaths that were sworn

And the coast will rise up to meet us

And the boats will be rocked on the shore

And the harbour where our souls greet us

Will be purged with the waves that are shorn

Now chime, chime without reason

Chime though the lovers be dead

And speak, speak forth your treason

For it all will be yours and her head

The time came without warning

Its arrows like thunderbolts sped

O the crisp true light of the morning

Where the swallows children are fed

As the holy blood comes in the dawning

And the thorns run rivers of red  

It is better to light a candle Than curse the dark

Won’t you go to the dance my dear?

It is better to light a candle

Than curse the dark its clear

It is best to look up at the bright moon and stars

Than out across a plain and barren land of scars

The floods may come to swathe your home

But do not wait in standing waters

You do not stand alone

There are some city quarters

Left dry to the bone

The people who are refugees

They leave their land and families

And yet can look ahead in hope

Here is some good that leads as a rope

The stranded downcast farmer’s lot

Who works for peanuts for that’s all he’s got

Will come back home to his dear wife

And thank the heavens for his good life

There is some good in man or beast

Which wins the day when chance is least

There is some truth that Art succeeds

Beneath the crushing fist of War that makes it bleed

 There is in death even a final beauty

Which lightens the soul and transforms terror from duty

And in the butterfly’s sweet fledge

There are the wings of the Moth whose pledge

Does likewise fly to the candle light

And makes bright the darkest night

And from this you’ll see more clear

Its best to light the candle

Than curse the darkness out of fear

Bush Fires

Fire on the mountain

Consuming all the wood

I wish you could

Do some good

Koorawatha, snakes in the shade of trees

Billabongs and ponds

Australiana frieze

Rusted railings cockatoos

White sheep on their knees

Horned cattle and wallabies

As alone stands the tree

Termite mounds of red earth lean

Telegraph poles stand in apostrophes

Ridges of sand stone stood hard

In relief of the Aussy back yard

 The sun’s heat blazes from an all seeing height

Dashing visions of rape seed in yellow oil light

Penniless farms in lands of plenty

Mines and rock shards below

The towns of shanty misery

Streams flow beside Olympian highways

Bendicmorrow

Of rusty ears and machinery

Cheddar Gorge in the Rain

Cheddar Gorge in the Rain

Cheddar Gorge in the rain

I wish I could remember my name

Or write a song like the Rock of Ages

That goes on for pages and pages

But that twisting turning path

That snakes upward through stone shafts

Just about can cradle my shame

Memory just about vanishes within

The rock veins

And stopping at a pub in Priddy

I read an article on Mendip Fracking

How all the communities opposed

And no permission given

But the company waits in intermission

So sadly sat the man at the bar

So badly the bar maid polished the brass

And pressing like coals the anthracite mind

Burns up the chimney black with sulphurous soot

A picture of Queen Victoria greets you

As you enter and to the bar look

So heavy fell the rain

So hard in the yard

Where crows caw in vain

And on the earth sodden field ruddy brown with clay

Gushing rivulets down roadside gullies as the snow melts away

Gales blow and holler

On the Mendip hills so hollow

Fallow fields of rain

The bleat of sheep in others

And brown goats on the torn up, moss rotten slopes

Near Blackdown, Velvet Bottom

The flashing Landrover of the Cheddar Gorge Company

With the sour faced man who glowers at you

And says to car drivers this road is closed

But nobody heeds him

A thankless task

I sat in a fish and chip shop out of the rain’s blasts

That abated half an hour

Though the lull did not last

And it was takeaways only

But she was persuaded

The look of pity in her eye of a wet sodden man

At her door

Then two ladies, one older than the other

A mother or aunt

Came and followed suit – pleading to eat in

While the rains pursued

And the elder woman talking of whether

She’ll be remembered when she’s dead

They had to walk back to Draycott Park

Because their car had given up the Ghost

Oh Come

Oh come to Fort William

The town of the fight

Where the timber men are drinking

The black brew through the night

And the factories are frozen

But the tourist bus rolls

Like an unending horizon

Of the carnival of souls

Come to Fort William

A very hard place

That is trapped between a Mountain

And the actions of Grace

Where woman may walk softly

Where a man is in disgrace

Because that is the nature of the whole

Human race

Give over your line drawings

Nothing is sublime

None more so the etchings from an unquiet mind

You poor mawkings

You Maoists of state

Who hunger for your purse strings

To bring up to date

The nurse in the court yard

The prisoner’s dock

The sentence that has thought hard

On the passing of the clock

The rain buffets trees

The rain will not cease

It comes round the lees

And leaves to the east

The tide is a miracle line

That shadow softly treads

The gull which glides has followed its threads

And it falls on the window pane

In tiny necklace beads

Which have clothed the clouds of heaven

Then by a tempest hurled

There is a queen there some place

Who has lost her jewels

Then they adorn the flowers

Hang around necks of cows or mules

The rose is spotted

In its pink promiscuous haze

It overshadows the cow parsley

On the hedge on rainy days

And we all call softly

Come back to life

And the master of death

Stands and sharpens his knife

All in All

All in all

The tide had turned

The case of the Jacobite

Was not heard

A tisket, a tasket, a dead fish in a basket

The sun broke like an egg yoke

Smeared everything in yellow

Like it was sick of being locked

In the Blue Robin egg shell of the sky

And the selfish clouds colluded

Like treasonous plotters

The way barnacles congregate – barns instead of churches

On a blue rock

Then because all Nature

Thinks with is the wind

It comes like the tide

To try to dislodge these shellfish

City Zens

CitiZen

The Zen of the City

Through the City Bazaar

So calm and so pretty

Like the King’s own Hussars

So markedly poised

In the river, the joys

Of the arcade or bar

Dogs stop their howling

Gulls stop their screech

Car’s horns are silenced

To the avenues of beech

The pavement cracks heal over

Plastic bags find their home

The wind blown detritus

Bins itself with Kentucky fried chicken bones

The Zen of the city

Is so Martian like and strange

The guards all look at themselves

And mark how they’ve changed

Anger and road rage

Malice and strife

Are not more than foot notes

In the book of city life

Loch's Constancy

Loch’s Constancy

What is this Princess of water?

Sparkling in her bejewelled gown

Just a Loch of Mother Nature’s daughter

Flowing from the father down

Rippled black shades and wraths

That touch like a feather stroke

Bristle the lake

Under a swallows fledge

Yet undisturbed the currents stoke

Stirring up the cauldron valley

In between mountain sides

That once cut by ice rivers rally

Now they rest to the sea’s abide

See the Princess in her parade

Pass along the mountain streets

Now the Glen is green with envy

An audience of trees

Stand to applaud the bride

There she goes to the sea to Marry

Rivers must meet, the union be tied

All water wives will obey

Neptune’s rule

He sends them forth then draws them back

With the tide