Airport

Board an aeroplane

Metal birds on concrete floors

Change your name

In your Holiday fame

Return to the same

Like a Phoenix from the Ashes

The Ashes fall down again

Oh keep your broken arrows

Oh keep your spears yet sharp

Like the shooting sparrows

Like the darting carp

Keep your soldiers marching

They march the whole day long

Through the Marble Arch

Singing your victory song

Steel Robins singing

Feathered Fuselage

Keep your eggs a bobbing

Through the thorough fare

Fight or Flight in the space age

Diamonds sparkle in the night air

What I’ve left behind upon the ground

While I’m up in the air

What I’ve brought with me

What I’ve found

Since flying way up there

Music of the airport

Sweet Saccharin smooth tile

Buying our duty free report

Up high mile after mile

Cutting clouds like Paper-Mache

Newspapers writing foreign attaché

Of foreign wars and words

Oh keep sharp your swords

Keep damp the ink your pen

Hold tight, hold strong ye noble men

The sky is full of dreamers

The earth’s soul full of dirt

Let flare Ideals' streamers

Let wild geysers spurt

I told you so

When the walls are falling in

And the cakes are burnt

When you’ve done an appalling thing

Gone and made somebody hurt

I’ll just say I told you so

When you need knives and not a spoon

Or a fork and not a cork screw

When your dreams don’t hit the moon

Even though to the stars you were true

I’ll just say I told you so

And if the miles of endless ocean

Leave you bereft of all emotion

Or the plane you need to catch stays on the ground

So you need to hatch

Some other scheme as grand

I’ll just say I told you so

Digging in and Letting Go

Bulls in the meadows

Digging in and letting go

Like ticks to the black blood of the land

Like Peat worker’s dogs

To the flesh on the bone

Digging in and letting go

Like his spade into the rich

Whale blubber fat of the land

Into the water bank

Where the fishermen stand

Digging in and letting go

All in the throw

The weight on the line

The meadow fly catches

The meadow fish

The Kingfisher watches

The Heron’s wish

Digging in and letting go

Swan Bath

Flexing neck, like a writhing snake

Orange beak pecking, bristling feathers

Pure white what choice has it but to be

A snow bird, neck like a waves crest crashing

Combed like the mane of a Kelpie

Back like a white bread bun

Like a leaven creature of the lake

Half in Half out undecided

Sky or Water which it preferred

Perhaps its own reflection?

Is there a word for rippling body matrix

Of muscles in formation?

For the wings spread, tendons extended

Changing becoming something more

Like a dragon evolving

Just glimpsed at by the observer

Out spread flinging dislodged grit

Mites or dirt across the surface

Like its Purity is its guard

Its white queenly gown

Sets her above all else around

Brown River Gentle

Frog swims slow in the midday sun

Ducks paddle low in bank shadow then are gone

All the spring goes in and out with the tide

Brown river flow gentle, gentle

Bittern blow their bottle-neck boom

Herons shuffle the Egrets for room

Moor hen nestle their nests with pride

Brown river flow gentle, gentle

Water turns in pools mercurial and blind

The Ash burns in the Sun, the willow wills the wind’s mind

Water boatmen doing back-stroke from side to side

Brown river flow gentle, gentle

Lemon Curd Lemmers

Cats are afraid of water

Abraham was afraid to send his son to slaughter

I noticed a woman who was nervous of a little bird

Tell me why am I afraid of Lemon Curd?

Napoleon was a Giant who stood 5 feet 7 tall

But even he had issues with the shadows on the wall

And many in Mogadishu feel the need to cry I’ve heard

So Tell me why am I afraid of Lemon Curd?

I used to know a sailor who told me of the things at Sea

Many I could guess to face they wouldn’t bother me

But even this tough sailor thinks its quite absurd

Tell me why am I afraid of Lemon Curd?

Is it that its yellow well that could be the fellow

But no I don’t hide myself from the Sun

And its not that its a preserve about which I am Mellow

After all I can spread Jam on a current Bun

No, what I think is, that it is from a lemon tree

It’s truly that elementary

For a nasty incident happened when I was young

I was stuck up the tree for hours

Just sniffing at the fruit and flowers

When I saw dead black crow there was hung

Now I know it was a scare crow

But back then it was I who scared so

And the crows still circled about the Lemon Groves in the Sun

Ever since I’ve associated a dead bird

Every time I saw Lemon Curd

Which my point it proves

When life hands you Lemons Please recall these truths I’ve said

Don’t be bitter just make Lemonade instead

Because with it you’ll be cured

Just for Goodness sake stay away from Lemon Curd