Gate Road

 Down to the gate road,

And beside the running brook

The gargling of sea gulls

As the starving starlings look

The road is cold

The frost takes hold

But robin cheerily sings

things unfold

He is bold to talk of happy things

And mist enfolds the hills

And clings to valley bottoms

It is sticky in the trees

Where the river sheppey rolls

But not forgotten

And we wander over storks of fields

We crunch in icy puddles

As spinneys of trees shine on hill tops

And the sun breaks through

As a yellow shield shining

Through bright dew drops

And snaking along the treeline

The sheppey does take shape

And lifts the pages of the mist

Like bed sheets from its face

The old oak with the spidery crown

Waits beside the gate

And we take turns to clamber down

Across a broken field stile plate

The post is rotten in the ground

It wobbles and it shakes

As we walk around the Lorax patch

Where the cocks crow as men of state

The hens are brooding in their hutch

Like glamorous fashion models

Kept there ready to lay such and such

A golden egg to bottle

As proudly strutting cockerels parade

Their fleeces, like dandified fops

Their ruffs like Elizabethan curls

The court of the Queen of chops

Off with their heads she cries

And headless chickens run a mock

And chicken feet run down the street

And upon the hills spill their blood

As the Cathedral peeps over the brows

Of hills which are vacant of cows

And streaming white whiffs of clouds

Float gently in the blue

I can see through these see through days

Can you see through me too

Invisible in the olden ways

Awaiting the tides of new

As I bend down to tie my shoe

A cockerel cries a murder blue

And digesting all that we've been through

I fill it up and bring it to you

You offer it back like your take affront

I take it back but not from want

I wish I could give, but what I have

Is taken up by the ditch grab

Cathedral city

 We are transformers

Now I am a robot

Now I am a cathedral

The ghost of a 

Cathedral

The wall of stone

The forest like a father

Mysterious alone

The sky like my mother

Hole punched through the dark

With these imperfections

That allow through the starlight spark

Give me the chewing farting cattle

The bending pole of mars

Magic mushrooms on the hill top

Just don't take away my heart

I used to have you

Now I know not what I lost

nor why I ever wasted

The chance at love's cost

The Green King

Near Yeo farm, the water
gets much darker
There is something deathlike
About these steel knives
Nothing can feel alive
In the land of the pike
This is just a death trap

Then I see a white swan
With her head sunk low
Swift and swallow like a cythe

 wet underfoot
Fields of wheat,
Cows that scatter
At trifling matters

The long track past Fresians
And all the world's reasons

Herons like the limestone
Crows like Egyptians
Go gleaning the fields
heads to the ground
Willows like sisters
Who knows where the wind blows

Somethings we lost
While others we found

I saw a heron the colour of stone
I stole her wings made them my own

I saw a heron the colour of stone
Standing by the rhyne all alone

I saw an old heron the colour of ivory
He was standing still as a statue made of memory

I saw an old heron like a tusk or a bone
Standing by the rhyne, standing all alone

The pigeons burst out
As I was walking home
I saw a heron the colour of ivory
Like a memory of a land I call home

I saw a heron like the tooth of a child
like the call of the wild
I saw a heron and it reminds me of home

The cows stampede
And they swish their tails
Down near Pilgram farm
On the low lands of Bagely and Theale
They don't make it easy,
But they don't make it hard

The sky is like limestone
and blue lias
Cut in by rain clouds
From a stone mason's compass
They don't make it easy
But nor do they stop it being so hard

Down in the marsh lands
Where the wind cuts the cards
And shuffles the cattle
and the buzzard shards
They don't make it easy,
But they sure don't stop it
Being so hard

I saw a deer stand in a field
The colour of orange peel

When the weather comes over
Across the mendips
Rain like a light mist descends
The wind that's blown
The green sea beneath us
Where the river Axe cutlass
cuts in its turn
The green heart stone

Like an emerald city
The hills shine so pretty
As thrones
As a labyrinth the fields and hedge
Criss cross below

And the weather comes across
In squalls
And throws the toss
Of which cloud will fall on us
And which will forego

Crooks peak in the distance
Trees walk down the beach heads
Dew drops fall on us
And we walk back home
With cold nose

As the Green king
On his hay stacks
Commands the sea gulls
And the rain
And the Green knight holding his Axe
Brings it down on the neck of Gawain

King Alfred

Many times I've hid away

Many times I stand and fight

But if this were yesterday

Tomorrow would be alright

Its just been a nagging

this wilderness in the back of my mind

Someday soon I'll journey there

And see what I may find

I dreamt:

I was a great king in the past

When heroes walked the land

And ships carried two ton masts

When men were born and died in reigns

That neither victor nor defeated

Could buy in vain

This grist that etched old Briton

As was how we called her

Was beset with Tribes and Factions

Though in strength together I did bind them

For we faced a common foe

That of the Dane who's greatness came in tow

And not more did commoner or saint

Have the wear with all to weather that complaint

I being of Christian heart

Fought hard to see a peaceful way

But tethered to the mortal spell

The fates decreed another path to tell

And so into ditches up to our britches

We wandered now

Then finding a friend with a long canoe

Up the rhines and river we did plough

Coming at last to a fateful place

Named Athelney then gave up the chase

For thought I, with mind bent on War

The military advantage proved most likely to endure

With treacherous swamp and tidal rills

Surrounding us always even up to the hills

And no enemy could find or try to invade

An army so well fortified by barriers nature-made

Therefore there did we rest with what was left of our number

Until we could regroup and gather strength and make weapons of lumber

Then we might be the one with the power

Of choosing time and place to fight a battle

At what’s now called Alfred's Tower

The long nights passed

And my resolve it did last

Until I was ready

To charge down the Eddy

And whirlpool of damage into the Danes

They stood there now in the screaming battleground

 Which forever I'll see in my dreams

As match sticks on the burning horizon

And all did us surround

Like frozen mirrors their armour

catching the sun's gleam

Yet this symbol I saw rising above me

Was the risen Lord now on the cross

I know without doubt, the Lord was on our side

And, though battle and bloodshed were our lot

We would not come to great loss

So I remember well the Saviours Land

Who felt our weary footfall

Those levels of the Summer lands

And Athelney's borough above all

No rich merchants did abode us

For they were all lost at sea

When Briton's hour was at it's darkest

Who saved us were the poor folk of this sweet country

They sheltered and clothed our soldiers

Gave them food and warmth

And when time came to turn the tides of War

So too the waters they did part

Like the Hebrew tribes of old

When Moses led them away

The sea again did save God's people

Until their judgment day

And like the Tribes of the Pharaoh

The Danes were smothered in the wash

To show that all of the unworthy

Shall be dashed upon the rocks and their forces quashed

So let this be a reminder to all those who come here after

This land was once so holy

And filled with a people's happy laughter

That it's essence is in Nature

That will provide food enough for man

And protection when times are hardest

This holy sacred Land