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 

Apple Orchards

They are held tight to the grit

In the grip of the sky

In the grit in the eye

And woodchip in our spit

Pruning the orchard

In a land of Peace

Where song birds flutter

The home of bees

And a bliss of Quiet

Yet never still

The looming presence of trees

The time you have to kill

Activity drums and hums

Your thumbs never idle

In the aisles, the rows

Almost bridal

You stand and wait for a kiss

Under the mistletoe

But, it never comes

Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth

But she would take a bite from the apple

Of course 

Near Wookey

On a Sunday morning

The old farmer stands

On the bow of his hill ship

And like Ahab

Surveys his pastures

The Mendip hills in their slate green light

Whose trees stand out like ships on the horizon

Distant Galleons riding a swell

And a sea of green before them in the fell

He turns back to his gunwale of hedge

And follows it with his dogs out of sight

Budapest times

In the Out, and any way between

From the Castle set in the Clouds I dream

Dreaming of the spires through

Salt encrusted streets

Someone has sprinkled the Danube

Now its grown extra feet

Far beyond the telegraph

Far over the clouded plain

We journeyed on for hours

Until we rested again

About the busy city

Where the rounds and squares

Fitted into pegged holes

Banners on castles walls where statues stare

Trailing in the sunny azure

An actor from the ramparts calls

Down to invaders at the doors

Stifling in the thronging crowd

We held hands in palms

In clovers, in the marble whiteness

Of the stone that shone like daisy petals

In a field of fire

Under the Trinity Statue and the dome

Whose symbols drove away the plague

Whose gold was yellow chrome fatigue

Whose cherubim twinkled as a fat ballerina around

The legs of Mother Mary, Father, Son and Spirit’s Surround

Trumpeters and fanfares of Ideas

So high and Mighty Up high within the battlements

Embattled soldiers, embodied all the queer and flighty

Tendencies of Post holders to abandon their guard

But their Military training kept them standing hard

(It was a military thing not an object d’art)

Standing to protect this fortress of the mind

Where such ideas integral to statehood we can find

The common man must be able to see but not quite

Touch the divine

For If he does what else is left but to topple regime

Castle post

Aristocracy must keep its distance from peasant orders

Of that kind

In the pleated Hungarian Night

In the pleated Hungarian Night

Where the clouds are rippling high

And the moon is burning bright

Rolling silver pale as a coin in the sky

Hear the houses

See the stain of the blouses

Washed in the rain

In the pleated Hungarian night

As Trans-danubian pillars write

Their own blood histories

On the wall

Of them that rise

And them that fall

In the pleated Hungarian night

While the tyres turning tight

See the racing cars, squeal wheels

As they chase stars on their heels

In the pleated Hungarian night

Because the big sky is there by right

 And the plains are without their borders

So men’s brains are free from chains or orders

They can dream big, in the tree twigs

Seen through the sight

Of the pleated Hungarian night