Toad

 It's six o'clock in the morning and the church bell is beginning to toll

The towns folk are starting to get up somewhere between the yellow

musk of street light and their first coffee cup they are reborn

And I turn to you and ask are we what we were once?

And you look askance and say the heroes are in us

And they run out of the page, through drawings on the stage

And I must ask what is this age, but kettles and fans that switch on

And electronic devices, which never suffices our needs, our wants

Where is the human intimacy, where is the human touch?

And you turn to me in your sleep and say why must you ask for so much?

And there is something courageous about the act of rising

Something that habit gives the human and it can be surprising

How automatic, as a rabbit, wakes and leaves his tunnel

We all must stir outside our door down the street side funnel

Somehow the bell demands, in a deep sub-conscious seat

Where we obey a call to arms to protect and serve on our feet

We all must be standing in order to carry on

And though our road may be demanding we can hear our victory song

So stirring, rousing, rebelling we go, defying all the odds

Defiantly defeating, all the squandered times repeating

The capricious acts of the Gods

Yet with our feet we give thanks, to cows and fields and cowpats

And mud, and stone walls that define the boundary lines

Across which we call dogs and cats

And men with umbrellas and women in hats

Rain on the fellas and gals 

The boys and the girls in wellies

That splash

And so long as this can carry on

Then Wells can too

And I will wake to take to the road

And send up my prayers of thanks

To the toad with the lily wet flanks

Who sits like Buddha in the wayside

Before he crawls back under his stone

Hawk Talk

 Well it needed to happen, that is for sure

The eagle has flown

But there's blood at his door

And as he does roam

There's the rub I am poor

But rich to have a home in The old Silvermore

The kestrel flew down to my hand

But quickly I saw he was a friend

And we talked like two hawks

Of life and our work 

As we walked out over paths wend

And the places we knew were many

In the hearts chapters we dropped a penny

Down the well of memory

To hear it echo what you meant to me

And I can hear your voice still

Ringing through the years

And she flew like a siren call

Like a screech through blood boiling skies

And it took a wrecking ball

To knock down all the cloud castles where I lie

And if there is some bird I must let fly

It is that of your ghost

Feather bed where I lie

Make a nest for my last post

But I cannot accept that I quit

Through this artificial bull shit

For Brexit is a lie, the truth is goodbye

Is hardest to say when you really mean it

Making Hay

 Are you going to ret and scutch?

Are you going to build and bind?

Are you going beat them?

And will you flatten the threads of the flaxen kind?

Do you need an old thermometer?

To break the bridge of the old geometer.

Who is measuring his toes.

While the grass grows

Under his feet - it's a vomiter

 

Have you sawn the hill in two?

Have you toed the line?

Have you sown the seeds two by two

Crossing country with the country wine?

 

Is it a stain in your pocket?

Is it a thread of your cloak?

Will it pull south if you dead head it?

Who is getting your goat?

 

Oh, the pheasant beaters know it

Yes, they howl, and they grown

When the pheasants they show it

Bear their bleating breast like a crone

 

And ringing through the trees

Goes the shotguns report

Staggering to my knees

I clutch and I moan at the sport

 

And yes, I retch 

when I see the flak in the vetch

And I feel a pea through my sleep

Though my bed is six mattresses deep

 

So, will you ret it, for one more year?

For one more time

Will you scutch and bleed, and tear at the reed?

Will you beat it? Can you ever beat time?

 

But the hands that rock the cradle

are the hands that hold the plough

And some like Cain's on Abel's

Were blood stained after breaking a vow

 

And the lines on the palm of the peasant

Are like the streaks in feathers of a pheasant

They are red and brown, and deep and proud

Like his furrowed brow, under sleeping clouds

 

And what will we make with the flax fibres

Roll them and mat them in to webbed spiders

That cling and they brook their tenuous hooks

And settle in new arrangements their atoms

 

And lattices and matrices 

That mother nature's intricacies

Have patterned

And pat them like patter-cakes, break them and flatten

Them down

Like tortoise shells hunkered

Like the dense pellets of owls

The egg yolks that bind the albumin

In the year's photo albums

And the favourite jokes of friendship

That sadden when they've gone

Oh, make the ties that bind

As strong 

River out of Eden

I was running up the riverbed dry

She was naked lying in her bed

Her stones had not bled, and she could not cry

Her dress of water was locked in store

And she was cold lying on the floor

 

I ran up the Biddle combe brook

And it gave to me a sideways look

Who are you to trample on my bones?

Can't you see I lie alone

 

I need no other to claim my throne

Or cast about my care-worn stones

I am nature the mother grown

But no other shall me own

 

And in ripples and in childish tides

Her water dress trickled down over her thighs

And filled the dry bed where once she was wed

With its web-locked fingers, and its fluidity spread

And curled in crispness of a fresh salad bed

 

And I leapt like a monkey out of her flow

Her water cress dress would have swallowed me whole

In her water-caress I was a fungi

And I could listen to her glamorous story

Glistening soft as a velvet Jew’s ear

Of how she joined the Gulf stream

To travel away for a year

 

But she returned in the rain clouds

Heavy and all out of sorts

He had left her near the Isle of Iona 

For a Madagascan or Chilean sport

 

So she returned to her hilly spring 

She dressed herself in black,

And she lay in ground waters low in the basin

Of the Mendip hill's cavernous crack

 

She stayed like a widow in mourning 

She lay in a suicide pact

With the stalactites and stalagmites adorning

Her chamber of echoing fact

She called to her own deep reflection

And she spoke with the mirror of the cave

And it said you are the source on inspection

It is only from you we can make waves

 

So, go out into the world once again

When the cold air will not turn you to ice

And be like the river of Eden

That runs out through paradise

A million lives

 I've lived a million lives

I've come and gone

over fires and coals

And my feet have moved swiftly along

As deep sea shoals

I've lived a million lives that's me

I've been to Burundi

And Margate on sea

I've sold the souls

And I know that nothing is free

And we pay the price

For the lives we lead

I've lived a million lives

And stole a thousand dolls

And sold the drugs kept under rugs

That have wrapped up things for me

I've been sacked and I've been fired

I've been quacked up in midnight choirs

And walked on cracked ice

So I know the price

Of the life I lead

I've lived a million lives

They're like the stars of the sky

Had so many women, been in too many bars

I've jacked cars, and I've jack-knifed

And I've been the jack of hearts

So I can say I know the price

Of living this life

I've lived a million lives

And walked a thousand trails

And each one of them has cost me twice

For each time I win, in another way I fail

And you lose what you had to begin with

If you're a gambler, if you're a thief

But I ask you who is the greater conman

The king or the priest?

Do they both know the price of the lives they lead?

And we each move our pieces across the chess board

The Rook to the Bishop

The Knight to the Pawn

The King and the Queen are mutually torn

But do they each know the price of the life

To which they're born

I've lived a million lives that's me

You don't have to ask me twice

I know not much is free

Except this advice which I impart to thee

Please know the price of the life

You lead

Wood for the Trees

I can't see the wood for the trees

Not me,

Oh, I look in the brook

But it comes up to my knees

Well what do I need?

 

You need to look through the forest he said

Listen, how far does the dog run into the wood?

I said, I don't know, he said good

You see he runs halfway, because

He can only run halfway into the wood

Before he starts running out of the wood

You see?

Not really -

Well that is why you can't see the wood for the trees

You are focusing on the problem and not the solution

You have to look through the gaps between the trees

To see the other side

If that is where you want to go,

How are you going to get there if you keep looking at the trees, see?

I said yes

Thank you, Fred

River of Eden

 I was running up the river bed dry

She was naked laying in her bed

Her stones had not bled, and she could not cry

Her dress of water was locked in store

And she was cold lying on the stone floor

I ran up the Biddle combe brook

And it gave to me a sideways look

Who are you to trample on my bones?

Can't you see I lie alone

I need no other to claim my throne

Or cast about my care-worn stone

I am nature the mother grown

But no other shall me own

I looked about and saw 

The folly of the broken door

And just as if the river was smarter

I started to hear the sound of laughter

And in ripples and in childish tides

Her water dress trickled down over her thighs

And filled the dry bed where once she was wed

With its web-locked fingers, and its fluidity spread

And curled in crispness of a fresh salad bed

That springs up after the first rains 

And I like a leaping monkey had to jump out her way

Or her water dress would have swallowed me up

In her water cress-caress I was a fungi

Soft as a velvet Jews ear

And I could listen to her glistening and glamorous stories

Of the time she joined the Gulf stream

To travel for a day and a year

But she returned in the rain clouds

Heavy and all out of sorts

He had left her near the Isle of Iona of course

For a Madagascan or Chillian sport

So she returned to her hilly spring 

She dressed herself in black,

And she lay in ground waters low in the basin

Of the Mendip hills limestone cavernous crack

She stayed like a widow in mourning 

she lay in a suicide pact

With the staligtites and staligmites adorning

Her chamber of echoing fact

She called to her own deep reflection

And she spoke with the mirror of the cave

And it said you're the source so remember

It is only from you we can make waves

So go out into the world once again

When the cold air will not turn you to ice

And be the river of Eden

That runs out through paradise