Frog-eye

 She sits and she composes her song

And all the birds , they go flitting along

And it skits, it scats and it throngs

With alley cats, the dogs howling too strong

And the train, the train rumbles on

The last refrain, she always gets wrong

And the frogs are leaping into her pond

And the birds are tweeting, while she keeps writing her song

Oh ribbet, ribbet

Rib-eye steak

In the time of Henry the Eighth

The Bishop had his eye on the market square

Looking out for bargains here and there

The Bishop's nose

The bishop's feet

Oh how they grow

In inches sweet

Yet he jumps back in his pond

Repeats, I have my eye on you

Ribbet, ribbet, ribbet

bleat!

Housing Project

 you sing of blue shoals

In deep savannah

You love in new roles

The asleep piranhas

But I am deep scrolls

And I am the Bahamas

Oh who do you think you are?

Singing Praise be Hosannahs?

The frogs on fourth street are hanging their washing

The dogs on low walls are already hogging

The cream cats on the sofa where the couples are snogging

Singing who do you think you are

With all this blogging

The new year is here,

It is what we all hope for

The fire brigade are on parade

Along the silver street serenade

The fountains

Of mercy they are overflowing

crying who do you think you are

(1/1/2021)

light

 Well the birds would sing

And the night disappear

It was the usual thing

The thing I like to hear

And it left me, with a feeling of glory

As the dance continued

And the storm breathed on

And the rain in it's legions

Dropped on us like bombs

But we found the meaning so clear

On our trail with the snails

across the garden path

And the creatures taking comfort 

From a water bath

I saw the Magpie's eye spy

An early worm

I saw an earwig leap at the crack of dawn

As a beetle creeps under a stone to stay warm

And it was a telegraph of buzzing flies

Upon the ceiling when I opened my eyes

All there ready to die or get born

In the cycle of life you don't ask twice

You take what your given including good advice

Its just that sometimes it would be nice

To be warned

If I am reincarnated as a bee or a bug

Then let me know the morning dew

From a night's dreaming there's the rub

Would I dream of being a human?

Does an ant have a fantasy of being a cat

Does a dog wish that actually he could have been a bat

As he chases butterflies through a field

Would a rattle snake that shivers rather be a whale

Would a leaping pony rather learn to sail

How do we know this is not what animals feel?

Whose to say their dreams are not like yours or mine

Perhaps they dream by day while the sun shines

And that is what drives evolution

Because you have to have a dream, to make one come true

You have to cling to hope no matter what you're going through

And it's in these final lines that reminds me to sing

It's through the cracks as Cohen says that the light shines in 

Knit-knacks

 It was cut and run

In the sewing circle

She would sort out their mealy mouths she thought

With a swift joust here

A dagger, dagger stagger fall

There

A needle knit between the brows

Don't knit your eyes at me you cow

She exclaimed

As they blamed one another for the blood bath

Whose red satin scarf is that around your neck?

Not mine?

Not yours?

But your gaudy blood I expect

It is slash and burn

In the fabric aisles

Rollers torn, and carpets shorn

The rending of the cloth

The tearing of skin

The knitting

Of a dead thing

Into life

Taxidermist like

She loved her lover

She gloved her mother

Turned her into a leather cover

For her book on knitting yet

Birdie, birdie

 Waxwings in the supermarket car park

Directing the traffic

Seagull on the trolley

Pushing his family to go Christmas shopping

Buzzard at Mcdonald's picking up

his happy meal

Blackbird prittle-prattling in the planted pot

Crows flick-flacking on a lamppost

Below a pied wagtail strutting its stuff

Busy birds bush whacking the red berried trees

Off the M5 motorway service station pit stop

Crossing bridges

 The railway embankment rises

From behind the gardens of the estate

A long corridor of brambles and green leaves

The pale, pastel barks of the Ash saplings

That still sprout and grow vigorously

Goldfinch carousel about the branches

Each limb is like a path to another town

Another bud is ready to burst into life

But now waits in earnest expectation

Of the spring

Biding its time

On the Strawberry line

I am conflicted, in two minds

Because on the one hand we are bringing

access to the countryside, linking up

the hubs and nodes like a network

Of underground roots

And on the other these natural corridors

will inevitably be somewhat diminished

By the human wish to spread its own branches

To feed its own systems of growth

And repair its own faulty pathways - the roads

Industrial, smoke breathing cars

That flash and wizz past the parapet of the 

Once-bridge below

They will resurrect this bridge back from the grave,

And like an old giant remembering

Something of the spirit of the railways

Will come alive again

As people will walk their dogs along it

Will cycle their bring-a-bring bikes

and maybe the hedgehogs and squirrels

And scurrying things, will likewise

Cross the bridge and discover new worlds

beyond the boundary of the road 

Elsewhere

 Well the buildings they breathed, photosynthesized

In the forest of the city

Sky scrapers sprouted limbs

And stretched out to greet the new dawn

Bridges hummed in the wind

Giant bumble bees flapping their

Rotar blade wings

Danced between

These new plantations

Seeking out the giant flowers that the covered football stadiums

And Opera houses

Planes stood upright and preened themselves

Qantas

Pan Am, British Airways

Ducked and dived in the Hudson river

Where oversized water boatmen police boats rowed themselves

Up and down leisurely

Other plane-birds rolled around in the enormous dust baths of quarries

Cars became inflated beetles that opened out

mechanical wings and zipped here and there

And altogether elsewhere

The forests and the oceans breathed a sigh of relief

Because they could finally relax about

Keeping the whole planet going on themselves.