It is better to light a candle Than curse the dark

Won’t you go to the dance my dear?

It is better to light a candle

Than curse the dark its clear

It is best to look up at the bright moon and stars

Than out across a plain and barren land of scars

The floods may come to swathe your home

But do not wait in standing waters

You do not stand alone

There are some city quarters

Left dry to the bone

The people who are refugees

They leave their land and families

And yet can look ahead in hope

Here is some good that leads as a rope

The stranded downcast farmer’s lot

Who works for peanuts for that’s all he’s got

Will come back home to his dear wife

And thank the heavens for his good life

There is some good in man or beast

Which wins the day when chance is least

There is some truth that Art succeeds

Beneath the crushing fist of War that makes it bleed

 There is in death even a final beauty

Which lightens the soul and transforms terror from duty

And in the butterfly’s sweet fledge

There are the wings of the Moth whose pledge

Does likewise fly to the candle light

And makes bright the darkest night

And from this you’ll see more clear

Its best to light the candle

Than curse the darkness out of fear

Bush Fires

Fire on the mountain

Consuming all the wood

I wish you could

Do some good

Koorawatha, snakes in the shade of trees

Billabongs and ponds

Australiana frieze

Rusted railings cockatoos

White sheep on their knees

Horned cattle and wallabies

As alone stands the tree

Termite mounds of red earth lean

Telegraph poles stand in apostrophes

Ridges of sand stone stood hard

In relief of the Aussy back yard

 The sun’s heat blazes from an all seeing height

Dashing visions of rape seed in yellow oil light

Penniless farms in lands of plenty

Mines and rock shards below

The towns of shanty misery

Streams flow beside Olympian highways

Bendicmorrow

Of rusty ears and machinery

Cheddar Gorge in the Rain

Cheddar Gorge in the Rain

Cheddar Gorge in the rain

I wish I could remember my name

Or write a song like the Rock of Ages

That goes on for pages and pages

But that twisting turning path

That snakes upward through stone shafts

Just about can cradle my shame

Memory just about vanishes within

The rock veins

And stopping at a pub in Priddy

I read an article on Mendip Fracking

How all the communities opposed

And no permission given

But the company waits in intermission

So sadly sat the man at the bar

So badly the bar maid polished the brass

And pressing like coals the anthracite mind

Burns up the chimney black with sulphurous soot

A picture of Queen Victoria greets you

As you enter and to the bar look

So heavy fell the rain

So hard in the yard

Where crows caw in vain

And on the earth sodden field ruddy brown with clay

Gushing rivulets down roadside gullies as the snow melts away

Gales blow and holler

On the Mendip hills so hollow

Fallow fields of rain

The bleat of sheep in others

And brown goats on the torn up, moss rotten slopes

Near Blackdown, Velvet Bottom

The flashing Landrover of the Cheddar Gorge Company

With the sour faced man who glowers at you

And says to car drivers this road is closed

But nobody heeds him

A thankless task

I sat in a fish and chip shop out of the rain’s blasts

That abated half an hour

Though the lull did not last

And it was takeaways only

But she was persuaded

The look of pity in her eye of a wet sodden man

At her door

Then two ladies, one older than the other

A mother or aunt

Came and followed suit – pleading to eat in

While the rains pursued

And the elder woman talking of whether

She’ll be remembered when she’s dead

They had to walk back to Draycott Park

Because their car had given up the Ghost

Oh Come

Oh come to Fort William

The town of the fight

Where the timber men are drinking

The black brew through the night

And the factories are frozen

But the tourist bus rolls

Like an unending horizon

Of the carnival of souls

Come to Fort William

A very hard place

That is trapped between a Mountain

And the actions of Grace

Where woman may walk softly

Where a man is in disgrace

Because that is the nature of the whole

Human race

Give over your line drawings

Nothing is sublime

None more so the etchings from an unquiet mind

You poor mawkings

You Maoists of state

Who hunger for your purse strings

To bring up to date

The nurse in the court yard

The prisoner’s dock

The sentence that has thought hard

On the passing of the clock

The rain buffets trees

The rain will not cease

It comes round the lees

And leaves to the east

The tide is a miracle line

That shadow softly treads

The gull which glides has followed its threads

And it falls on the window pane

In tiny necklace beads

Which have clothed the clouds of heaven

Then by a tempest hurled

There is a queen there some place

Who has lost her jewels

Then they adorn the flowers

Hang around necks of cows or mules

The rose is spotted

In its pink promiscuous haze

It overshadows the cow parsley

On the hedge on rainy days

And we all call softly

Come back to life

And the master of death

Stands and sharpens his knife

All in All

All in all

The tide had turned

The case of the Jacobite

Was not heard

A tisket, a tasket, a dead fish in a basket

The sun broke like an egg yoke

Smeared everything in yellow

Like it was sick of being locked

In the Blue Robin egg shell of the sky

And the selfish clouds colluded

Like treasonous plotters

The way barnacles congregate – barns instead of churches

On a blue rock

Then because all Nature

Thinks with is the wind

It comes like the tide

To try to dislodge these shellfish

City Zens

CitiZen

The Zen of the City

Through the City Bazaar

So calm and so pretty

Like the King’s own Hussars

So markedly poised

In the river, the joys

Of the arcade or bar

Dogs stop their howling

Gulls stop their screech

Car’s horns are silenced

To the avenues of beech

The pavement cracks heal over

Plastic bags find their home

The wind blown detritus

Bins itself with Kentucky fried chicken bones

The Zen of the city

Is so Martian like and strange

The guards all look at themselves

And mark how they’ve changed

Anger and road rage

Malice and strife

Are not more than foot notes

In the book of city life

Loch's Constancy

Loch’s Constancy

What is this Princess of water?

Sparkling in her bejewelled gown

Just a Loch of Mother Nature’s daughter

Flowing from the father down

Rippled black shades and wraths

That touch like a feather stroke

Bristle the lake

Under a swallows fledge

Yet undisturbed the currents stoke

Stirring up the cauldron valley

In between mountain sides

That once cut by ice rivers rally

Now they rest to the sea’s abide

See the Princess in her parade

Pass along the mountain streets

Now the Glen is green with envy

An audience of trees

Stand to applaud the bride

There she goes to the sea to Marry

Rivers must meet, the union be tied

All water wives will obey

Neptune’s rule

He sends them forth then draws them back

With the tide