Red Burn

 Down from the dark, titanic mounds

Runs the Titans blood

Sometimes white as milk

Sometimes dark brown

Dirty blood from its deep arteries

Over salmon flesh, over cod yellow

Over the red Wrasse fish body

That heaves in the Glen

Whose gills breathe rain water

Whose lungs are damp caves

Whose Leviathan mass lies

In these watery graves

 

Whose back is a whale- une Roche Baleine

The whale bone ribs have been bent into waves

Whose oil and blubber are buried deep underground

And ambergris in its gut are the minerals yet unfound

They’ve been hunted by Geologists with their hammers like harpoons

Ready for the conquering like men who want rock from the moon

River

 The river babbles, shelves in clam-like semi-circles

These C letters it is spelling out

Constantly, clattering, changeling

Calling in chains

That run like white sausage strings

Over stone rails

Bulbous and fat as onions rolling

Down a cobbled hill

Chattering and chasing each other as children do

Racking and racing as horses out the stalls

All from the starting line over the head of Steall Falls

Dragon Fly

 Little beastie

Fearsome in is proud mantel

Scales of multi-colours

Wings of thinnest hair netting

Squashed so its guts spilled out

Trodden under foot of exploring geologists

In their rush did they find the rock was still there?

Did they try to squeeze Life out too from that?

Like blood from a stone

I don’t care

Skin and bone and hair that is where life is

We are like hurricane hunters chasing after

Something that is already dead

This is red, that is not

Time is not dead though

Time ages and we can only remind ourselves of by how much

Of by how unimportant our lives are by looking at Rock

Hard, never blinking, always staring no matter what

Rain gets in its eye, 

Like Heroes of the old world

They survive or don’t quite out last everything

Slowly decaying eroding

 

She held this fledgling in her hand

Like it was more precious than all

The Rocks of time and the world

As a giant holds a seed

Or a mother her child

That they know will grow into a flower

Then upon a rock she placed it

Ticking, for the seconds of its life

And let the fairy nymphs of the river

Have its body

Path building or making ends meet

Here we are all sat down

Amongst the turf that’s turning brown

By the stream which fecund flows

Over rocks in rows and rows

Here we stand beside each other

Sister to sister and brother to brother

Beside the mountain

Beneath the cloud

The echoing falls which talk so loud

A new line

 Monads, epistles, fevers, colds

Cool drooling mouths

Faces of fools opening, closing

Laughing and falling

Like all of human nature

Into the gene pools

The River out of Eden

The long charade

The pictures and shadow play

The aching archipelagos

Abandoned island rock

Out on a precipice

On its own a ticking clock

The sum of all our fears

 Will you create a lasting world?

Will you dry our tears

Will you ensure life for every boy or girl

That's the sum of all our fears

That's the sum of all our fears

Are your eyes seeing, what our eyes see

These visions of hell and heaven not free

Will you close the book and just let it be

While the water boils down in the sea

That's the sum of all our tears

That's the sum of all our tears

With your finger on the buttons of a warhead

Will you press the red button marked send

Will you let loose the dogs of war unlead

Like the fossil fuels that have come to an end

For that's the sum of all our fears

That's the sum of all our fears

There wasn't a dry eye in the house

When the film of Earth ran off its reel

The director was as quiet as a mouse

But you could hear every producer just squeal

Will you ask mother nature for a refund

Saying I thought we had a lifetime's guarantee

She said look son what you've made me do

It's because of you that I had to roam free

So I stare in the mirror like a mad man

And ask myself what am I going to do?

Just wait for death here in the badlands

Where the dry winds are blowing their due

Shine a light in from outside Lord

For this house is going into the shade

And we're sitting beneath a hanging sword

It's one that's only man-made

Let us be judged by a court of our peers

Let the hammer stroke beat on the gavel

For this is the sum of all our fears

For our fears yet have a long way to travel

The garden and the sea

 James Allen he lived down in Bowlish

And he planted near Darshill docks

Where the water flows down, from Shepton Town

And into the sewery locks

And he collected these Ukrainian snow drops

Beautiful flowers like pale faces at bus stops

These Caucuses brides who were carried on the tide

Of the Crimean War over fields of crops

Which soldier with his face buried in the mud

Looked up to see their beautiful faces

While cannon balls fell all around

Red blood pooled in all of the places

What hope was there in their black despair

To see these white flowers just growing there

Up from the soil, the good earth of their toil

Like a spring of hope in the valley of death's lair

And so back they came as bulbs in pockets

Who knows what horrors their porters had seen

Back to shine brightly like light bulbs in sockets

Though not yet invented the electrical gleam

And growing them hardy and growing them strong

James Allen adapted them and brought them along

In his greenhouse, his shed, his garden wall's shade

Damp like the valleys of the Crimean parade

And with powder white hands from the flour mill

Dust on his jacket, green fingers of skill

He picked and he reasoned, discerned and he judged

Used tricks of the season, through forest paths trudged

And he cared and he reared them in the English style

To be well adapted to winters in these British isles

Until these Ukrainian flowers learnt to love these lands

Brought here by soldiers, tended by gardener's loving hands

So look around you in February when the snowdrops bloom

And think of their journey from the hands of doom

And hold a light brightly, like their fair heads shine white

And look into the future with hope and fine fight