Cretan Voyage

A rock finch sips at a verdigris trough

blue-black wings caught irridescent in the slanting sun.

Villagers watch us as we pass,

looping the narrowed road - a house width - barred with chairs.

White-fleshed figs, green lemons, olives bent with fruit slide past,

rain slashing  stone to granite-grey , soft rock to lion -yellow.

With a fine delicacy of neat hooves,

a herd of goats steps out

brown udders full and swinging.

Honey dark as bees drips slowly off the spoon.

The fat of the land.

Cold Call

‘I am of the Romany people.’

She announces herself,

stops by her trolley hard-packed

With folderols

unfolds her stock.

Webs of crochet assail me –

table-cloths, doyleys , mats I have no use for.

Her hair neither hennaed nor oiled,

trousers beige as a seaside pensioner’s

but eyes of green and violet mixed.

Pamelina from the North, mother of five,

your cushions warm my back,

make my spine purr.
 

War Baby

A bolt of dove-grey silk

ruffles the early morning sky

then slides away.

The ice-skate tracks of aircraft trails

criss-cross each other,

soften and diffuse

to lambswool curls.

A sheep rolls on its back

like a cob set free of its harness,

then rights itself and falls on its knees

to graze the downland scrub.

My heartbeat tread

kicks  out sequestered Sunday lines :

‘And all the blue ethereal sky’.

Just one small cloud,

stretched to a sea-snake`s wily shape,

swims on to drink its fill

and spill a shock of summer rain.

Around my head a fat bee`s Spitfire whine,

while in among the dusty weeds of summer

bright-eyed poppies bay for blood.

Prague Spring               

‘Ma Vlast’ bursts from the cabin as we touch down -

a fine exuberance.

Later, climbing the castle slopes,

thick scarves wound twice against the cold,

blizzards of cherry blossom freckle our faces.

The suffocating weight of putti pushed away,

concerts play in every freezing church,

and through the steamy windows of quaint bars

the heart-shaped faces of pale girls,

hair razor-cut for piquancy,

anticipate hot chocolate and love.

Inside our small hotel a boy - word-hungry, cramming English -

jumps up to serve us nutty beer and ham.

On Charles IV bridge, between the brooding statues dark with soot,

medieval jinks –

beggars, buskers, artists.

Only a hound`s head, stroked by sentiment to gleaming brass,

winks in the winter sun.

“Very like a whale”           

A geography of clouds drifts through my sun-bed sky.

Tectonic plates shift,

Rift.

Valleys split,

Form continents, deform

Sail into new-found-lands.

Chains of islands pass:

The sand-dune sines of Norderney,

Juist and Sylt,

The basking curves of Brac and Hvar,

Korcula

Peljesac.

Fjords, Cuillin sharp, have Mercator perplexed.

Now Corsica and lizard-Cyprus –

All the gem-stone, scorpion islands of the south.

Myth breaks in -

Through tamarisk tails

Neptune rises headless –

Great thighs stretching into sky.

A devil sheds his horns,

Grows angel wings.

A ghostly head, punctured with azure eyes,

Swells hydrocephalic with rain,

Turns feline grey, speeds by

Till nothing`s left

But one fine eyebrow, arching in the clearest sky.

Fox Cry

A bark comes nothing near it –

more a strangled cry of agony

calling me to the open window this June night.

I mistake it for human suffering –

raw anguish at some deathly news,

lungs` dreadful bellows coughing out the heart.

Then in the intervals I hear

faint echoes: its mate is quartering the cemetery,

panicked, stopping with pricked ears to catch the call

and set its compass straight.

After so long, I hadn`t made the connection:

sad, empty wings spread on the grass

day after day.

First blackbirds then, with empty bellies growling,

the hunt`s stepped up.

Pied quill, a shimmering blue-green chevron -

magpie, jay –

give the game away. 

Her Plait

I talk to you softly,

brushing your hair,

your wonderful hair

stroke after stroke

till it falls like a fan

spread wide on your back.

The weight of it –

rope-thick,

shiny as conkers spilt  from the case

(hellebore green, hellebore white)

new to the light.

Now I divide it,

fold it and fold it,

under and over,

three-ply-strong as a spell.

And when in the evening I loosen your plait

it will fall into ripples,

stream over pebbles,

seal-slippery, weasel wild,

a force of nature.

My joy, my pride.

A Goose-feather Bed

In Lenka`s country geese are for feathers, not flesh –

“Too everyday for Christmas – fatty,

roasting down to nothing in the pan.”

She tells me her grandmother sits in the barn,

in the cold,

gossiping, plucking the geese,

stripping the down from the quill,

stuffing whole snow-drifts in sacks,

keeping them ready and waiting for when -

the girl returns home as she ought to

has the six children she ought to

each put to bed under feathers –

keeping them warm, keeping them safe,

keeping them in their place.

Lenka laughs – she`s escaped

the soft suffocation of quilts

the warm suffocation of babies

born of too many feathers,

too many smothering nights.

Who dares say

that barnful of down

is a forfeit neither must pay?

It must stay in hock to a dream:

of home remaining just the same,

however long she stays away,

of the day

the child comes back –

needing the sigh of goose-down on her marriage-bed. 

Smoking is  Bad

Smoking is bad

Smoking will kill you

But just for a moment

Catching a glimpse

of the boy in the Elvis blue-jeans,

the white Brando T-shirt

tight round his pecs,

I want the fine smoke

to drift to my nostrils,

remind me of Dad,

remind me of home

long before smoking was bad. 

Summer in Brittany

Madame la Comtesse has a gypsy soul.

She snatches up the comics from the mat

and reads them on the stairs – ‘Buster Brown’.

When coffee`s taken outside in the summer heat

she lies along the granite sill

and lets the Breton sun

kindle her sallow skin,

fade her cotton skirt.

But when she dresses to dine out with friends

she wears her pearls, puts on her rusty white tulle gown

and all the children cry ‘Maman!

You look so pretty, like a fairy queen.’

Across the fields, old magic.

In the home-farm kitchen Mere Nanette sips Calvados,

takes a baby`s hand in hers and blows a burn away.

The Ash-tree breaks its buds

Mid-winter.

Time freezes.

The garden static sticks,

the soil sullen, iron-ugly.

I draw breath,

hold it,

wait.

And this year I caught it –

a breeze quickens,

the stopped clock of nature resumes its measured tick,

treads and plods until –

time tricks again, jumps, races, bounds unbound.

From my red sofa my eyes swing to the window,

framing a young ash, thick with bud.

I glance - and seconds later, glance again.

The buds are stirring, nudging, pushing.

Each time I look they grow, dilate,

open like hands struggling to contain

a spill of pebbles as another and another splays them apart.

A heartbeat later

flowers froth on every fuzzy twig.

The Rector suggests we adopt a grave

The churchyard tumbles down the grassy slope,

headstones tilting in a mad crones’ dance.

It’s out of hand, the gardener’s overworked,

so we should all adopt a grave.

Whose shall I choose?

A young man “killed by accident” down on the coast?

The grim Victorian row of spiked and rusty rails

hammering out a smithy’s peal of grief?

Nine children dead.

A nest of trefoil, plantain, pimpernel

cups a small grey stone.

I choose it for its enigmatic rune:

“Benjamin the Ruler”.

But knife and trowel hang loosely in my hand,

unable to disturb

the braided strands, fine grasses, petalled stars

singing to the high and vaulted sky.

 

The Chiaroscuro of Faith