At Edge

Estragon of town-edge accidie,
   Crux perplexed of any key,
Butt of self-horror and the world’s mocks,
   Thumb-scalded, whipped from the stocks,
Stranded in thistled sour-stench wasteland,
   Slapped often by my own hand,
Shouting “Crux, ave,” and “key, oh key,”
   Screaming “When, what, why, you, me?”

Screech you crows! You pompous magpies dance!

   Stung by briars and gorse I’ll prance.
Day and day, high day or self-harm day,
   Come and go. Moon-grinned I stay.
Crux ave! A wanderer with the key?
   Oh, cleansed lepers howl once free.
What if truth into my soul should blaze,
   Finding nothing, only days?

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© April 2015

Admonished

Hear it said
That when you’re dead
The pulse in your head
Lies still like lead.

Be you well-fed

Or starved on your bed,
Happily wed
Or in a hermit shed,

Blood then red,

Which once had bled,
Now ceased its tread,
Sinks black instead,

And when soul has fled

In a sweat of dread,
By angels led
To the Judge and life’s Bread,

All pleading pled

And sentence read,
The sins it bred
From A to Z,

It will hear it said

That dead is dead
And flung from the Head
You must lie in lead.

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© April 2015

A Cherry Blossom

   No bigger than a thumbnail
      Yet a world;
   Five petals like lawn, as white
As milkmaids’ aprons at the pail,                                 
   Glanced by the morning light
      For work unfurled.

      Yolk-topped stamens

   Like skinny saffron Brahmins
Adore their goddess pistil which looms,
   Greengage-hued, pad-headed,
   That the powdered bee be bedded
      Before it homes.

   Ah, faint as memory,

      Its scent but felt,
      Like a rain-rinsed sky
   Or sleeping child’s skin,
   Pale as a night star fading,
Seen not-seen, smelt not-smelt.

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© April 2015
 

To His Daughter

My dear, as you the day’s journey take,
   This world caressing,
Know my thoughts are ever with you
   With every blessing.

From mornings, at your shower and dressing,

Your work with rush and clients pressing,
To evenings with sighs and love’s guessing,
Know my thoughts are ever with you
   With every blessing.

My dear, the careless world is glib,

   All hopes compressing,
But know my thoughts are ever with you
   With every blessing.

And when love’s found with glad confessing,

And marriage with a coy congressing,
And then a family coalescing,
Know my thoughts are ever with you
   With every blessing.

My dear, at last, since all are called,

   Past convalescing,
Know I went ever thinking of you
   With every blessing.

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© April 2015

The Magnolia Tree

   Despite the frosts and damps of March
   Which spot the grass like scattered starch,
A magnolia tree, before a single leaf
Has spread, has flowered into a sunburst head
   Of colour, like the self-belief
Of one who, though encumbranced by the dead,
Has flung aside his cerecloths to proclaim
   His phoenix-rising in a flame.

   Firework of life! Brünhilde’s grief,

   Infolding fire of Eliot’s wreath,
Those Pentecostal flames on Peter’s brow,
Though teeming, are outshone by this display
   Which, like a fountain in the wind’s sough,
Cascaded round the bole gone wetly-grey
And damped its lichen to a seasick green
   That pre-spring flowers should have such sheen.

   Those flutes of flesh, cerise and bright,

   Flamed at the base, at top pure white,
Dimpling at pressure like a woman’s cheeks,
As luscious to the sight as moist fresh figs,
   Within held sweets which the bee seeks,
Clambering on stamens with frenzied jigs,
Those pistils like tiaras, green-gold eggs,
   The bee caresses with its legs.

   Fullness done, the flowers flop

   To star shape, then the petals drop;
Its leaves in khaki-green enclothe the tree,
A beau demobbed, now staid in middle life.
   Late autumn’s winds in smash and flee
Strip the tree whilst shrilling upon the fife,
Then winter sears its branches to an almond stain
   Like bones upon Ezekiel’s plain.

   This tree will bud again but not

   Men’s bones unless a Penteco’t
Rent Physics in a flame-fierce Second Coming
Which – fire of petals emblazoning the tree –
   Re-fleshing bones with a mighty drumming,
Summons the four winds of eternity
To fuel their senses that in bliss there be
   The colours of this magnolia tree!

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© April 2015

 

Villanelle: The Inscrutable

This was published on ground.org.uk website, 14 Sept 2016 (although the site now appears to be defunct).

----------------

Exaudi Domine is my cry;

Mid-quest, the dustlands cake my lips.
I know the what but not the why.

Is God a brute who blinds our eye,

And so we fall, one drowns, one trips?
Exaudi Domine is my cry.

Or Great, but gifting liberty,

Thrusts hemlock on a child who sips?
I know the what but not the why.

Some say He’s process flowing by,

Undone when gaolers thrash their whips.
Exaudi Domine is my cry.

Others, He’s ground of sky and sty

(A pearl through ordured fingers slips).
I know the what but not the why.

What’s left but that forsaken sigh

Of One whose blood from the Cross drips?
Exaudi Domine is my cry;
I know the what but not the why.

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© March 2015

 

March Song

This is the last of the little poems I wrote while recovering from 'flu. "The Lenten lilies" are daffodils.

-----------------

Bedded by sickness, my every thought
Is on my body’s blowsy weakness,
My skin abuzz, gone dry and taut,
My limbs aching in fever’s bleakness.

All hot-cold March has passed me by

As in my sheets I lie unshriven,
The Lenten lilies clack and sigh,
And last year’s leaves, wind-dug, are driven.

Will April’s flush of sun-gleam growth,

Spangled with birdsong’s chatter-clatter,
Fresh me to fling off fever’s sloth
And dance with Spring’s renewing matter?

 

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© March 2015