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
 

Leafing Up

Damp, dank and dingy, this cold March day
Cannot stop the bushes having their way,
Leafing up in the morning gloom
Like a green mist drifting in coil and plume.

All winter, the shrubs with branches bare

Have rattled in the thumping ice-stark air,
Now, with nosegays of salad-green,
They are leafing up in a rain-crisp sheen.

Be it the hawthorn with its blood-snag spines

Or the osier willow in fingering lines,
Mintily-tinted where insects will tup,
Springward, the bushes are leafing up.

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© March 2015

Resignation

A sort of pastoral perhaps?

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

I said to the sea, “What of me, what of me?
Whilst you go on to eternity
I age and wither, then cease to be;
Ah, think of the years not seen by me!
     Can it be?”

The sea in its thunderous winter mood,

With blackened waves and spray all skewed,
Roared, “I have no flesh nor any blood,
I need no love, I want no food;
     Like God I brood.”

And then in lisping summer swells:

“But you must flirt in sunny dells,
Exchanging vows like coloured shells,
Drawing sweet water from deep wells
     To the sound of bells.”

I said to the sea, “Ah me, ah me!

My girl has sickened, stung by a bee,
I fell at the plough and broke my knee,
Infection came laughing with the crypt’s key;
     Ah, take me to you, sea.”

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© March 2015

Death in Mouila

(Gabon, on the equator. From a photograph.)

A paper-thin paysan with ribs like ruts

Lies on the ground, his steel-wool hair gone grey,
His flung-out arm glows at the finger tips,
Those glossy nails the only hint of life.

A priest gives unction, sanctioning death’s putsch,

Crouching in sweaty soutane to lisp his say,
His hand on the man’s hair cancels all hopes,
Firming him for his last faint in a breath’s froth.

Outside, the equator’s sun packs down its heat

Which soon will bloat that man to gas and stench;
At crux point, limbs aching but nulled of strength,
Self-knowing hunkers in his brain, then blanks.

What is it then, a hand entrancing his feet,

A light which like a desert drink can quench,
A selfhood beyond intensity and length,
Knowing no thought or feeling, only thanks?

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© March 2015