On inundated soil, the ground held its green
in the lakes and depressions.
A stroll from the manager – solitary barman
in the tap rooms of melancholy,
wondering who on a surface of imperfections
was cutting ribbons, opening bluebell buildings
in remote pockets of woodland,
hoping and regretting wayside desolation
lined the verges of memory
(though the ground held for all its shifting) –
ended in an ancient stone bench
in the ruins of an abandoned castle
with a view over the valley to the sea
with peace only found in layers of time
rather than hopes of future prospects:
the only prospect is in the trees.
Category: Poems
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Held Ground
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The Heart of the Line
In unplaceable country, running up and down the train
to disparate smiles: you’re the heart of the line.
Beneath your feet, the earth revolves
while wheels trundle through distant halts
before bursts of speed to the western sea.Now on such a small branch-line
by a sunlit estuary and flare off the glass
in the stillness of North Dock, then through the scrub
and dense green of Ammanford, through the rec
for Black Mountain views, some energy spike
became a cyclical decline, inexorable shut-eye,
a prostrate sleep before you alight
somewhere you don’t know, a dark co-ordinate
carried unearthed through renovated time
by a church conversion and Towy Porsche
on the back roads of a Llandeilo night.
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Whiteboard Scattergraph
It was like that angst in the chest
you mentioned, but then it exploded.My self was in a hundred fragments.
All I had was a bed and a skylight,a window on the incomprehensible.
Drifting off, I muddled cliffs and gardens:Was it West Bay, Lyme Regis or Sidmouth?
Football grounds merged: part Brunton Park,part Craven Cottage, part kickabout
at the old MK hockey stadiumwith Oxford United reserves –
or were they off duty cinema workers?About 12 0′ Clock, somehow scrambling up
for toast and a roll up, with a roll downwhiteboard scattergraph of faults,
their points the day’s shielded stars
all isolated from their cause,it was like that angst in the chest again,
but then it broke. Now you’re outat this car park. ‘No fear’ and ‘One life: live it’
on the back of a Mitsubishi Warrior,deep azure ocean beneath wild camping grounds
picked up in the eyes and a blue O’Neill shirt.This new hope is tentative. Will there be enough
finding gaps between or augmenting major leagueprescription drugs, all the dietary limitations,
the social times for which you’re out of action?It was like that angst, but then it broke
from its containment, lost its physical presence
to all our winding rivers of memory,
took root in close family and distant friends.I can’t describe the feeling so say ‘fixed’
and ‘broken’, currents surging to a tsunami.I sometimes wish there was a sole conductor
to form a single melody from all our memories.
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The Syntax of the Wind
I followed it over the new school,
a spire touching fingertips with God,
and temporary traffic by Sol Jol Park –
the syntax of the wind.
I thought about its temporary graces
collapsing vessels in rubicund faces,
setting down a hoarding or Caution:
Changed Priorities Ahead sign –the syntax of an isolated gust shifts a cedar in the dusk.
That’s the power between spaces and dots,
an ellipsis gone before we cycle through the verbs.
Now the hills are not quite full stops
in contrast to the highest city peace walls;
The syntax of the wind finds fraternities of silence
in lowland weather systems
we can’t see meeting.
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Vauxhall Sand Martins
From Slough Sewage Works
to a football field in Uxbridge;
Can you spot the Ring-billed Gull
among the others?Portland Bill, in raptures:
first a Desert Wheatear,
then a Ring Ouzel.And where was the heath,
that hot March with the Crossbills?Whatever is on the line,
we follow the majesty
to places thought unvisitable.
Something’s blown in on tumbledown winds
so pack the flapjacks
and start the Passat.
We’re off to Vauxhall Sand Martins,
gravel pits and estuary flats,
seabirds slotted between tower blocks –
cormorants off the Isle of Dogs.
Can you sense the sea
by St Edmund’s, Millwall,
reflected back in shallows
of the outer dock?
We’ll mark the species off –
more than a hundred in twelve hours –
from Slough Sewage Works
to a football field in Uxbridge,
from the post-dawn grey
of Portland Bill
to an equivalent dusk
on Bugsby’s marshes.
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Love Waits for Anyone
Between rows of poplars
at Bank Station:on a Bali beach
with a cappuccino.At Liverpool Street,
or the former site of Bedlam:Love is not eating noxious crisps;
Love is allowing others to pass;
Love is keeping two chevrons apart.Someone at the bank cares for me,
sees beyond my overdraft,
sells only fixed rate mortgages
whatever the Bank of England does.Everything invested in your job
buys a Boxster, riviera yacht,
penthouse and Dom Perignon
as God broods over the bonds
and hovers over the surface
of The Financial Times:Love waits for anyone.
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Aeroplanino
If I can’t find words
or they are halted by a synaptic lock keeper,
tyrannical yet wise, holding up a hand
to delay the latest craft, whatever its design,
I return to a trusted question,
my favourite formula:
Have you ever heard of Vincenzo Montella?If I can’t find truth
or it’s out there in muddied layers of time
resounding through Sheldrake’s field
as memory traces in the collective mind,
I return to a trusted question,
my favourite formula:
Have you ever heard of Vincenzo Montella?If I can’t dance
a question forms and lands
to looks as if from continent to continent,
with bafflement in subtle lines above the eyes.
My friends, do you know of the Aeroplanino,
our absent choreographer?
Have you ever heard of Vincenzo Montella?If I can’t find beauty
or its sun in England only shines obliquely
forming shadows on our game
of a mild September evening,
I return to a trusted question,
my favourite formula:
Has anyone here heard of Vincenzo Montella?
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Hazards on the Boardwalk
Flooding has exposed trip hazards on the boardwalk,
federal yellow mute evidence of cars,
exposed bricks by the International Cocoa Quarantine.
Consult the Blandford Forum Research Council
on Cold War and mafia slang. Read their biennial report,
sheltered between beach huts beneath the chines
with a bright disc shielded in the clouds’
distant quality of Irish County Cream.
Protecting yourself with your own proximity mines,
headphones covering your ears by Havelock Street
on your way to Gorrick Well’s healing waters,
ignore the trip advisor reviews of Wayne’s Basement:
‘Made not so much to feel unwelcome as actively repelled:
loose paving slabs, loose dog, absence of signage
and of Wayne.’ Figgy Ormerod’s in charge.
Find her down the lane and over the stile
if the local lads haven’t meddled with the signs.
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Haiku
dark sea lounge –
high glass mutes
Atlantic rollersrain curtain far out –
crockery and tables shake
the last of the sconesblinking tanker –
a pleasure or freighter’s
round lights rustingrain on cargo
in summer charcoal –
faded paperbacksswallows in Heston –
a man claps in time
over the M4
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The Cold of Labrador
On this leaf-strewn path of rotting wood,
between backs of houses and the railway line,
splintered oaks lie, stand and enclosea bigger house on pristine grasses,
too open and alone to retreat within
for winter fires to thaw the cold of Labrador
which settled into our bones on the walk.An old Toyota utility vehicle,
white and rusting around the wheel arches,
sinks among maplesas red kites circle through wood smoke
over fallow fields and a distant lock-up
stores future reports.
Wilderspool Causeway 