Poem ~ Grass, Hay

GRASS, HAY 

We grubbed out the apple trees, ploughed

and weeded, and waited through the winter

then we harrowed, seeded and rolled. 

I would never have guessed the beauty 

captured in the movement of long grass

the sway and flow of it in the wind.

And now, after mowing, before 

the first of three turns, I am entranced by 

the felt weight of it already turning gold.

If you wish, you can add your own analogies

here: effort, timing, patience, reward. 

Or, you can just stay with the grass

watch the wood pigeons settle 

on the layered tresses searching for seeds.

Close your eyes, breathe. The scent of it.  

Haibun ~ Words

For a year I have been thinking about getting back to fitness with each run I take but back is surely the wrong word to choose when ahead is where the gift of full recovery lies. And today the lane I am running along reminds me that neither word serves and it is only the now of the cow parsley, the fields of beans, the North Downs holding up a sun-bright sky that matters, this moment, this breath  

here now

stopping to listen

to the skylark’s song

Poem ~ So much

So much

I want to say so much about 

this oak and these first bluebells

but what can I say that you

don't already see and feel yourselves?

The weight of that trunk hunkering 

over the frail brushstrokes of colour. 

You might even imagine their barely 

perceptible scent soon to be booming 

through the woods. We are comforted 

in these moments, aren't we? The reliable 

return of Spring. By beauty. 

The way our small hearts sing. 

Above me the first shimmer of green 

in the splayed branches. At my feet

these steadfast little gifts. I want to

believe in a world that can change and heal. 

 

Poem ~ What I see

What I see

The railway bridge’s shadow staircase

rising diagonally on the opposite side of the cut

reminds me I cannot always be sure

of what I see, or what I think I see.

Or at least understand that even light

can sometimes lead me in the wrong direction.

Poem ~ The Old and the New

The Old and the New

What remains in the Afan of an old wooden wharf

overlooked by wind turbines crowning the mountain.

The castellated look-out tower at the docks dwarfed

by the unloading cranes in the deep harbour.

The timeless and relentless tides held back by

giant tumbles of rock along the steps of the prom.

This is what we are made of too: the old and the new,

what we were, what we’ve done, what we have become. 

Some days we look back with a heartful of regrets,

others, we are brimming with gifts a new day has brought.

The past is always with us. Change sits at every horizon.

We can only do our best to carry and welcome them both.

Poem ~ Never

Never

For Mam, 1st December 1932 ~ 25th March 2021

Grief keeps changing its shape – a weight 

like a kilo bag of sugar compressing my lungs, 

sometimes a water smoothed stone that fits

perfectly in the palm of my hand. Yesterday 

the heaviest of winter coats that refused 

to keep out the chill. Today, I woke and heard 

birdsong through the early morning mist 

and remembered the last words you wrote 

the month before you died –  It’s good 

to be positive and looking ahead, Lynne.

So here I am running the lanes looking for 

all the things I would have shared with you:  

the planting of young laurels along the hedgerow 

on St Vincent’s Lane, the way the moss 

has grown sparsely on one side of the stone bridge 

but thickly on the other, and how someone 

has laid a plank across the stream to cross 

from bank to bank. I think I understand now 

that grief remains with us. And I never had to say, 

Don’t go, please stay, because you never left me. 

Mam, the white wood anemones are like 

a carpet of stars. Soon, the bluebells. 

World Poetry Day 2022

2nd day of Spring

No one shouts about 

the 2nd day of Spring.

The 1st day takes all the credit 

for just being, well, the 1st. 

But let’s celebrate being 2nd today – 

the determination to keep going 

when you know there is 

no fanfare waiting for you 

when the cheering

has stopped and it’s up to you 

to congratulate yourself 

for the effort you made 

and no one can say that’s

worth less than what is ahead

or behind you. Each day 

another burst of fragile scent

from the apricot blossom.