July 02nd, 2021

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,
And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;
Before this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife--
Fly hence, our contact fear!
Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!

"The Scholar Gipsy" (1853) is a poem by Matthew Arnold

Below are some of my own poems compiled from painter's notes, observations and the use of my own imagination.

Glide

Ye of earth and sky.

You whistle in the old oak tree.

I love you, I fed you.

How you swoop and soar.

I walk in the shadow of the Kite.

NOVEMBER

Boots crunch.

Birds scatter.

Branches drip.

Rivers stream.

Earth hums.

Vale thins.

All is now.

I WISH I COULD SAY

I wish I could say.

When this is all over,

your soul will be safe, saved and free

I wish I could say.

Looking back we will laugh
and see the errors of our ways.

I wish I could say

The light is to the left and to the right of you.

I wish I could say.

In life we will warm to a sacred flame,
the heart of love.

I wish I could say..

EAGLE AND CHILD

Taking a puff from an imaginary pipe.

Pondering the Mount Olympus Syndrome.

The silent white washed dolly sits like a keyhole.

Punters shuffle on by as the pale light dazzles.

The weather is fair and the ale good.

The Hearth hath dried flowers.

BUILDING A NEW WORLD

Gaming all night.

Fall out of bed.

Chuck on some clothes.

No Breakfast no head.

Elbowed hole, demisting screen.

Fag, Energy drink, living the dream.

Wi fi connected, yabber, yabber, yabber.

Plasticated microwave meal saved for later.

Cold blue Tardis.

It's time to dig some trenches.

Vapour mist pours from warming piles of earth.

Another earmarked field.

For whatever its worth.

ARROW

An arrow fired through the channel of night.
To land I hope in fertIle soil.
Then sink and be embalmed in soft earth.
Cocooned for a thousand years.
Until gently unearthed.
Balanced on a coarsened palm.
Now made of gold, gleams in the sun.

FRIEDRICHSTRASSE
Rolling cloud on a darkened window.
Glowing phone screen by a flickering candle.
Small glass vase, fallen petal.
She is a child of this place.
Like the bullet peppered wall she carries the memory and trauma of the past.
She is a dark sapphire, wise and clairvoyant,
a poet and painter in touch with her land.
I just hope one day she will see this in her reflection.

IN THE FIELD.

The winter moon sits as crisp as a twist from the tip of a pristine pastel.
At a distance a small wood stands alone,
a hazy net of burnt umber against a thin ash gray cloud.
The sun's eye the seamless seer swoons upon this noble and intricate sundial.
In it's depths under a wet swaying canopy lies a leafy tapestry of lush sprung earth.
Outside a field ploughed into furrowed flaps of pale sienna.

MORNING BLUES.
Juggernauts in the darkness thunder past Brown field sites and green belts on black belts of constant lava flow.
An eyelash prison carving headlights into lazer lights.

OXFORD.

The breaking light of a cool pewter morning enlivens thick lime stone walls.
In this shining realm a symbol a white glowing feather creeps through a curtain into an old room.
Here once sat an easy chair on a rug by a fireplace where wheat and grasses once drifted in on the breeze.
Outside this room barley- recognisable a Phoenix carved in stone.
Silence was once golden in this City of screeching tires, flooded plains and telegraph wires.

DREAM TIME.

I was right there when I was being reborn.
The chambers of my heart opened like the folds of a rose.
I had fallen into slumber and had awoken to the motion of waves lapping onto a moon-lit shore.
I ran back to my clan through the trees as fast as lightening to tell my brothers of my discovery that I was still alive but all that remained.The silhouette of there memory and a fire that crackled up into the night.
This is dream time, darkness is pure and the universe, home.

LADY BERLIN.

Freshly bolted steel well-oiled chains.
Shattered glass on a new stain.
Pasted printed paper on a lamp post cast.
Track's, wasteland
Evening Primrose.
The pale reedy light of lady Berlin.
Forest within a City or City within a forest.

MOTH.
Blitz, blitz.
Old twine old twine in my mind.
New moth guiding a stitch through time.
Earth, doorway, rain.

Old Path.
Fluttering green leaves.
Silver grey linings.
Ticking room.
Red brick on seasoned mortar.
Victorian shade.
Shed spider skin next to an old dry match box.
Silence gaurds the night and a tassled lamp is glowing.
Bats flit above and with oceans of instinct dissolve into twilight.