She lifts from the hill with slow flaps of her wings,
Seeking out heights where the eye alone reigns,
Where nothing sings, no odours ever steal,
The predator prowling round for a meal.

There she dissects the landscape for her prey,
Some hare in a paddock licking its paw.
Cloaked in the mighty shoulders of a swimmer,
She dives down the sky and shatters its summer.

Sometimes I glimpse her while I’m driving past,
Colossal and shabby, perched on a post,
Then in a flash I see how she sees me,
Too big for a hare and gone at high speed.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I often see eagles around where I live. There are lots of pastures here and they like to perch on fence posts.

When the guitar is strummed
And music swells the soul,
When the walls reverberate
Like nets behind a goal,
Then silence seems as loud
As a tense soccer crowd
Desperate to catch all
The moment being played
Because time soon runs out
And all great memories fade,
Because we are the score,
Played just once and no more.

 

---

 

Sometimes simplicity works fine and this one is right for a ‘young person’, I think. Why should poetry not be written for them?

As the storm snatches leaves
Emeralds from fingers and those
Great arms in anguish at the robbery heave
And sway above their point of balance to and fro,

Do you sense your own disturb-
ance through the glass and do you find
The cause of all the movement and all the turb-
ulence dragging you from the centre of your mind

Lost in the scenery?
Be assured the ravens roost-
ing high in that wind-tormented canopy
Never share a girl’s anguish for mere leaves ripped loose

But black as storms they bide
The storm’s end when their hoarse calls
Can walk like rags around the countryside,
Bony lips tearing at the weaklings the tempest kills,

The hour your beauty shines.
Brushing mauve shadow round your eyes
And making mouths within the glass’s confines,
You will be yourself again, perfectly at ease.

---

This needed a lot of work. There is something there that wanted to be said. Have I isolated it yet?

I like the feel of books, the way
They open out their hearts
To everyone
As if the Sun
Amid clouds the wind parts
Unfolded ray by silent ray.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The book may be on the way out – or is that a myth, like the paperless office? Anyhow, when better to write a poem in praise of books! This one looks finished for now. Short but sweet.

The rape was papered over in Ovid’s verse
Then snipped of outrage with such charm and wit
(Those razors that immasculate the curse
Of voyeurism), we can barely feel it.

Bernini, finding the girl penned in wood,
Sculptured her pained confusion out of stone,
The marble veins so rich in sap and blood
She appears reaching up like crystals grown.

Then he got even with the rapist god,
Catching him always cheated of his catch,
An insect trapped in amber, the cock shod
In marble now an itch that none can scratch.

I saw these sculptures in a photograph,
A rape once more on paper, recycled stuff.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The way we process human suffering both ennobles it and cheapens it. It becomes an artefact. Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a good example of it. He presents rape in mythological forms and then treats these as toys. The sculptor Bernini brought one of these toy to life, creating an image that is packaged and repackaged in the popular media. Here I have repackaged it again in a thoughtful manner, I like to think. I guess it follows on from my series of sonnets for Professor Beard’s lectures.

Edging along the eastern hills
The slow insinuation of light
Gathers to a red stamp that seals
The promise: everything will be alright.

No sceptic can accept this though.
Atmospheric and astronomical
Phenomena like dawn convey no
Epistolary or psychological

Assurances, not while science rules.
What we see there is gravity at work,
Photon-excited molecules.
There is no real contrast between light and dark.

All the same what we see the heart
Illuminates with meanings we don’t own,
The mind a pop-up book on art
We cannot, if we wanted to, fold down

Without ourselves being shut up too.
So when the dawn speaks to us, what it says
Is nothing revolutionary, new,
Nor worn out or burned out just – always.

.

---

Like all my stuff, this might be reworked later but it looks good for now. It reflects on a moment that we all share and it bubbles along like the dawn itself in a matter of fact kind of way. We are all shaped by scientific scepticism yet we all retain cultural meanings developed by previous generations, so we are all a bit schizophrenic really.

Current draft: 26 August 2015

What you see is what I see,
What you see through me,
My reflection in your glass
Tattooed with trees and grass,

Here looking out, there looking in,
Window made of skin,
World a room turned inside out,
Brilliantly thin with doubt,

What is ending, what is starting,
Joining where, where parting,
Who dissolving, who created,
All born all annihilated

In one great outburst of bright light,
Seeing and in sight,
No God shouting thou shalt not,
Just Adam wondering what?

.

---

Another short poem while I work on the novel. I think the universe must really be like looking at ourselves through a window. Identities are confused by their totality. We humans are unique in our ability to distinguish ourselves clearly. The Fall is a night where we see only the reflection. Yes there is more that could be done with this poem.

Current draft:

August 26 2015

The stuff our ring is made of must be strong
Enough to bend but not so as to break,
Common enough to seem of common make
Of course but those who think so will be wrong.

Its design? Unequivocal among
The cognoscenti. Ignorance may take
It for a platitude, never a fake.
Above all else, this ring does not belong.

Rather this ring owns all that lies beyond
Its little circle, brings the world outside
Inside its circle, brings the sceptic round
To its perspective, everything onside,

Like ripples spreading from a stone we fling.
Who can withstand us once we are this ring?

.

---

Conspiracies are not always deliberate. People form groups very casually without understanding the directions the group is taking. Their solidarity is intuitive.

Current edit: 26 August 2015

Fire fills a skirt of grass
To keep itself warm
As evil looking clouds pass
By bringing up a storm.

I’m burning off a pile
Of dry, old garden scraps
I’ve stored up for a while,
A year or two perhaps,

Standing here with the hose,
Keeping things in control,
Relying, if this fails, on those
Clouds to play the role

Of villain in the wings,
A black hat and black heart,
The vampire with his fangs
Out for a bit of skirt,

In case the fire breaks free
And sets my house alight,
Bungalow in between
Bungalows left and right

In a world full of nice
Neighbours and homely scenes,
Where the old anger tries
Not to say what it means.

.

---

Here I am writing about a back yard fire I lit while the storm clouds were approaching. I chose that moment to ensure I kept control of the fire as there was a lot of dead grass and it could easily have got away from me. Such moments always operate like metaphors. Current edit: 26 August 2015

I shamble to the kitchen out of bed,
Tumble-
down
man needing coffee, slip-shod
in whiskers toilet-brush-face
scrubbing the ceramic rim,
steamed
ah
clumping together like rice
here at the edge of another day

I am myself again
and yet remembering all that
struggle to get here, this morning’s
metaphor, all to do again, I wonder
if I can ever be myself again

while in the gathering day
winking at me from garden oases
bedouin dew dissolves away,
fading lives, forgotten faces.

Well-scrubbed man on a mission, company man,
suited up like a deep sea diver, in slow bounds
of effortless commotion I proceed towards
wrecked hopes as if they held a treasure.

 

************************************

Life generally is a set of potentialities that can’t be realized. Seen in that way, I can excuse the world’s failures, just as I excuse my own.