Prolonged Immersion.

Rebuke, or pity? Spurning all life-skill guides,
oblivious to shellfish jaws and stings that leave
sure swimmers keeling, she dived young, keen to prise,
eviscerate and string the seeds.
                                                  The first heave
mesmerised.  The seven sea-tentacles unfurled,
artful to drag her down. The laden wrecks
rebuffed her questing hands.
                                             The glass-green swirl
yawed, paused and shifted her past hope of land.

Meshed with slow swells she grins and glides,
adrift on moon-drugged tides, which at their flood
roll, roll her  shorewards, till brine cold rhythms guide
this prisoner from deeps misunderstood.

In the sea's time, formless remains are hurled
naked, flesh gorged by seabirds, spent, unpearled.

 Revenant


At parting, saying -
"Let us agree we both prefer
'Goodbye' to tears.  Learn to accept
and not condemn. The past
never was the future's stage."
A carriage window sliced this valediction.


Work, infidelities and towns
slipped by to undiscovered ends,
while the unquiet ghost for half a lifetime
turned triumph - yes, even that - to puffs of smoke -
(Mists laid on English shires at twilight,
fingers on a candid lip in sleep . . . )


Then in some undistinguished capital,
Buda?  Trieste? - in just that sort
of backwater cafe where conversations
hatched against despair
stutter towards another rented pillow,
the smoky lights revealed -
skin no longer absolutely young,
the smile that lay in wait -
a dress that could not - surely -  be the same?


"No logic, dearest, please,
or laying blame.  I answered only
the motiveless appeal of happiness . . "
(Quoting another poet! At such a meeting!
I should have . . . )
Ah, but her fingers, placed
with such complicity, such care,
placed where the bloodstroke like a habit burns,
sought my acceptance of her affirmation.


My actress on her stage,
ageless and English,
her tear precluding tears.

New Year Poem

"In Memoriam" . . . .  Alfred Lord Tennyson

Lovely Christmas Poem

"A Christmas Life" . . . . by Wendy Cope

White Christmas, Anyone?

Five "Snow" poems.

"London Snow"  . . . . . .      Robert Bridges

"Snow in the Suburbs" . . . Thomas Hardy

"She Tells Her Love" . . . .   Robert Graves

"Stopping by Woods" . . . .  Robert Frost
"Snow" . . . . . . . . . . . Edward Thomas

I cannot find the following poem on the Internet, so I cannot link to it from its title.  I break my rule, therefore, and post it in full.  I heard it on the BBC, in the summer of 2009, in a programme fronted by John Prescott, formerly our unlamented Deputy Prime Minister.  Bloggers from outwith the UK may not know that Mr. Prescott was formerly a ship's steward, then Shop Steward and thence to political prominence as representative of "Old Labour" in the Blair government.  The poet, Maurice Harney, was an engineer in the UK Merchant Marine.  This is a lovely little "regret" poem . . .

A Time For Sea

I shall acknowledge age

when the call of far wild seas no longer stirs my blood,

when I shall not see as a boy would see

the beauty of homebound ships harbouring on the flood.


Only then will I sit in the lee of warehouse walls,

Conjuring dreams from the river's mist.

Only then will I weep an old man's tears

For times that I have known,

For lips that I have left unkissed.

Maurice Harney

Him Downstairs


Him downstairs knows everything.
He stalks me.  But when his sandals
rattle the gravel, I don't stay
to canter through old times
or take the "by-the-ways" that bait
his nattertraps. I don't need
doddergenarian advice.
I'm too young a dog
to be taught old tricks
and I've been caught too often
in his thickets of yesteryear.
So I skulk downwind or use
sly footwork to dodge
his monologue lassoos.
If snared I'll haw and hum
and keep a weather-eye
for the venom that stipples his view
of Empire, lawnmowers, schools,
and men who aren't men
if they can't use tools -
till he grumbles off to hunt his wife.
Once she plucked my sleeve and gently
hoped I wasn't bored.  "It's his tongue,"
she said, "his years.  He's so handless.
Stubborn."  I hummed  and hawed,
and we stood there speechless -
I at her loyalty,
she from her life, her tears.

The End of Ambition . .

As Dubai sinks in its sea of debt . . . a reminder from a bygone age!

Ozymandias . . . . by Percy Bysshe Shelley