About Me

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I am a great admirer of English poetry from the time of Chaucer up until the middle of the twentieth century when it appeared to lose its way. I love all aspects of this planet but are sometimes sad when I think of what we are doing to it.

Monday 5 November 2018

Lament For Urien Rheged


Where the waves like clawing creatures
paw the northern shore
Urien of Rheged
strode through heathen gore.

From the walls of beetling Alclud,
from their rampart heights,
Cymry armed and bloody
came thick as stellar lights.

With spears fang-sharp and bitter
as hearts of angry men
the swords of the North tribes
made harsh harp notes in the glen.

Back fell the flaxen Sea-Wolves,
back from the reddened land
till the thunder of the ocean
rolled on the bloody sand.

On Metcaut’s crumbling rock fields
they smelled the stench of death;
loud and fast and shallow
came their hunted breath.

But there his doom was dealt out
by Britons cursed and low –
The shield of the Northmen
fell to a Cymric foe!

O Urien – our bright one!
Our shelter and our shield
A death from your kinsman!
- To no other would you yield!

Dark and cold the North Land
Gone the friendly fires;
None but Godless Saxons
Shall stoke our funeral pyres.

Sunday 21 October 2018

On Visiting Jodrell Bank



















A steel eye stares up at the sky
seeing the radio colours never seen by men;
Glimpsing through the smoke-like nebulae
what we can but visualise as peaks on graphs.
You can see them: you can probe the farthest depths
beyond those whirlpool galaxies,
beyond the far coruscant quasars
to where time and space curve back on themselves
like the sleeping Norse World-Serpent.



But you cannot see what I look on now:
My love, dampened with this summer shower,
her hair wind-blown to a silken fan;
and lips moist as they meet mine own.

Friday 12 October 2018

The Captive Eagle






Bright were the skies in which I rode
on winds that in cold torrents flowed.
Close to the sun was my abode.

Dark were the skies that I controlled
save when the lightning’s flames unrolled,
and the fearsome thunder tolled.

But now my world is bounded by bars
and wingless things throw me dead meat.
I who broke the mists beneath my claws
and brooked no rival in the cold skies.

Grandeur was in my sharp-eyed view
Icy cirrus plains or tumbling clouds of rain.
None soared above me in the stormy air
None could meet my imperious gaze.

I matched thunderbolts in righteous rage,
snatched the kid from its grieving dam.
Challenged the sun and mocked the moon
That crawled like sheep in my wind-torn sky.

Narrow this world like an apish womb,
its light to me is a fetid gloom
that haunts a foully smelling tomb.

When can I die – when, oh when?

This straitened world will choke no more,
my spirit will fling wide this door.

and tread the azure steps again.

Tuesday 9 October 2018

The Fossil Fern





Lift it gently, it was green once.
Honour it, it had the same life as you.
Once it was tall and strong 
lifting viridian fronds
against the adolescent sky
of a chaotic juvenile world,
still bright and hot with newness
from the celestial forges.

It lived once, as you do now,
and it died and fell, as you shall soon,
and gained this lithic immortality
-       —As well may you.

And from under whose feet
will you look upwards,
a faint ghost stamped in stone,
a lost memory from an abyss of ages?

Whose eyes will you meet
under a senile, reddening sun?


Tuesday 3 July 2018

The Wind From The Sun




THE WIND

The wind from the sun buffets the worlds.
It streams over the lavas of Caloris;
It presses fiery fingers into Cytherean storms.
Here, over Peary Land its shimmering curtains
Dance in the dark when the great bears
And the Great Bear shiver in the night.
Into Imbrium’s dust it throws its ions,
Sweeping on to bombard defenceless Tharsis
And the unplumbed Valley of the Mariner.
About The King it places twin circlets
And around His aged father too.

The wind is fading now as it sweeps
Past the far Frost Giants and across
The dim Styx and its Ferryman.
At last, in the silent darkness
The wind flutters and dies; fades and falls.

But there in the depths of endless night
For a moment it meets other winds
And listens lovingly to their tales.

Wednesday 27 June 2018

Autumn



The year is turning once again
as rust and sand invade the leaves.
The sun rises in a veil of mist
and in pale skies birds turn to Africa.


I look out over these ochre trees
and remember their green loveliness.
Such a short while since I felt the first bud
and dreamed of coming sunkissed days.


The sun retreats, defeated, to the south,
soon to hide behind the shadowed hills.
There is damp decay upon the winds
that hints of greater griefs that wait their call.


And I too look upon my own Autumn,
My own change from bursting bud to Fall.
and yet – beyond the ice and dark there is hope,
hope for golden warmth again for the bud


And sunblest kisses once more for her and me.

Monday 25 June 2018

The Note I Never Wrote



I tried to write a note to you,
A note that would reveal my heart,
But what to use to write my part,
How to send these words so few?

The iPad seems so wrong, so cold,
The laptop glows a baleful blue
and does not nurse sweet thoughts of you
with menu bars and text in bold.

My typewriter lies in its cloth of dust,
Its keys now grimed and stiff with age.
Could it print thoughts on this page
before it lies in a shroud of rust?

I sat before the ancient tool
and looked down with nervous care.
It seemed to me that your face was there
Smiling at me, your earnest fool.

I saw my note before me then,
The words I’d say, the love I’d send,
The hurt and pain I’d softly mend
and how our time should come again.

I took the sheet and planned my pleas,
Placed my hands on the aged thing.
So now it was my words would sing!
My hands came down and met the keys.

They did not stir; they did not move.
My thoughts flew not from mind to ink.
I sat and felt those sweet dreams sink,
trapped forever in an endless groove.

Would love have grown from that hopeful note?
Would we have kissed in the summer sun?
I only know that our time is done,


Dead as the note that I never wrote.