TOMBSTONES

Written on my late Father's birthday...

Bonfire burning in the apple orchard at the day's end
beside the big house bordered by "trees of heaven".
If I could cheat time, I'd return there again
to collect all the windfalls with you
and pack them in a box for the neighbour's pigs.
Then, our task over, you'd tell stories in the glow,
while marshmallows toasted on a fork.
                                                                 Oh such magical days!
Those moments in time, since you've been gone,
return to haunt me often...and with such yearning
to behold just once more your beloved face.
But time has encroached right up to the house
and the orchard has long vanished beneath
an asphalt street and strangers' homes:
tombstones to the memory of us.

FEBRUARY, 2020

Ferocious south-westerlies cut to the bone:
a merciless invasion from the Arctic
that intensifies my anxiety and sense of separation.
Today feels like the end of an era...

It's February, and storm Ciara is battering the land.
You, too, are agitated and anxious to be gone.
Jangling nerves make you snappy. I picture you alone later
in the taxi scribbling notes and frowning,
deep in thought. And my heart aches for your nervous uncertainty:
new career in an unfamiliar city - a huge step up.
Sensing your thoughts: Am I up to the challenge? Will I succeed?

Trying so hard to absorb it all for you, to
free you from what I know is gnawing at you inside.
It is my destiny, my duty, willingly undertaken.
The definition of a mother's love.



Lingering now on Portsdown Hill,
the city below aglow with lights.

And knowing you're down there somewhere
in your lonely hotel room is emotionally draining,
because I know I must leave soon for home without you.
But it's so hard to tear myself away,
so, so hard.

A spectral umbilical is tugging at my heart.

PETS

Let me consider you capable of speech
and higher function:

the notion of scales made flesh and fins made limbs;
a metamorphosis into cognitive being

so we could converse and share a joke or two,
exchange anecdotes and life experiences -

to know what it's like to be you, and you I;
to truly connect and touch Souls.

Whatever you believed you were when I chose you
and brought you home to live with me, you are so much more.

If I could, I would give you an ocean to swim in
with rock pools, caves and weed to explore.

Oh how I wish I could see through your eyes
and know what you think of me -

food dispenser, perhaps, or jailer?
But I never wanted to be either of these.

No. I wanted to be your friend, protector,
surrogate shoal, to earn your respect.

Because it is such an honor to have you here.
I am your humble servant...and I love you to bits.

EVA

Cursed with delusions of such grandeur,
your life was a work of art
forged from the low self-esteem
that tortured the depths of your heart.

With such aplomb you wore your masks
that disguised the authentic you
for days and months and years even,
until you believed them true.

With past retold of a noble birth,
you rubbed shoulders with the elite
and even moved in circles Royal -
they all found you "oh so sweet."

Yet just below the surface bubbled
of discovery such a terror -
what if they should find you out
and realise their error?

So you pretended even harder and
still deeper buried the truth,
for the worst thing you could ever conceive
was to incur your idols' reproof.

But you looked and acted the part so well
that no one could ever guess
this beautiful and elegant socialite
was an orphan and penniless.

Still the pressure of keeping the lie alive
was building up deep inside
and daily threatening to erupt,
so at times you'd vanish and hide.

Then when you hit forty it all imploded
and you suffered a breakdown because
your past caught up with you and exposed
the Earl's daughter who never was.

HOME MOVIE

How love deceives!
The romance, that close bond
into which we entered

so eagerly, now dissolves in tears.
Passion has gone cold
and resentment enters our hearts.

The dream, in it's rosy detailed glory,
has faded into formless grey -
like a precious memory lost in time.

Then there is the loneliness - the mourning
for the still-living other. Oh how it hurts.
I have become invisible.

While new lovers celebrate the night
I walk in circles,
a ring of self-questioning: where did I go wrong?

Laughter cannot come here,
we have forgotten how to play.
In a home movie,

two strangers deceptively happy, in another life.
Time has stolen their identities.
What has unraveled us?

Venus and Mars? Maybe.
Too much scorched earth -
we were doomed from the start.

JANUARY AUBADE

Observe this expanse of glowering sky
in slate-toned pagodas to winter's freeze
where north winds bite both nose and eye
and the blood retreats from bitter breeze.

A robin sings out mournful madrigals
to awaken slumbering daffodil buds,
while naked boughs bow like praying Cardinals
reflected in the unseasonal floods.

Crowding around a hanging fat ball
chirping sparrows compete to eat,
as blackbirds wait for crumbs to fall
beneath a lichen-encrusted seat.

And as Nature's cycle begins again
euphoria transforms my world-weary brain...

THE ACTOR

I am an actor. Stage lights dazzle.
The director
barks out instructions, tearing

the expectant silence
into shreds of meaning.
Fellow actors await

their cue, their time to shine,
become leading stars.
Competition is intense.

Time-worn boards creak
underfoot, woodworm-honeycombed.
Even the scenery has faded

into yellow-brown forest.
And we characters, we characters -
God! We are even more wooden today.

Voices too flat,
ridiculous
parodies, like drunkards

trying hard to pretend they're sober.
My costume
doesn't fit, constantly slips

from my shoulders.
Oh my, how the dream has crumbled!
Oh Caesar, how you elude me!

Striving, even in sleep,
to become you.
But your mannerisms defeat me.

Frustration abounds.
The betrayal I suffer
is wholly subjective.

Ambition, ambition,
I have exhausted myself with trying,
with agonising -

never quite good enough.
Let Brutus
plunge his dagger deep.

Let my demise, at least,
ride on mercurial wings
into resounding applause.

I am the actor
the Bard's pen defines, owns.
I am the blank page...


Dedicated to my son, Ayrton.