Poetry

Two White Horses

without tv or news or clocks
time is measured in white horses
in the field below

the morning brings a new alignment
they are enacting all the prepositions 
in front of, behind, next to
and some that only horses know

the stations of the horse

two entangled particles play out
a stately ballet on the clockface field
clouds attracted by a strong force
and repelled by a weak one

cumulusly billowing, melding, reforming
waves from two distant shores 
breaking, each, one upon the other

on the next day they do adverbs of time
before, after, a long time ago
a very very long time ago

and on the last day 
they're performing verbs
galloping, slowing, resting, lying down

leaving the house for the last time
I turn tail, to see a waft of white smoke
that turns into a tail, then two of them

twirling, tick-tocking the seconds
or is it the years

-------------------------------------------

The Pond

by the pond in always falling daylight

misted moon-smitten blue

I waited

all the animals came and went

all the ghosts too

and glanced through curves

through bent branches of night-heavy alder

things that were neither

everything went to that watering place

eventually

so I waited

there were false alarms, many of them

a flock of birds on the in breath

a lost decade on the out

bats hunted moths

moths haunted butterflies back into larval cases

dipping down to sip

the last end-of-summer swallow

just skimming the surface

of a stillborn dawn

then at last a song thrush sang

"it's day, its day"

the thrush from my grandfather's dream

all those years ago

and because this time I sang along

it was day ----------------------------

Dream Thrush

I was a dream-thrush and creation knew me

back then there were only wild words

mostly wordless, free of meaning

grounded air, a ripple's seeing-through-to

first dreamt by Daniel in the 1930's

I was an omen-thrush, a new dawn-thrush

winter's tale breast, yarn of flank

I was a story-thrush, an idea of feathers

more of them with each telling

till I was a full-thrush

I am a song-thrush now,

silhouette bird shape of the farthest branches

spoke them once, sang them twice

these words

I gave his grandson to sing

"while I was here I heard a song

a snatch of a happy song

while I was falling

I knew just a snatch

was all I'd get

So for a moment I sang along" ---------------------------------

to know what it's like

I threw myself to the wind

to see what it was like

scooped up autumn leaves

imagining they were ashes

arms flung wide, prising open the air

to take the offering

of a me I'd cremated

to know what it was like

threw them into the embrace of falling

threw them to a corner of empty

like a self's sky burial

but didn't feel anything

didn't feel any different, so I

gave up

and watched a jackdaw tumbling instead

not trying but juggling gravity

playing cards with up and down

friendly with sky in all directions

making a balloon of itself

tapping the bottom into buoyancy

I watched it and knew what it was like -------------------------

Jackdaw

when the sky was friendly in all directions

there was no part that couldn't be feathers

I headed the bottom and heeled the top

spun the world while I stayed where I was

why? I didn't do it because of why

down on the ground I saw something

that wasn't a jackdaw

not even any kind of bird

some creature stuck in two dimensions

no discernable power of flight

it was funny to watch

working so hard just

to be

something you already are

---------------------------------------

at the thigh-high of grass

at the thigh-high of grass

and the willow herb of waist

I'm found

found by a deer-narrow path

I'm leaving litter behind as I go

a trail of me - the parts I don't need

I shed some things with small sigh of breeze

peeling off rind - off from the mind

the thinking and the thoughts

they're thrown away in handfuls

cast as if I'm sowing doubt

a rain-quick rinse washes off more

some pith, some regrets and worries

at the prickle of thistle

and the catch of bramble-snare

there 

delusions get torn off

and at the caw of crow

where there's cuckoo-spit-wet

I'm lost

and now I'm not walking

because nature walks me

-------------------------------------------

this is a recording of the poem

http://abcissa-websites.co.uk/video/thigh_high.mp3

Here There Should be Wood

here there should be wood but there's me instead

standing up in a lightning struck hollow

I am Jonah, the oak tree is a whale

and then I am part-whale

cavity walls, skin of lizard, fire-crack black

algal green overlay on crosshatch-fractures

looking is ushered upwards, sight shot out

skyward, straight though a peephole

the tree, now Cyclops by dint of my eyes

human senses added to those old oaken ones

making eleven in all

seeing itself for the first time

branches jacknifed to injured chevrons

boughs, whole chunks of tree, strewn dead and dying

like fallen comrades on a battlefield

damage surveyed, I hatch out of the tree

there's nothing it didn't already know

The Mist

the mist came down last night, came in softly

a drowned world between here and Winter Hill

just spires and tree tops jutting out above;

archipelago in Pacific fog

grey but lustrous - has eroded edges

all the gaps are filled with mother of pearl

the middle-willow distance gone over,

lightly stippled with a softening brush

so watercolours run, bleeding into

tump-grassy nearby and all that's behind

words are becoming detached corner first

shaking free, the children are leaving home

what used to be a branch is shedding nouns

twig, leaf, acorn and bark have now all gone

borders dissolved and separation smudged

all of it replaced with a sea of this

the sun comes at last pooling rosy mist

white whips tilt and float up, slow and steady

a flock of birds drops down reattaching

returning to things, the birds are words

The Midwife

the old ash tree midwifes a dawn

limbs reach down and

find a waiting sun

in the womb dark hill behind hills

pulls it up with wood-tong-twigs

and onto a turn of the trunk 

where it flares with lighthouse flash

a halo of radials in starshot traces

the sun's held tight for while 

embraced in a cleft

a hug and off the nightime shrug

 

light gathering bright on brighter

passed from branch to branch 

up higher and higher 

bark-framed shapes of background

lit with stained glass window glows

then right at the top's tree-tip

with a final hand of balloon-lift 

the sun is given, skyborne 

to the day

I can give you these

the tail-bob on a skulk of bird,

that tells you it's a chiffchaff

the tiny fringe of whiskers right

round a lichen edge, I can give you those

I can't give you much but I can give you

this day's end sun-settled down in colours

bark hieroglyphs on the age-slanted hornbeam

the ones it etched upon itself

I can show you those

every note that the song thrush knows

and knowing how 

the wood knows them

that Trough of Bowland stream and its

certain angle sparkle

I can't give you much but I can give these

the nature-dog

wind licks my face

the only part exposed under wollen hat

and above my layers of rebuttal

like a dog

that wants to taste animal

not man-made fibre

wants to mix salts with something alive

a lower case letter of geese

written on the lined paper horizon

calls giving voice to grey sky

smash through the glass of my thoughts

bypassing them to speak to blood

nature is saying hello

I'm brought to a halt in

a tangle of bramble attrition

a Gulliver needled

by a hundred small thorn pricks

that scratch-card off my complacency

my human skins

nature is saying hello

the nature-dog

bright eyed, glad to see us

always jumping up to greet us

forgiving every rebuff

always seeking out the

exposed part

to say hello

so that's where I was

I rounded the crest

skirting the top

sitting windward on a slope

I made a cairn of myself

and that's where I was

I picked a way through brambles

deerstepping over thorns

legs souvenired in blood

I stopped

and found myself there

through the spring-frothed wood

green, so green it's yellow

ivy scaffold on hornbeam

beech and brother beech

I was there

so that's where I was

A Step

a column of ground rises up to my thigh

leg baked through with earth

I move by soil

I am flesh to statue and blinkwise back again

toes clench the land as I turn the world round

by the width of a distant field

my stride sends an infinity of perspectives 

into flux

I step clouding hills into travel companions

hitching them to me

walk rows of oaks onto concentric carousels

and put hawthorns in slow orbits

I step a birchbank accordion into splay

open and singing

tread yarrow and dock to ground-skim flocks 

that approach with

withered wings and seedhead eyes

I step a shoesole of clod, grasswards ingrown

and headlong a clover sprung carpet

as a second ago recedes into melted past

I plant my foot like a flag on the moon

to claim a yard of time

and I step a new moment

The News

the news broke around six o'clock

robins heard it first

plucked colours from their breasts

then sang it to the dark

that coloured the tiny parts exposed

by dawn's needle

etching

clouds chinese-whispered the light

held on to it for a while

then passed it on

leaking ochre rumours

bleeding into flame

the hills heard the word 

lifted the veil

but slowly 

a star burst the horizon

flooded a piece of it

fireworked the fields

crackerjacked through trees

fireflied the mist

even glow wormed webs

the news broke around six o'clock

everyone knew by seven

Between The Start of The Pipit's Peep

between the start of the pipit's peep
and the ending three months later 

in flea time

In that moment
I've moved along the path
by two fronds of bracken yard

a million pixels have flitted
settling like soft snowflakes 
to new places where they'll be
for all of an instant-long

last year's grass lattice
a coarsely woven weave of
willow herb stems that
tessellate afresh

a jigsaw jumbled and then rejigged

I've felt a small mountain range 
beneath the feet
peaks jutting just enough to be cogs
that mesh with flesh
and earth me to the moment

flapping wings of breezeborne birds 
have sent runs of cool air
whirling, draughting wafts
for me to feel, only

between the ending of the pipit's peep
and the start of the bullfinch's pipe

A Crack Must Have Opened

a crack must have opened 

to let the barn owl in

slipped 

white side down

ghost side up

mothborne from another world

flashes like bonfire night

in very slow motion

unleaded the clouds

tiny nativities put

day-fragments in glow

scattered at first then melding

to an alleluia of skylight

the owl made a vortex 

of itself

spiral tightened down by the pull

of the volewise-grass

then as it dipped back

it changed shape

to air-snipping scissoring shears

maybe it passed on

a baton of morning

to the kestrel

A Roe Deer Leaps

soon as it sees me
the deer makes of itself
a ball of molten roe

hind, hide, head and hoof
are all in there now

pours itself into
an old mould it knows

has ample time to set
as time has also slowed

the new shape has the jump
of a curve
takes the springs from
a bound and bends them
to an arch

in mid air though
as with a different gravity
that pushes not pulls

the leapness spreads
not just the deer now
but all around

a rump ups
lift of back behind
white now coming through

it wasn't there before
but time has also stopped

sitting under wings

back in my wheelchair days
I'd sit under wings

at dawn's first garden light
under the path of migration
picking out dots of southbound bird

pipits, swallows, wagtails, thrushes, geese

long journeys over a lumpen watcher
my gravity lessened by a lightness of feathers

and friction smoothed off too

brief intersection of grounded man

and flying bird

a moment's liberation

a fractional part-share in a pair of wings

the birds made their own wind

a slight movement of my hair

then more,

then off!

I was blown upwards

 and with them

Woodcock Rising

leaning into the gale
that sabres rain as a weapon
each up tilt of the head is met with
punishing wind-slap spite

so I look down, not ahead
settle for a view - a framed picture
of leaves signed by autumn
ready to give to the winter

I chance a glance in front
just a few snipe's bills along
where a small tornado of leaves
rises up as if the ground itself
has been raptured

foliage resolves into bird
leaves revolve into woodcock
a long twig threads forward
in a form become beak

a maple red rump at the rear
is redder by far than it is

bracken stitched
tawny woven through fawn
and all the fallen leaves
that ever could be
on the back and wings

with an unplotted path jinked out
of bends and kinks as it
weaves through a barn dance
of willow arms

the woodcock clatters
quickly out of view
its second has scooped up the autumn
leaving behind a spring in the mind

Birds Knit my Ribs Together

birds knit my ribs together
wrapped the corpse in feathers
song-embalming; mummifying

wrens sipped cuckoo spit
spat it to a thimble

stirred in berry and honeydew
dripped the tincture drip by drop

a woodpecker bored my skull
in trepanation

drummed a hole and wasps flew out
goldcrests’ needle calls put punctures
all along the kidney’s line

swallows’ flightlines skywrote my ill
when thrushes sang it out loud

a woodpigeon listened while
I told it secrets
laughed when I lied

when everything changed

in the days before change
a fully formed field,
solid with unending same
- that was all that there was

not finescale like it is now
not variable nor variegated

no one knew they were larvae
caterpillars were never seen

yes, there were butterfly wisps
blue clouding buff on blue
but these ones were flies 
that had always butter-been

fluxation only just forming
flexing, extending from all the 
bundled stuff of similar
breaking bonds of likewise

after the change set in 
everything that was, or could be thought up
had a bright russian dollness 
from crystals of chrysalis

each a fragment of a bigger whole
as if you could pick out a pizzicato 
of pissaro points

arising was twinned with passing away
and so the reverse got visa-versared

in this the new norm, of this the new now
pupae were mutable, 
chemistry alchemical

in this the new norm, of this the new now
people knew they were pupae,
knew they'd pupate





A Hazel in January

rounding winter's grey corner
I'm sprayed in the face with paint
yellow points splatter my retinas

and then drip

drops trailing vertical paths
like a thousand speckled wagtails
singing, bursting out of the sun

so impossibly bright tassels
rind of lime as tinsel
a burning hazel bush that
sears everything around it

its catkins strung
between earthed dull gravity
and a skyfull of living things

wanting to live