Category Archives: poems of place

Poems of Place: At Shotover

10 Monday Jul 2017

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Inspired by the Fantasia On A Theme by Thomas Tallis: Ralph Vaughan Williams

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Sunlight scouts the forest’s weak points

And glints through dark birch parapets

Across the late morning,

This late Easter morning.

We came looking for hope,

To pause our dissertation on sadness and despair

For those we have lost;

To smell the Spring, all sweet and fecund;

To see the evidence of resurrection.

In the clearing, a process and a place today,

We hear that chord: strident, promising

Flattened and incomplete,

Then, from somewhere deep within the earth

The baseline heartbeat canon,

Which pulses strong again as if from nothing,

And shows we can indeed rise up from beds of death.

Then I see the bluebells, boisterous, on the march,

In rampant progress across the forest floor.

Thus re-connected to my optimistic self, I smile,

Past, present, future are in communion once more.

 

Easter Sunday, 2017

Poems of Place: Lunch with Tory

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

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abbaye-senanque2

We said it would be the Luberon,

Perhaps mid-September

When the crowds had left? Or mostly.

We’d find a table with a view:

Oppède Le Vieux, perhaps? Or better at Sénanque

In the hollow, amongst the purple

We’d drink Domaine Ott – barely pink, well chilled

But elegant like you

We’d banter with black olives

Or the tapenades with fig you liked

Then the smell of roast chicken would

Demand the group’s attention

And with it, we’d bring out salad leaves,

And beef tomatoes, the primed burrata.

After, some would contemplate the madelaines

And lavender honey ice creams lying in wait.

But then comforted and comfortable,

We’d pause and think of you –

And feel once more the warmth you brought.

Poems of Place: Promenade des Anglais

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

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(Elégie en bleu)

 

You always wore a smile

And welcomed us with warmth,

You were always best outdoors

So genial alfresco.

You loved the noise and buzz

You lived for food and friends

You were my Empire of Blue,

This elegy’s for you.

 

It took one summer’s night

To wipe away your warmth

Bring silence to your mood

And shadows to your shine

When Death crashed into you

Devastating

My Empire of Blue.

This elegy’s for you

 

For now those chaises are empty

The vélo racks are full,

The promenade is silent

Yet the sky is azure blue;

 And the sun breaks through our darkness,

As waves kiss the shore

Galettes forever treasured

As music sounds once more.

 

You’ll always be our zest,

Our carnival of joy,

The Nissa of pizzazz,

The goodness that adds life.

You’ll always be our star,

The magnet of our dreams,

The Côte within our hearts

Our Empire of Blue,

This elegy’s for you.

 

2016

 

 

Poems of Place: Hen Domen, Montgomery

15 Monday Aug 2016

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Surrounded by the rolling hills of debated lands

Hatched verdant and yellow brown,

And shadowed yet by galleon clouds,

The castle rock stands weathered by winds

That blow through elms and ash

Even on uncontroversial days;

And bastions slighted by the hand of men are left monument

Picked at by crows who scale the rickety finger heights

Of accidental crenellations.

I sense a magic here inside the motte,

As sentinel rabbits sniff the air and leap or run

To leave me caught in time awaiting ransom.

15 August, 2016

Poems of Place: Adventurous Training

19 Tuesday Jan 2016

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Coach House Cuisine, Farchynys, Gwynedd

Friday was the dangerous day: tea came with us on wheels,

Our minibus smelling of boys and batter and non-standard tomato sauce;

Perhaps not exactly Mrs. Watkins’s Taste the Difference fish

Was stored precariously under seats in scratched Aluminum and threatened,

As we climbed the heights of Dinas.

 

Saturday often brought surprises after long fresh air days

Like Geoffrey’s Boeuf Stroganoff and the dark brown slush of

Poires au vin du Bourgogne,

The sight of which tested the saporific nerve of even Alpha boys

But nevertheless soon passed our eager invigilation and was gone.

 

On Sunday, the reward for finding long lost Roman roads

Was JAD’s Brithdir Roast: a great golden bird

Displayed with squadrons of spuds and roots

And plattered to fill us up and lift our hearts for

The journey back to Mocks.

 

The Kitchen spick once more,

The light falls in the Dayroom,

Refectory tables are stacked,

The Coach House stands empty

Yet full of the aromas of our histories.

 

Poems of Place: Acela Express

05 Tuesday Jan 2016

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Boston to New York, November 18th 2015

 

Flopped, fatigued against the grain and route,

We left the dark cold concrete Boston quay

In business class, our train a silver flute

Of gleaming portholes and intricacy.

We passed sad sidings and graffitied trucks,

Framed azured skies, dark edged with orange hue,

And knew this was the day’s defensive crux

When relentless night might again break through.

By creeks and coves and whiteboard harbor homes,

We crawled then spurted to impending shade

And halted briefly where no signal roams,

Saw lights expire and all ambitions fade.

 

At this small junction, did the engine send

Its silent signal of how careers end?

 

Poems of Place: At Legal Seafoods

07 Monday Sep 2015

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Boston Harborside, August 26th

For Nize, Dulce, and Jarod

Somewhere in that domain of blue,

Across the sound,

A jet is landing to take me home.

I’ll leave

The flutter of nylon in the wind,

The scent of lemon brine

The smiles of well-heeled WASPs,

The bobbing lobster floats

The happiness of families

Dressed up for summer nights,

The welling anticipation of lovers,

The therapy of women talk,

The baseball caps reversed and telling jokes,

And rich mens’ launches which dart across the bay

Like screensavers to my thoughts,

So now absorbed and lost in all of this,

I leave the mobile-me upon a bench.

Life pauses and then a transformation:

I leave reflection to realization and panic

Silence.

And then with staccato heartbeat

Comes the brittle face of loss,

I glance the time – compute the options.

From nowhere yet apparent,

A thunderbolt command says ring your number

I finger tones, anticipate the rhythmic loop

And fast, a friendly voice speaks in my hand

‘We’ve found your phone….’

Across the room, three faces wave at me….

And soon I’m leaving:

My smile and thanks I’m leaving here with you.

Manifesto

25 Saturday Jul 2015

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For shall the poet starve for words

Whilst shivering in the rain?

And will he drown of silence

By the wetting of this brain?

Or could he turn to pen and air

To make his heart beat fast?

And feed himself on visions

So his thirst is quenched at last

And so I’ll not defend my words

As poets sometimes do.

The words of senses sown,

To the senses are due

 

Walsall (12.VII.75)

Poems of Place: At the National Portrait Gallery with Simon Schama

24 Wednesday Jun 2015

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 The BP Portrait Awards

You told us to lock eyes,

Get up close and personal;

Be inspired by Hogarth’s words

And if in doubt, swipe right.

But I didn’t expect a face-to-face with Fairfax

Over the Sancerre and sea bass.

But the Roundhead was a better with pike blocks than with banter

And sadly for me he sat impassively

As I munched on burrata and asparagus,

So I talked instead with Karen.

You might have warned us Dr. Schama

That we’d been invited a Game of Thrones theme night dinner

Where House Stuart showed once more how if you win, you lose

And three big names – Strafford, Laud and Charles

Looked down at us with hauteur and as yet their heads,

As we sat below the salt

Contemplating life’s greatest dilemma:

Of being wrong but romantic;

Or being right, but repulsive?

Poems of Place: Sunday in Washington Square

18 Thursday Jun 2015

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The alchemy of life’s best demonstrations are found

In sudden switchback whirls to happiness,

As when you stumble upon a random piece of heaven

Around an unsuspected turn.

Today Nature envisioned for us the perfect set:

A sky cerulean pan, unblemished and unwashed;

Big trees with names as challenging –

Black Locust, Cockspur, Hawthorn, Slippery Elm

A man-made Garibaldi pointed the way

Beyond the copper glints of water towers in the lunchtime sun.

The audience gathered and seemed the perfect sample

In gender, age and color,

They cradled dogs, stroked touch screens,

Caressed familiar shoulders, checked the progress of probing ants

Or slept off the late night booze on shaded lawns.

Protected by the hawthorn trees, stood the matt black grand

Its veteran keys flanked by plastic buckets – as yet unfilled with either folded notes or metal.

A third up-turned bucket became the seat for Colin Huggins

Our virtuoso in torn jeans, a pork pie hat and the cheery patter

He introduced us first to Frederic Chopin then to Phillip Glass

He holds us all inside his fingers

And in a moment of sweet modulation

We sit within a circle inside a Square

Held In the perfect balance of infinity.

May 2015