Song for Richard

Let’s sail through the night on a moonstruck barge,

Taste dawn on the deck as the stars submerge,

Embrace in the lap of a sunlit gorge…

And you’ll love me then,

As you loved me once.

Let’s climb to the top of a snow-blown peak,

Sift pearls from the shale of an ice-blue lake,

Entwine with the limbs of a mountain oak…

You would love me then,

As you loved me once.

We’ll shake up the dust on the Pilgrims' Way,

Sow sand-soft steps on the shores of the sea,

Tread poppy fields to where they graze the sky...

Will you love me then,

As you loved me once?

Oh come, sit with me by the dying flames,

And let’s speak again of the former times,

Of wistful promises and half-grasped dreams -

For you loved me then,

Yes, you loved me then…

Sub Rosa

Remember that single flower you picked?
Gathered in stealth and trespass,
Far, so far in that arid land
And I, a whisper on the wind.
How could you help yourself, I ask,
When all around was dust and sticks?

Was it her blush, her cunning sway,
That made you stop and marvel?
Or did you breathe the heady scent
Of thwarted dreams before you bent?
Did you not feel those thorns at all?
They ripped your heart from mine that day.

Warm petals parting, smooth silken lies,
Frisson of sweet illusion -
Safe, so safe in your treacherous arms,
That fraudulent rose, ephemeral balm…
Was it because the clouds had gone
That in your eyes she saw the sky?

Remember that single flower you took?
Wild and wanton, undeserved,
The one you swore you’d thrown away?
I found that flower the other day -
Fragrant still and perfectly preserved,
Pressed in the pages of our book.

Coming Home

She sat facing backwards on the train to Crewe,
watching herself shrinking in the distance
while familiar landscapes flickered past the window,
though not in black and white.
They had been, once -
with hairline cracks that burst upon a screen,
and Mother, tightly-permed and nyloned,
clicked her heels through unconnected scenes,
pulling the silent, dreamy child beyond...

Her face reflecting in the tainted glass,
she stared at fields that billowed into view,
the bales of hay like wayward scones - and paths
that led to Sunday afternoons, and you.

Those twisted paths.

She can’t forget, she tried -
examined frame by frame her flimsy life;
rewound her soul until it snapped and died -
and still she never found the child who laughed…

And now she’s coming home for Mother’s sake:
dragging her luggage along Platform Two,
she bends to brush against your Old Spiced cheek…
and shudders.

Or maybe it was you.

When Daddy comes home

There is a moment in our day – which hitherto
had teemed with dimpled laughter;
tumbled, nudged and winked its way
across the sunlit birdsong-speckled hours –
there is a moment when the quivering springness
starts to slow; an instant when the light falls wingless
to the cold earth, a sudden folding of the flowers,
a hush of footfall poised upon the roaring brink
where with buckled breath we wait...
we wait for you.

Sonnet

Would you compare me to a Summer’s day?
Not really, I suppose, if truth were told,
Not first thing in the morning anyway-
More like the end of Autumn: rumpled, old…
Perfection taunts me from a magazine
Where Truth is Beauty, Beauty wrinkle-free;
I wonder if you wish that I had been
A girl to make heads turn, instead of Me?
You snuggle closer, kiss me on the neck -
“I love you…” and of course, I know you do,
Despite the fact that I’m an ageing wreck.
“But what,” I say, “Would you compare me to?”

“Shall I compare you to this Summer’s day?”
You draw the curtains and the sky is…grey.

First kiss

I shall remember this night, years from now,
when life has drifted, settled in the cracks,
covering our tracks. I shall think of how
the summer moon slipped from her shroud
and bowed to peep between the chimney stacks,
beamed softly as you said my name out loud
and stooped to press your mouth against my own;
of how wind moaned, stars clustered, rivers gushed
while Time, in eagerness to tell, had flown.
And when existence palls, I’ll think of how
one night the fretful universe fell hushed -
and blush when I remember, years from now…

Journey

This is the road we travelled down
so many years ago;
this is where winding memory strays
through leaf blown lanes from distant days
towards the place we know.
Here ran a river tumbling deep,
transparently sublime -
here beneath silver-seeded skies
we moved the earth with eager sighs
and cultivated time.

Do you recall the oh! of the hill
beyond the flush of dawn?
How, as we pierced the morning mist,
the path began to heave and twist
till threads of blood were drawn?
Soft as a bruise, the evening spread
into the swollen light:
wasn’t it then we turned to flee
from where our pain crouched silently
and bled into the night?

Remember how shadows screamed their loss,
bringing us to our knees?
How echoes flew, bereft and blind,
chasing the fronds of fraying mind
scattered beyond the breeze?
From strands of fading gossamer,
we teased our thoughts apart -
and wove ourselves a curlicue,
back to the ancient path we knew…
back to the very start.