Beyond the Horizon

The horizon, you see,

is in here, tied round my heart

to keep my eyes on the slow

passing of comfortable days.

There are times for looking beyond,

when the moment is safely past

and I can bear to discover

all those misunderstood certainties.

Then people can even emerge

from the mists that wrap our days

as bubble wrap round china.

Then the terrorist can sob

for the comfort of his mother,

then the policeman can see the fear

trembling in the burglar’s eyes,

then the politician can see the sallow skin,

the exhausted rags and the empty shelves of poverty.

Beyond the horizon are jagged peaks

and canyons of untold depth,

then the blood flows, the light shines, the cheeks sink

and beauty presses its lips

against my wound until I retire

to the protection of grey mist in the twilight

on the endless featureless plains.

Making eye contact

It is too hard to look at you

lest I find myself examined,

seen through, discovered and exposed.

I know I must not look elsewhere –

as it were seeming bored of you

but I still fear to look at you

lest I reduce you to a thing.

So I let my eyes hop about,

show respect by glimpsing your smile,

show respect by a far-off gaze

looking over the horizon

as in deep thought about your words –

and back again to reassure

that I am with and care for you.

Beyond the horizon, there is

only the illusion of things,

a smooth vacancy as the space

expands and galaxies flee

into what is not. For the truth

that we can know is in your eyes

looking at my failures with love.

So it’s too hard to look at you.

Reclaiming Grief

There’s nothing to say that the tree

will not fall on me in the gales.

I know that life can be snuffed out

in an instant, but it’s knowing

that’s not knowing, unknowable.

Just the same unknowable

as that crimson shudder I

tried so hard to see and not see

as my lost father released life’s

tenacious mysterious hold.

And now I know I will be crushed

by some random calamity

I would return to see and know

that shudder of a passing life

that event of incompleteness,

that abandonment that forms me.

I would take with me a bible

opened where the mysterious

embodiment of truth is found.

If you come, you should bring with you

a pebble, polished by the seas,

so I can cling to permanence

and feel its forgiving smoothness.

Somewhere, let there be found a song

and the thought Summer sunshine

and a glimpse of children playing

in a garden of wild flowers.

Surely you will find me – surely

I cannot hide from the echo

of the world changing, from the star

that must shine for death as for birth

and I may find a voice to cry

in fury at the agony

of all human hopes and failures.

New Year Resolution Haikus

Resolution one – 

See how five syllables shone 

and danced in the snow.

Resolution two – 

Hope seven syllables flew,

skating on thin ice.

Resolution three – 

Seventeen syllables free 

amongst frosted trees.

Resolution four – 

Break the rules to discover

Winter’s glittering lights.

Resolution five – 

Failure is sure to arrive 

so just fail better.

Resolution six – 

When in a bit of a fix 

look out for a rhyme.

Resolution seven – 

Don’t pretend there’s a heaven 

between fire and flood.

Resolution eight – 

In darkness, seek patience. Wait 

for inspiration.

Resolution nine – 

Believe it will be fine 

when dark clouds gather.

Resolution ten – 

Feel the balance of your pen 

in a relaxed hand.

The Home of Tolerance

Across the valley, you could see

the houses of quiet domesticity

nestling in the folds of the hillside.

Beyond you, stretched out the highway

busy with the urgent passage of lives

making noisy journeys to the future.

Impotent fools would blow their horns

and leave their poison hanging in the air

drowning out the soft music of nature.

On the path, the dog walkers came

calling them to order, more to please me

than to impact the dogs’ behaviour.

And the children, slouching to school,

leaving a trail of litter behind,

laughing inside their youthful enclosures.

Then, the lone walker drab in dress

on her daily discipline, shy in step,

eyes flickering in watchful gaze, ready

to observe the social necessities,

to meet kindness with kindness in safety,

to slip unnoticed behind convention.

You must be closer still to see

the tremor of lip and the brow darkening,

the way a life draws its lines on faces

that have learnt truths about the price of love,

the hard necessity of failure and

the courage of ordinary living.

The Pioneers

No more does the blood of our ancestors

animate the spark of life that drives us.

We are just folk straining against the powers

that sit in unseen panelled offices.

There are no shared stories in this landscape,

no ancient duels to give us our side,

to shape our outline through opposition.

Nor are we given stories, laid before

us, to still our minds and diminish us,

until no man creates his history

in the empty landscape. Beasts are strangers,

nameless objects of indifference or

sentiment, living lives unconnected

with the city scape’s brutal urgency.

Then they ground their stories into the soil,

every bush or hollow etched with the names

of their fathers, mothers, – ancestors myth wrapped

determined survivors of all the earth

could drain from them. And the line of the dead

stretched out of sight but woven into law –

the law of their truth and morality

standing proud in the blood of the hunted.

Go West

Only the blood of deer,

cheek branded by its smear,

awakens this boy

to manhood, a manhood

defined by fear conquered.

Kindness is the province

of the feared and despised

woman, who strips the men

of the carapace

of fearless assertion.

He must become one

with the wilderness,

with the dry bones

of ancestors long gone

from their bitter struggles.

One with the entrails

of lead-shot bucks

and grizzled bears blasted

from their homelands

by the blank hearts of hungry men.

Nativity

For so long, the. prophecies sang freely.

Swords would surely be beaten to ploughshares

and spears to pruning hooks. There was promise

that nations shall not learn war any more,

and God’s chosen people would come to peace.

No more.

Justice has bowed before self-protection.

Compassion has been bombed to cruelty.

Neighbourliness is defined by weapons.

The promises of peace are empty words.

What then of the baby beneath the star?

Words and flesh lying bloody in the rubble?

Were we children dreaming in sunlit fields

or just fools, eyes closed in the desert?

Wilderness

My garden is, I believe, uneducated – 

it has read the wrong books and doesn’t understand the weather.

I leave Monty on the telly, hoping 

the herbaceous borders might learn something 

and that the lawn would know to fade away, 

allowing the wild flowers to spread some joy.

But no, weeds plough on, oblivious to the layers 

of mulch and scatterings of blood and bone.

The grass loves the yellow rattle and grows lush – 

two fingers to those smarmy experts who claim 

its roots would be weakened. No birds visit the pond – 

no one made them wash their wings before meals?

Sometimes a pretty flower, brought up in nursery 

and hothouse, mollie coddled through infancy, 

finds its way into the border, is mystified 

by the need to work for its living as it dies 

amongst the chickweed and dandelions.

My garden hates those entitled pretty boys, 

and yet, as the frost paints the faces of wild things, 

it thinks “if I’d learnt things, I might have fed 

someone and charmed the sad and lonely.”

How strange that it doesn’t know it is on message, 

sustainable, insect filled and inhaling carbon dioxide.

Cop 28

From now, I must be living on borrowed time,

three score and ten being long gone.

Certainly, it is the fall of my life

as a bruised ankle will readily testify

so I feel the danger of a muddy slope and an exposed rock.

But nothing can be done and the truth is

innocence clings to me just as the day I was born,

innocence that is a kind of ignorance

protecting me from the grief and horror of a world

that stumbles under this innocence of men.