Garden Thoughts

Home

Home.

Once there were green lanes

Leading to grassy meadows

Running brooks

branches moving in serene air.

Now there are crumbled buildings

on uncertain streets

Rooks.

Red smoke.

The only passage

wires strung from here to where?

We are all tightrope walkers now.

Covid Thoughts 3: Free Fall

We float spreadeagled in the sky

Lifted and pulled by vague winds

Invisible currents.

Above us the receding plane

a speck

hidden by cloud.

 

As we fall,

Burnt cinders of news

Sparks brightened by the wind

Circle us.

 

Gradually we shift uneasily together

Reach

Touch

And lock hands.

 

Our frail parachutes open

and we lose our grip

Still descending

towards an uncertain earth

Separate,

Yet together.

 

Covid thoughts 2: Warmth

Everyone

Seems suddenly warmer,

Closer,

More connected,

 

Despite hugs

giving way to

elbow bumps

giving way to

little waves,

giving way to

masks

and distance.

 

The wish to be close

Coiled in every muscle.

 

I would never have believed

I could survive

five weeks

without the merest touch of another human being.

 

And not be desolate.

 

But I can.

 

Because I know

The warmth is still there

Deep

in the heart.

Covid thoughts. Birdsong

I am at the moment working on the libretto of a new oratorio we have been commissioned to write about this surreal experience. To help me imagine my way into it, I am intending to write a poem a day about different aspects of the experience. These poems are just thinking aloud; inching towards finding out what I want to write about. But I thought I may as well post them as I go along.

 

I sit

Book on knee

In a green

Dream.

 

Branches between blue

Clench

Into bud.

High

Sweet,

Calling birds.

 

Filling the sky,

the trees,

the wind,

the world.

Beating against my closed eyelids.

Halloween

Feet crunching up a deserted drive

winding

through tangled shrubbery.

 

House silent

in the empty mist.

 

An owl,

disturbed,

passing.

 

From an upper window

a shadow stares.

 

All that is left

of someone

who once

lived.

Mary’s Song

These are the lyrics to a new carol Jools and I were commissioned to write for the children’s choir at Bath Abbey. The music is wonderful.

There were many things in my mind when I wrote them. Foremost was not the nativity, but the later Mary, running for her life with her baby. Like the Kurdish women, and all the other fugitives across the world.

 

Sleep my darling, sleep my little one;

Toes curled gentle in my hand.

Sleep my darling, sleep my little one,

Stranger in a stranger’s land.

 

In the wind

The snow is blowing

Dancing in the

Winter air..

 

Sleep, my darling, sleep, my little one,

Do not fear the winter’s cold.

Sleep, my darling, sleep, my little one,

Child in a world grown old.

 

In the wind

The snow is blowing

Every crystal 

Fragile, rare..

 

Sleep, my darling, sleep, my little one,

I am watching over you.

Sleep, my darling, sleep, my little one,

You will make the world anew.

Sleep..

Sleep…

Sleep…

 

In the wind

The snow is blowing

Dancing in the

Winter air..

 

D Day

So infinitely touching

The love and tenderness

Of soldier to soldier.

I understand the colours

And the uniforms

And the bands

Marching.

The pride and dignity

Of rank.

Only the beauty

And exhilaration

And emotion

Of music and flags

Could help these

Gentle men

To kill

Other

gentle men.

Spring

I shiver in a green garden

Hoping for butterflies.

State of the World

Steward, there isn’t enough ice in my Martini!

Coming right up, Ma’am!