Category: Poetry

The day before, relentless rain beat hard
Upon the fragile earth; soaked near to the skin
We sought the shelter of our homes, our heads
Bowed very low by a storm so foul and grim,

And though today the cloud is slowly lifting,
The birdbath’s surface ripples in the breeze,
Just like a bowl of overflowing tears,
And softly falls the blossom from the trees,

Which briefly, with such fleeting beauty, decks
The sodden grass. Yet on the broken ground
A pair of hopeful goldfinch search for seeds
Beginning now to swell and sprout, their crowns

Blood-red, a vivid sign amid the gloom
That on the morrow life once more shall bloom.

19 Apr 25

How do you measure love? Something so real
Yet undefined? So true yet through the years
Evolving? So strong yet in tenderness
Expressed? Unseen yet to the watcher clear?

Perhaps in ironed shirts or cups of tea
In dinners cooked or dishes washed and dried,
Perhaps in photos of a thousand places
Or paths we’ve walked together side by side,

Perhaps in songs that speak of special times
Or jokes that no-one else could understand,
Perhaps in wisdom gained in grief and loss
Or overwhelming joy, unsought, unplanned,

Perhaps in stories of our mutual friends
Or family trees now tightly intertwined,
Or maybe over all these things a sense
Of being one in Christ in heart and mind.

5 Mar 25

https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/gallery/plymouths-armada-way-revamp-update-9896608

Amid the excavators tearing up
The ground, an overwintering tree still stands,
Surviving on its grey grass island
In a sea of concrete, brick and builder’s sand,

As history once again is overlaid
According to some grand expensive plan.
And yet its roots run far beneath to where
The old Elizabethan leat once ran.

So though a busy din rings out around
The site, maybe one day in the spring,
The blackbird will return and over all
The noise its ancient melody shall sing.

22 Feb 25

For the original poem on Armada Way click here

Inspired by a visit to the Wetherspoons of this name in Camden, and a visit to Wallace collection…

Across the sticky, ale-stained tables play
Out myriad dramas of the every day
Like those, perhaps, depicted by the Dutch
Old Masters, with such acuity portrayed;

Young couples navigating their first dates –
Him laughing a little much too long and loud,
Her checking her appearance with great care –
Some lively theatregoers in a crowd

With early drinks to help the evening flow;
Philosophers debating the offside rule
And whether VAR should’ve intervened
Or if the referee was simply fooled;

A mother with her not quite teenage kids
Before the awkward, independent years,
While hidden by a pillar, some scruffy youth
With headphones on, eats through a scraggy beard.

Within this ever changing tableau, you
And I are also actors passing through,
Part of the city’s endless, countless throng
In which I need to stick right close to you.

Within the slanting sunlight of a late
Autumnal afternoon leaves russet brown
And washed out green are caught upon the breeze
And in a whispering shower come tumbling down,

Some to be trampled underfoot upon
The path already churned by darkening rain,
Some borne along the winding old canal
To drift towards the steep declining plane,

And as we wander hand in hand I think
How winter very soon will strip the beech
And oak completely bare, and how the warmth
Of spring will lie for months beyond our reach

And how such memories of a tranquil day
Will help to keep the lengthening nights at bay.

There’s a beauty in the pale, transcendent moon,
That science on its own cannot explain,
And as the eye perceives the wondrous light,
And then informs the weary, working brain,

Somewhere within a sense of awe and joy
Bursts forth, defying reason’s icy cold
Appraisal, so as the city starts to wake
A lingering sense of hope the soul enfolds.

18 Oct 24

A sleepy day in Budleigh Salterton –
Beneath the azure sky, with paper layers
Of fragile cloud, a postcard seaside scene;
Sun worshippers sprawled out in stripy chairs,

And joyful toddlers heaping stone on stone,
And teenage sweethearts sharing fish and chips,
And slowly shuffling with their walking sticks,
Old friends with many memories on their lips,

And while you brave the tranquil, chilly sea
My eye is drawn towards the small white yacht
That sails along the edge of what is seen,
And as it fades from sight I wonder what

May lie beyond the boundary of my view,
And if my course is somewhere known or new.

18 Aug 24

I miss the slow engagement with the word,
And physical embodiment of text,
The days when all along the shelves I’d search
To find the end and object of my quest

And then at last within my hand to hold
That precious world of freshly printed ink,
Beyond whose cover I’d discover a cast
Of friends – and sometimes foes – who feel and think

In such a way to touch my soul within,
And in the turning of each fresh, crisp page,
I’d eagerly pursue their every move
To gain a vision of that wider stage,

On which we all are called to act our part.
The text is pixilated now, to browse
Is simply with a mouse scroll up or down,
And words endure but for the here and now.

What if we learnt to read and read again,
To savour every carefully crafted phrase?
To cultivate within each humble heart
A sense of wonder, an openness to grace?

29 Jun 24

The phone box has been removed from the end of our street

For years it stood unloved, unused, a place
Perhaps to smoke a joint, or etch your name
Upon the smeary panes of splintered glass
And advertise for brief, illicit fame.

But once there would have been long queues outside
As starstruck sweethearts planned their special date,
Or someone rang the council to complain,
Or giggling schoolgirls pranked their hapless mate.

Thus a thousand conversations flowed,
A stream of prose within graffiti’d walls,
That grows and grows until the coins run out,
Or else the operator ends the call.

And all the while the jilted lover waits
Just to hear this phone box ring. But that is past,
Long past, marked only by a plot of earth,
Soon to be lost amid the uncut grass.

At last the flooding rains have ceased, and with
The dawn of May the long awaited sun
Breaks forth upon the cemetery path
All muddy where the storm-fed streams still run

(Despite the council flood prevention scheme)
Where toddlers love to splash without a care
And long-haired dogs rush in to roll and play,
And yet my gaze is focused quite elsewhere.

For just beyond the cracked and crooked wall
There is a far more gentle, peaceful scene –
A sea of vibrant bluebells breaking on
A weathered headstone, by the years washed clean,

And there a lively robin starts to sing,
To greet the long-delayed, much-needed spring.