in the sun watching
the sky – lying on my back
the world rotates
I shall be here – in the shadows,
upon a dune-crest riding high,
playing my whistle, softly, sadly:
oh – let the tide come flooding nigh. Continue reading
Poems like fishes all come swimming past –
so many, innumerable, all going so fast:
I’d like to try catch-one but shoaling they fin
into a whirling ball, silver, all wild in a spin!
In a blur they wheel past me and gone in a flash –
in the silent, still water – not even a splash,
but in the comforting clarity, enveloping fold,
of the crystal clear water its not even cold.
So floating I drift with the tides and the lace
of intricate seaweeds, across oceans I chase:
below fantastical chandeliers, by the sun lit –
the tentacled colonies of jelly fish – I flit.
In the depths a rare shadow: of hope a faint glimmer
in the distance before me – spy a brilliant shimmer!
One day shall I catch one, one day to be sure
will I land my fine catch upon a far golden shore.
Oh the Marram Grass so firm before
the violent waves that raise-crash ashore
and carve in the sand a delicate rose
of the coming of the wind – and how it goes
and scratches just like a seismograph
a record of just how the wind gusts laugh
and leap between blades shimmering
and play, reverberating, glimmering.
Oh what a charge to nurture flowers gay
and spread in the sun day after day
and night after night below the milky stars
send pale racimes out-reaching far
towards the sea that ashore angry foams
and the rising sun’s warming golden gloam.
The wood-pigeon’s call comes booming in
through every wall of the room I’m in
the bricks dissolve – there’s an open sky
that lets in all of its basal cry
There is no driveway, there is no street
instead stand pines so tall and sweet:
their resinous odour fills my nose
and golden sand lies beneath my toes
my skin even feels the warming sun
in my ears, cries of laughter, oh so fun.
Ten thousand pines stand all around
on dunes that rise up from the ground
and in high branches play squirrels, red
but now of feet have I none, only roots instead
and my arms extended up toward the rays
are fixed now, each of my fingers splayed
and branches and green needles have come
where once golden hairs from my arms were sprung.
Here, then, where I once stood by the forest transfixed
will I now stand forever, in-amongst, betwixt
the ocean’s raging waves and the hinterland
will I be forever a Pine tree – how grand!