Equality

Hope now sees the desert flowers opening in the rain

To end time spent under a hostile sun and finally evolve
And soon the sweetest kiss of the honeyed bee is laid
Onto the brightest and most vibrant blooms of humanity
For now any two sentient hearts aged of consent may join
And in that new gender blind love; open a gentler door
Out of the desert and into the cool, green fields of equality

Mathematical Enquiry

Seven times seven plus three

Probably a mathematical enquiry
More likely an unravelling sum
Of complex flux settling to dust

The Temperate Zone

In the earth’s northern bands now comes summer

Faltering steps of gentle warming are now waxing
Slow and deliberate it has taken on the old world
Shaped it anew in broad strokes of deepening green
It comes neither fast enough, nor warm enough; for me
The close high summer days still seem so far away yet
Even as the zenith of radiance nears its full breadth
So runs out the world within the temperate zone
Hope each year dashed by geographical location
For this is no Spain; no Provence and no Tuscany
Just a damp quarter of England called Lancashire
Yet it is green and whole; even if it lowers the soul
And what the sun omits we supply with imagination

We grow yet never evolve

Two to three weeks late this year
Finally watch a spring evening unfold
Pigeons vie for the best spots in trees
Against a backdrop of creaking branches
Leaf bud coverings finally burst
Fall through dappled sunlight
A rain of green-brown confetti
Strewing on the ground
A deer flicks through the garden
Away by the time the dog has a scent
Snuffling grass like a truffle hound.
Overhead a heron's broad wingspan
Looking for a way into the ponds.
Circles and glides across a blue sky
A cold wind blows from the north
Slicing through the hot sunshine
Biting midges take to the evening air
In a formation of insect Spitfires
Mercifully to be blown way off course
Return home; see the unfolding news
Horror spills out in high definition
I want to return to my shaded arbour
And never leave its grace for...
We may develop; yet we never evolve

The Sword of Truth

So when they come to write my hagiography;*

What will they say?
That I was not a saint or leader of a great house
They will say
Here is the story of an unremarked man
And see the briefness of its pages
But you my love will know
The true spirit of the man
Cannot be writ from a strangers memories
And the sword of truth sheathed and unused
Is all the blunter for cutting out falsehood

*Hagiography (pron: hageeography) (from the Greek (h)ağios “holy” or “saint”) and graphēin (“to write”), refers to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, although less common.

Clowns cry out Angerously

 
Nonsense doth decry all that is the essence of benevolence?
When snakeish and egotistical buffoons cry out angerously
If a just and societal sharing perforce takes away a tithe of
Excess gained through the exploitation of the fellow man
Surely makes them rage like a beast against darkening clouds
They deserve it more; no matter the gloomy cost to common good
So they shall have it now, but not long; for this bitter dance of tears
Enters its final movement and when the motion stops, so it rains
The world cleans away long ages of fault; renews to better design
Scents the globe in a precious arousal of the senses called compassion

When food alone will just not do

Of a cook that beats and whisks
Within the dark like an alchemist
No bullion made save golden pastries
That ease the waking heart to glee
So then also does enigmatic night
Sing operatic arias to the soul
To calm to dawn a fluttering heart
When food alone will just not do

The Actor

The actor is finally revealed

Unmasked in the final act
As a jester of some magnitude
It matters not now left or right
For his exit is verily assured

Prehensile

The snake weaves across a mosaic floor
Soft and gentle; as a zephyr across dunes
Its prehensile length smears the tiles
Warning symbols etched in diamonds
Coiling around objects it enters the garden
Slithering from day into the jewel of night

Reasoned Peace

Rain droplets fall onto boots that walked out into a cooler morning

Among fading daffodils and first mown grass it falls in soft globules
Scents the morning world around me in a solidifying arousal of senses
From a deep reverie recall compassion into the light of reasoned peace
Take the morning and its meaning and let the rain wash away fault

Solace of Embers

The outlook lifts amid summer’s clime like a tender breath

Vellum wrapped thoughts can be shared on starry evenings
Beliefs as gentle as the brush of downy wing on heavy brow
Are disseminated like the solace of embers in a winter refuge

Minimalist to complex

 

Summer arrives so fast

Days wake and slumber
To complex feathered song
And if days can expand
Washed in warming light
Take root and grow swift
Minimalist to complex
Then I think so must I

When I run up the hill

Tobacco free now for 6 months

Saving fifteen hundred pounds
But I miss it so; even still
It will probably never leave me
This feeling of loss
But I tell myself it is worth it
When I look at the savings
When I run up the hill
Chasing a swift running dog
For many years longer to come

A state of grace can claim the soul

Paths are laid out before me like intersecting unions of precision and purpose

They sit below the evaporating dawn mist; but above the fog of endless labour
Choose a way now you are enlightened by the years gained; and travel its length
Before a state of grace can claim the soul to make easy decisions for a lonely heart
It can never be a choice for the craven requiring a leap of faith into the unknown
No outcome foretold; it is a gamble on goodness, built within the world of the meek
Though unsure I shall set my foot on this conduit and walk in the quiet ease of truth

I forgive you

 

I choose to split bread with ghosts

That rise and wander in the night
You cannot gain say me?
No more than you can tell me
What to do at this time
Perhaps it is inevitable;
Now that I finally...
See through your ailing disguise
But the more I become my father,
The more I am able to forgive you