Galleon

Scaffolded and rendered

A grand, colonial design
Matriarch meeting Monroe
The actress is still tall
Svelte and immortal it seems
The reinvented renovation
Perfection in the cosmetic
Both application and design
But comes ever the night
And upon a sea of cotton
She is then lost, becalmed;
A shipwreck; foundering,
Upon the rocks of time
And though we can forgive
An actress her last role
No woman, nor any man
May stay afloat forever
And sheets become shroud
To wrap a plastic life within

Bluebell

I walked over the hill, dale and field

While on the wind church bells pealed
Across ancient wood and shady dell
Through dapplement on nodding bluebell
Orchid of May, vivid scented lightning strike
Queen of the woods is this fluorescent spike
And not for naught do I walk this way
For what compares to an English summer day

Spider

Soft and deadly

To some but not I
Petite tarantula
Undulating quietly
While we sleep
Rising and falling
Like a hairy wave
That greets night
In hirsute whisper

Polar Shrinkage

It falls upon green parchment

Writes in watery scripts
Clear words of change
Water is everywhere
And more is coming
The last rain of dinosaurs
No longer locked to ice
Is now freed by humanity
From frozen bondage
And its fluid antiquity
Leaching from polar prisons
Trickles into the seas
As we also meander to oblivion

Hope

What is expectation?

It is to be given a choice
It is wishing enlightenment
To be whole without conditioning
To live and to love each other
As benign equals
Without reservations
Without condemnation
And no fury, no winds of rage
May still this change
Bigotries rusty chains slip
Clatter to the floor of history
And…
The world may shake a little
But it will still stand
We are only evolving
After all
And once the bound are free
The world will change forever
To the good
And that is the greatest fear
Of those under the yoke of faith

Waiting

And where are they now?

Where do they lurk
Through this inclement May
They rest on growing armies
Brood upon the future
In fading paper houses
Whisper in waxy amphitheatres
Listen to the endless rain
And wait for the sun

May Sights

Tesseract

And the reformation has faded

Glass strikes steel and shatters
A reflection in a starlit mirror
But it is a million years wiser
Evolution served at differing times
The curtain of stars now withdraw
So is revealed the rift in the tesseract
And in this mirror ball of possibility
Temporal dimensions fracture and bloom

Poldark

What may a man see from a coast?

Where the timbers still land
From long gone galleons
Now sailing a shifting seabed
And if we could dare to look
What else is cast from sea?
A mermaid with auburn hair
Under the gaze of such a man
In a three-cornered hat,
Unfurling brown, crescent, curls
Laced around grey-green eyes
And a flowing voice of copper
And what he may see from the coast
She espied from the sea long ago
And ever thus loved
Cornwall's Heathcliffe
And became his Demelza

Wasps

We are the winged sharks of the air

We take well above our insect share
And only by our determined stealth
Are you guaranteed harvest wealth
To pollinate the pretty flowers is fine
But upon destructive bugs our young dine
And without us the flowers cannot be
And then there would be no loved honeybee

Civilisations

Twas a world of baths and vanity

That sits under watchful eye
Of the lost memory of Atlantis
For is not this Greek tragedy
Only a game of civilisation
That Rome trumped and bettered
Till the volcano took the prize
While Titus watched from Rome

Herculaneum

Pompeii

 

Villa Cimbroni Ravello

Where green meets blue
And coasts are guarded
By marble sentinels
Fashion a vista of awe
An eyrie of relaxation
Clinging to the very air
Seamless and timeless
Infinity captured in grace

Amalfi and Capri

Nothing may come here

And be unmoved
To visit Italy
Is to wish to stay
To wish to leave
Is to feel nothing

Herculaneum

Colours of ancient history

Still sharp as fire
Blue and ochre, gold and pomegranate
In Herculaneum
Under the shadow of fading cone
Who painted the frescoes?
And did they know
They would be seen
Two thousand years from now
Like the brush just left the wall

Sorrento

The greater heat

Is closer now
Sheds warmth
Illuminates softness
On butterflies wings
From volcanic soils
Surges green veils
And out of history
Are living tales
This is Italy