original poem – Page 95 – don't confuse the narrator

incubus

He comes to her at dawn,
sweet-nothings her awake
as he nuzzles past her ear,
whispering his desire, telling
how her sweat draws him, how
he would risk his life to serenade her,
to tangle through her hair and kiss
the smooth curve of her neck.

I’m not exactly bubbling over with new ideas at the moment, so I’m looking back over old notebooks and reviewing pieces that I never thought sufficiently polished to submit for comment and critique, let alone for publication. So this is still a draft, but it amuses me, as does the idea of writing a poem to a mosquito. Of course, if you’ve interpreted it as meaning something different, that’s your prerogative as reader.

first light

The Matins bell sounds honey-clear
across still valley air. It chimes
outside my window where
a carillon of grapes calls
to the rising sun.

The photo is actually from the year we moved to the village – the previous owner was assiduous in his use of pesticides and chemicals, so the fruit that autum was far more photogenic than what we produce.

The words are not recent, either, but I’m hoping that now the summer is effectively over, and I am ready to settle down at my desk with fewer distractions, visits and visitors, I may be able to find space again for poetry.

welsh leaks

A problem with the overflow at my mother’s house has reminded me of a poem I have never managed to polish to my complete satisfaction. The first stanza seems to have potential, I think, though the line breaks still bother me. It’s probably ‘finished’ enough to post here, and I’ll be glad if anyone wants to criticise or comment:

A heavy storm has made the flat roof leak
 and in the small hours, memories drip  
from the bedroom ceiling.  Unlike the rain
they cannot be absorbed  
by piles of folded towels,
or mopped  into a bucket, so  
she paddles through them, 
barefoot, towards dawn.

The poem was intended to be called something like All Hallows Anniversary and gets quite maudlin, but the fact I’ve thought about it now in August and under very different circumstances may, I hope, shake me out of my affection for the original idea.

All thoughts and commentary appreciated.

the spaces between

The heart nests in the bone tree.
She chatters idly, then sings
when the sun touches her. In Spring
she seeks a mate, peeping
from behind a complex foliage
of words and silences.

(An old poem posted because the photo reminded me of the ‘complex foliage’. Having found it, I thought I’d try and remember something about how and why I wrote it.)

It was Castaneda’s Don Juan who talked of not seeing the shapes of the tree and its leaves, but instead looking at the spaces between them.
Continue reading “the spaces between”

the wayside flower (green and pleasant)

It’s a cliché, but England really is green, and I was amazed at the exuberance of the plants and wild flowers growing on untended verges. There’s a tiny blue cornflower tucked in the among the yellow and red here, and I couldn’t believe how truly blue it was. Here in Spain, they seem to come in a shade of over-washed lilac.