The Last Lighthouse

Something's stirring.
Something grows
Old Albion in waking throes?
Will it sweep all to the sea
An act of grand finality?

 Or, sad and lost in venal sight,
condemned to search in ailing light 
for some dim echo ceased-to-be,
or shape it blind, from memory?

There's nothing here, my dear
Save the last lighthouse
where a keeper tends a guttering flame
against a gathering squall

We will recede into the slate-grey tide
to commune with other shipwrecks
and forget

Bitter Sunday

“There was a man once
Who wrote for me”
You'll say
On some bitter Sunday far off
Reminiscing in a silver light
Perhaps to no-one in particular
Watching rain on cold steamed glass
paint shifting pictures
with every pass.

What will you think
with time and wisdom?
Content that someone cared to try,
or wistful of the memory
where one man carried into view
each paltry comrade he could muster
to forge a monument writ large for you?

And will you still be unaware,
of what you are
cursed by some wayward grace
that makes you ever destined to deny
and no words will turn you to see
though it's as clear and vast
and beautiful
as sky?

I knew you before we met
And I'll still know you,
On that bitter Sunday far off.

Work Haikus

1.

New Century Place
With shrubs slashed and bushes bare
Where now the green shoots?

2.

Reading in spring frost
Sunshine on cool water
Silent Oracle

Fox Moon Sugar

The clearing.
Circled by leering trees,
lit by the dappled glow of a baleful moon,
casts new shapes
Arcane and twisted
that grasp at the sky.

A bright dusting, then a coating
of tasteless icing
drifts,
banking mutely around the black trunks
in a chill and loveless embrace.

A silent visitor emerges
and sniffs the glass-frozen air.
He is a streak of burnt orange
rendered dazzling
stark against the endless white,
and endless black
like a stranded sun.

From the shadowed tree line,
a muffled crunch of snow underfoot
then a breath,
a fleeting ghost.

As the flakes hang from eyelash and melt on skin
the gun is levelled
and cracking the night
like thunder
a new colour is born.

Commuters

The steel lines follow and stop,
no argument breached
in the vague animosity of stale air
attended with aimless glance and slick gloss
of shoe, raincoat, case, umbrella.

To a fanfare of lurching creaks
I am born, birthed inelegant
to a churning crowd, hive mind,
that is skating hither and thither.
A frenzied nest
At the centre
of a black cathedral.

I crouch, sick and flinching
inside
clawing the shrinking walls
begging some fell apocalypse
to empty the trammelled lines these blank maps slide over
and take them away forever.

Or for me to cradle myself
foetal, shaking, weeping darkly in some cold corner
far from these crowding phantoms
that purring, tolerate by cycle and rote
that which jars so wildly
and throws me into disarray and aching panic
weighing my soul a little lighter with each new day.

And until that time,
Until horizons scatter them on ever walking paths
Away, away from me
Cowed, wan and silent
I can scarce breathe.

Untitled Poem

Amongst the circuits of light,
Lies a windswept serenity.
The cascade of sky on sea,
The clinging salt-tang air,
Centred, heavy and cut with the starkest blue.

Along the haunted promenades,
And over supple sands,
Your voice trails off and outward,
Like a ship's wake.
Scars the sea.

The secluded bays against the cliff,
Where the muddy chalk bears down,
Are where we laid our hopes and fears
An aching love,
A red sun that drowned.

And when I visit, now and then,
The sea will always be,
The witness, silent, brooding still,
Of what you said to me.

The Grumble’s Tale

Once in a dark, dark forest, in the darkest shadows of a black, black mountain, on the shores of the gloomiest, doomiest lake, there lived a grumble.

Now, a grumble is not an animal like an owl or a cat or a frog in the strictest sense. It’s a creature that lives in the little line between where your shadow ends and where the sunlight starts. And grumbles can only live in the blackness or they blur and blow away like dust.

But this grumble was sad. His name was Grumbledum and he was all alone. Sometimes he would walk out of the forest and sit on the shores of the lake and talk to the weepfish, in all their brilliant greys, about how sad he was.

One weepfish, called Wailsford would drift close to the surface and listen, and Grumbledum’s tears would sprinkle down into the oily waters and make soft ripples above Wailsford’s scaly head.

One day he drifted right up to the surface and popped his fishy lips above the water.


“Grumbledum. Every day you come here and you cry in our water. What is wrong with you?”


Grumbledum let out a booming sob.


“No-one understands me. So I sit here on the shores of the gloomiest, doomiest lake and make water come from my eyes.”



“Oh dear” said that the fish. “Why don’t you try to go to the very edge of the forest and look at all the meadows and fields on the other side flooded with sunshine and think that there are still good things to be seen?”


“Because,” said Grumbledum quietly, “I will be jealous of the bunnies, of the birds and of the foxes that can play and chase in the long grass and smell the flowers and feel the sunshine on their furry faces”.


“But if you did that” said the wise weepfish, “If you played in the sunshine, you wouldn’t be a grumble. And that’s what you are. A grumble.”



Grumbledum sniffed. And then he walked back into the forest, slowly and sadly, and sat in the sorrowful sorrowful cave by the tantrum tree.



The weepfish watched him go, and they agreed that without his tears, they would not be there, and the doomy gloomy lake would be dry.

And the doubtgulls chattered on the low branches that without the grumble’s groans and sadness, the dark, dark forest wouldn’t be there and they would surely be homeless.

And the despairfrogs that jumped and ribbited in the rockpools at the foot of the black black mountain all concluded in their slimy way that the mountain would be too hot, bathed in sunlight in the grumble’s absence.


So they made a pact, to thank Grumbledum for everything around them.


The weepfish dredged midnight pearls from the oysters in the deepest cracks in the lake and strung them on a creeping sadvine to make a beautiful necklace.

The doubtgulls flew up and plucked the bitterest bitterberries from their clusters beneath the sharpest leaves and made precious jam for Grumbledum.

And finally the despairfrogs practiced their ribbits in time to make a hymn to Grumbledum’s gifts, a strange and sorrowful melody.


And one day, they gathered at the edge of the lake and waited for Grumbledum to come out of the dark dark forest.

When he came at last, he sat on a cold stone and sure enough, he started to cry once more.

But the weepfish swam close and presented him the beautiful necklace.

And then the doubtgulls swooped down and gave him the bitterberry jam.

And then the despairfrogs started their tune which reverberated into the very corners of the dark dark forest.


And Grumbledum smiled.

And the clouds parted and sunlight beamed down, and swept him away like smoke.

And in time, the lake ran dry, and soft yellow daylight came again to the mountain and the forest thinned out.


All that is left, on a still cool day, if you listen carefully, at the mouth of the odd little cavern by the peculiar tree is the faint sound of sploshing fish and ribbitting frogs and cawing birds.

And beyond it all, if you strain to hear, and crane your neck a little closer to the dark, dark cave, is a rare and precious thing.


Like the smile of an old friend, an unexpected letter, a tiny tickle on your ribs.

Like a present, a ladybird, a rainbow or a sunny day.

It’s the sound of a grumble that turned into a giggle!