Category: Poetry

Past is past;
We can never know time.

Time is only memory,
A previous life stretched,
Calibrated in artifice,
Checked by rusting chains.
Dylan, who measured time —
Time that let him play and be —
In lamb-white days,
Knew too well that time’s constraints
Would hold him green and dying.
We created our mythology of time
To index our simple lives, but  
Time is life past and life to come
And our petty measures
Can only frame our misered view
As we, heedless, dance ever forward
Beneath the blue-framed sun
And a myriad stars in a naked sky
Which retain a myriad alien times.  

Future is future.
A time like any other.

“This head is more than churches or bibles or creeds” (Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass)
Hinduism: Ātman – The soul or the true or eternal self, or the self-existent essence within each individual.

My soul exists — it simply, is.
So also my mind.
The one perhaps deeper
Buried than the other.
We may say, I know my mind,
My mind is made up
As, consciously, we process the day,
Accepting or denying the stimuli
That the world and its people offer.
But my soul is the me
I have come to know
In the years of my life.
I can sit in silence and let my soul be
While my mind worries the day.
I know that my soul is the sum
Of the me I know:
The product of my upbringing,
Of all my people and surroundings;
It is the me that I know;
That they know;
The spirit at the core of me;
The consciousness that I write:
I am the poet of my soul.

Sunk in the Great Storm of 1703 on the Goodwin Sands

What decision earned them then their terrible fate,
Near all who manned her on that fearful date
            Officers, brave men and knaves
All helpless before the mighty wind and roiling waves?

Here were the mighty ships of the greatest British fleet
Fresh from a campaign in sunny Mediterranean heat
            Ill prepared for the Channel’s icy winter gales
Soaked by seas and frozen by winds that shredded sails

The crew on deck saw the land and houses of Lower Deal
Their thoughts turned to women, ale, and a decent meal
            But all came second to the watch’s worth
As Captain Johnson sought to find his ship a berth

In a crowded anchorage, it took all his skill to guide
His ship, under reduced sail and against the rising tide,
           Between so many mighty naval vessels;
While, to reduce her canvas, the whole crew wrestles

They let go their best bower from the starboard bow
Ten fathoms of heavy hemp streamed from the prow
            Then another twenty fathoms more
To keep the anchor holding on that sandy sea floor

Heavy canvas sails were lashed to the spars tight
Anchor watch set, the men stood down for the night
            With salt beef, hard tack and stale beer …
And the anchor held whilst the gale winds blew clear

Stormy days followed but then a late November day
Saw a winter sun shine weakly as the waves lost their sway
            Longshoremen and their beach boats were all around
And Admiral Sir Cloudsley Shovell was Medway bound!

His three-deckers up-anchored for a short sail worth
The safety and shore leave of a Chatham winter berth
            The Stirling Castle watched them leave the sound:
They were for Portsmouth when the wind went round.

A short lull but in two days the south-westerly gales grew
Top-masts and lower yards were taken down by the crew –
            To offer less purchase for the gale –
Lashed securely to the decks, but needed later when they sail

Late November: the new moon meant tides at high-water
Reached their strongest, with winds shrieking no quarter
            Ships in the Downs dropped a second anchor fast,
As rigging and spars bowed before a wind that cracked a mast

Blocks and rigging fell among the men, spume crashed, flaying
The for’d watch as the anchor dragged, every man praying
            At pumps to empty bilges, or in the maelstrom’s face
Watching for vessels dragging anchor, bearing down on their space

Hours passed, the wind blew stronger, the ebb tide began to flow
Against the wind: waves grew rougher, the anchor dragged slow,
            Held, and dragged some more. Half turning to the tide
The ship rolled and mountainous waves took men over the side.

They knew she could not survive much longer. Men fell to prayer
Brave men, soaked, shivering, beaten by a mighty storm so rare.
            At low tide they felt the keel judder on the Sands:
The Stirling Castle, broken on Bunt Head, sunk with her hands.

            It was the early hours of the 27th November 1703
            Of the four hundred men who set sail on the Stirling Castle
                        Only sixty-two survived the storm;
            Over one thousand naval sailors were lost that night
            But seventy ships rode out the storm.

After G M Hopkins: The Loss of  the Eurydice

Conceit of man,
That need for a reason!

Unknown selfness, essence:
Existent only in heart and mind —

Would you remain soul-shaped
Homed in a cloud, a raindrop,

In a microbe, a tree?
Would I — I, the cloud, the tree — be

The same me? Have the same
Thoughts, doubts, beliefs and loves?

(Oh, sexy cirrocumulus!
My slender pale -skinned birch!)

Will I wonder what happens after,
Seek something greater above the sky?

Will I form some story of creation,
Some reason to grow straight and true, fluffy and white?

Will I know I am a tree, a cloud?

A spot of yellow,
of buttercup yellow, shone
amongst the grazing grass
and, cunning low beneath the sward,
the ever mist-moist moss:
yellow, risen to bring sunlight
at end of dreary day

This is the pewter hour,
dull dusk’s light loss
drains energy from the fields,
quiets the lambs to lie sheep-shielded,
yet lets night’s beetle see,
above the grounded grass,
an outlived sun remembered

Following on from the short February 4th ‘Miracles’ poem with it’s ‘time’ theme, another poem that recognises the variability of time!

Tick, tock, distant star
How I wonder when you are
Just a timepiece in the sky
Your every ‘now’ another lie!

A Haiku

Golden sunsets streak
Cloudy skies over the sea
A lost horizon

Mid month
as a good a time as any other
to write of howling winds that smother

Every hint
of comfort and the daily norms
to replace them all with Darragh’s storms

Which break
the trees which crash and fall upon
wires, and thus: the village power has gone

And then
in every room in every country cottage
is darkness from the lack of wattage

No heating
warms, no ovens cook, no hobs to boil
and freezers let their contents spoil

Crouched around
wood burning stoves we try to read
by candlelight, wondering how to feed

On anything
that isn’t cake, or bread and cheese
or how to boil water for our teas

The luxury
of an old potato baked in the embers
(a boy scout’s trick my mind remembers)

Barely makes
a meal but is a change from more cold food:
stale bread, cheese with pickle slowly chewed

Deadlines pass
with no heat or glimmer of a friendly light
and then no power to warm my bed at night

Till suddenly,
hours before the last deadline, a sudden shock –
lights and heating are back in stock

In the abyss
between language and meaning
the crease of intent
is shelved with
volumes bound in leather
each embossed
in gold

And when you
have selected,
dust, no… polish each
with the softest
white vapour;
care for the interstices
that lie between its words;
consider the colours
and shades of nuance;
search out the drifts
and shivers of significance—

do not embrace,
do not grasps greedily
but use them tenderly
feeling for the perfect edge
which, with great love of locution,
I honed. Only

then will you know my sense
and each allusion sense and sense
allusion