on reflection poems

On Trains


Across the wide spring sun lit land
Your white reflected face floats
Mutable over the pastoral idyll
On its way here or there
Travelling

Pale as the sky you merge
Emerge in tunnels
Sudden against shadowed walls
Behind you men who are not reflecting
Turn their papers

Many journeys and the same journey
Many landscapes and the same green field
Many papers and the same old story
And smoke dispersing in the
Evening sun

Rapunzel


I’m up here looking down
You’re down there looking up
And between us is a half occluded glass
And an overflowing cup

I’m inside here looking out
You’re outside there looking in
And between us much that is unspoken
And the glass balanced , fragile , thin

I’m entrapped here wanting to leave
You’re at liberty there walking away
Not calling “ Rapunzel , let down your hair ”
Or doing your princely best to save the day


Travellers

In a way
We only started travelling
Once we had learned to stay
Completely still

So that we could hear
Our breath rising and falling
The breeze coming and going
The wagon wheels turning against the bumpy road

Like the man sleeping
Who finds himself
On a long journey
Back to a house he knows yet does not know

Does not fully recognize
Where other rooms are suddenly apparent
Their dust covers thrown off
Their colours blinking in the dazzling light of day

These are the places we come to
When we think we have left home
We find them in the afternoon
After the mourning is done


Laundry Dream

Last night I opened the green door
And you were still there
Labouring over the laundry
In our tiny kitchen
Dragging sodden shirts
From sink to spinner
The windows running puddles
Onto the narrow ledge

That room
was only large enough for one
But still I squeezed in
Between you and the door
Between your frown and the four walls

And now behind another door
You’re locked away
Still steaming on without me
Doing goldfish circuits
Inside your own head
Inside your mad bubble
You have swum away from me
Over the perilous edge



Death at New Year 2007


Last night a tree fell silently
As the new year came in
Beside our house
Taking other trees with it
On a last fling
It landed bridging
The narrow lane
Suspended
Waiting to fall further
Still travelling
And nowhere to go
But down
Before the winds came
We did not know
Its roots were shallow
Could pop their socket
Like a dodgy tooth
Earth cratered like
An empty gum


On Trapped Birds

Still probing bloodless stones
For answers
Still entering
Empty churches
Still selecting silence
Reading blank walls
And after visiting
Carefully closing doors
to prevent birds
From being trapped inside

In my dreams
They blunder against granite
Fly into glass
Retrace
The long ribbed vault
Past magnificent windows
Which do not open

Still searching for the tablets
In the churchyard
Turning
To the wrong god
For an answer
Whilst in some dark corner
Wings undone
A last breath rattles
From their tiny chest
And the battery runs out


New house with fallen angel


Upstairs in the white room
You can no longer reach
I rest , paintbrush in hand
A time to survey the ground
A time to look forward
The garden winds its own sweet way
Around unseen corners
Into the middle ground
Under the fallen herbs
I leave your ground undug
Bulbs are waiting for the light
Waiting in the dark soil for the suns heat
They will fly upwards
Spring back skywards
As you no longer can
On soft white walls
The eye of god opens
The room floats away
Glowing like a puritan heaven
To where you are reflecting
In another room
Remembering another time
Face down in the promised land
Your wings stretched for flight



Owl House

I have planted many gardens
Put down roots and walked away
Left trees to grow untended
Left fruit to be picked by others
I have upped my sticks too often

I have known too many houses
Hoped to find beneath their paint
Beneath their layers of peeling paper
A phrase I recognized
A line to call my own

But in the end the lines called me
And brought me here to nest
Amongst the eves
Mad rooves rising like Gormenghast
Owls calling in familiar old voices


Owl

Beneath the blinding snow
Owl scents blood
White wings fringed for stealth
Silently glides in
For the kill
No tunnel will save you now
he is on your case
He is in your country
In your comfort zone
He who flies straight to the brain
Flies as the crow flies
Along the ancient lines
he will read your thoughts
With his glasses on
He will call on you
Beneath the ice cold covers
Under the deadening blanket
For all your silence
He hears your heart shivering
He hears what you do not cry out
he will make a meal of you