Where naught was left

Where naught was left I stayed and sat

And remembered enough for two

Without past there is no present

And the future splits in two

You were there, yet naught was left

And but for the sounds and sighs

I might have been alone in that room

With no cause to bow and cry

Dimly lit

Only let me dip

Always, always

My cheek to your shoulder

My head to your neck

The night comes early and

The cupboards are barren

A blank clockface

No longer moving

Only stay, stay

Where the smells of yesterday

Linger longest

*

2020

Side by side apart

Love is always

The light piercing the rain

The heart’s worn-out refrain

My pillow

At the end of the day

Somewhere past Cornwall

“Send her to the whippershpon”

Said the cat beneath the peas

Batting white and purple blossoms

Jupiter passing on the breeze

“We don’t need her kind here –

Yarn-cutters and bird-lovers tall –

If Gravity were not fallible

She would not have birthed them all”

Held between the bulldogs

An abundance of meows

Were all that fell from my lips

And I was led off by the snout

The Wind at Cedars

Between moon and sun we sway

Seen from above, a coursing mist

Sand over sand, white over dark

A breath at the end of the day

With Althea

You were my song in summers past

Where the bracken thinned to white

Of Queen Anne’s lace over gorges fast

Against age and speech alike

–

The rocks fell into canyons whose

Every fingertip were knew to climb

Up to the nests of red hawks loosed

To heaven’s twilit design

–

Our paths were ever lighted by

Your head of strawberry gold

That brought us home through nights and winters

Through forests thick, and rivers cold

–

We have lost those vistas sweeping

Where sand and sun danced intricacies

Strange and fanciful as daydreams

Stranger still in memory

–

And your hair fades to darker now

More of the earth than gold

Yet at times we do remember

And still the stories hold

We knew our way

The sun remembers you

Slopes that were tufted, swaying

To the tune of one farmhouse,

One farmhouse or two

With sway-backed beam barns

–

This road was unborn then

And trees wandered to tracks

Bereft of trains

Where that one other road

Gravel, held houses in bends

Of dust and autumn leaves

–

The snow under our feet

Is no longer

And our laughter in the wilderness

From school to stove-side

Has been painted over

By roofs and asphalt unending

0700

The mat –

It need always be rolled

A different which way

To lie clean

You could tell how we are alike

If only

You would not guess

Ours

I think of the things

That get worn down helping us

Being what we need them to be

I keep the spoon

Although it is broken

And refuse any house that cannot house

The table, with its dented claws

The End Waiting (Lathe’s Vigil)

Up on the bare heights

I hold a decaying light

And live off Parnassus’ airs

Each night before dawn

Each hope before haunt

From the moss to the bedrock below