Since Valerie and I married, our evenings fly like shooting stars- bright, glorious, and too brief.
A First Quiet Breath of Norfolk
Ever so gently through two miles of mist. I hear but do not heed.
I would be at my work of brush or pen, but my soul is caught in the eye of Dylan’s heron priest.
He stands majestic, in his cathedral of reeds, preaching his still silent sermon of grace and dignity.
His eucharist is bright, mysterious, his cup the flashing river rim.
His cake of barley bright minnow harvest bread while gently and forever sing
The sky-long anthems of angels, in plumage white, black or brown. And I accept this sacrament, Hoping that what I have received with my eyes, I may speak of with my hands.
Tide
I thought to moor in Yarmouth no more than a week
But events kept me there, tied between the bridges.
The Vauxhall –a corpse – rusting steel bones,
The new road bridge a-race all night with lorry and car.
Spring tide at evening, pressed higher by force ten nor’easterly
Over-ran the quay, pressing boats towards the town.
Kept busy with rope and fender, wading deeper than welly tops,
Holding the’Gypsy’off the stone, I met my new neighbour-
The tide- the dusky lady with seaweed in her hair.
The brown, curvaceous, Eve-serpent, Eden woman
Came majestic, crashing, soundlessly smooth,
Trailing trophies of mischief in her wake.
At the rake of her fingernails.
Face long set grim fixed against the wind’s bite,
Screwed up tight enough to crack at the sudden lash
Of the steely strands of her long, wet, long wet hair.
Limbs chilled devoid of nerve were sudden convulsed
At a sigh of her ice-damp breath.
She sang, teasing, knowing her song was foreign to me,
And that I had no words for her.
Into the small hours she threatened and menaced,
Flaunting her beauty, her power, her way.
And long after, when she lay slumbering
In her big brown rolling bed, I looked after her,
Shivering cold, in my exhaustion,
And knew (as she did, in her awful arrogance)
That here was a creation to take all from a man-
Love, homage, labour, life,
And give in return, only mysteries;
To answer question with question.
In the White Slea
But the dog and I sit snug and dry. The work goes slow, with iron-ration daylight,
But the world’s book of days is ours, and this new volume is hardly opened.
There’s time enough to paint pictures, but that patch of bright water will transmute in a second
From living silver back to base lead. I must watch it while it is here.
And the reeds and waters threaded with duck, and the farms nestled down by marsh and mill.
There are such songs of sights that even I, now looking, cannot see them all.
Then the pup stirs from winter-woolied sleep, and needs to go a-shore to bend liver and limb,
So I give up all pretence of work, set down my brush where I will be sure to catch it
With collar or cuff on my return, and scrambling through the ‘Gypsy’s pram hood
With one hand full of stern rope and the other full of Toby, stride large and lung- filled
Onto the grassy sward, and call automatic- ‘Stay you close, mind!’
Then coughing on a cigarette, I look again at God’s bright, new, fresh-painted hour.
Wild Oats in the Reed Beds of the Chet
Three and a half curvaceous, tender miles. It was like a first encounter with a young virgin.
Exhorted by her guardian, that poxy old hag, the ‘Yare’ to go very slowly, I soon realised why
As the shy, plumpcious, sweetcurving river trembled at each whinny of the ‘Gypsy’s stallions,
Straining and rutting under my leather-clad fist, I stroked round each honeycoloured,
Sticky-sweet thigh of her curves, and her tender, watersmooth skin trembled with delight.
I ran the fingers of my eyes through the long bright flaxen reeds of her hair
As they drifted gently across her smooth clear full bosom, and she moaned a wind soughed sigh,
Which softly rang with wide-eyed innocent come hither naughtiness.
With each press of the ‘Gypsy’s sun-warmed flank, she tossed feebly in her rushy bed,
And sighed ‘Not yet, not yet’, but I in my grey mantle of years, had patience and to spare’
And stroked her sunbright body still, until she could spin and writhe and weave no more.
So with one last gentle thrust of the ‘Gypsy’s bow, the young sweet virgin river
And my warm coursing Gypsycraft, lay gently trembling into satisfied, dreamless slumber
In their smoothing, smoother, smoothwater bedding, at Loddon village staithe.
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Acle Market
Two Shetland ponies silently pleading – not even with eyes – more hunch of back –
“Take us home, comb our coats, and we will trot happy round the paddock of your soft, green heart
We’ll content to carry children; we’ll even carry your Sunday-school Mary to Bethlehem
If you can’t find a donkey – Just take us home and comb our coats?”
A shed a-squeal with wall to wall pork. Fringed with knots of grizzled men,
All a-doze, save the gleam of possible purchase shining from flinty eye,
While the mind computes in its cloth cap casing-
“Who’s selling, who’s here, and who’s like to buy?”
A hall a-cram with furniture, carpets, pictures, boxes of books,
And on the tables down the centre are heaped lots of ‘lots’ of miscellany-
Brassware, bibles, empty scent jars, clocks and watches, with and without (fingers, keys, straps)
An Edwardian, electric- er-Therapist, mayhap, gift shop remnants,
And especially and for ever- miscellany.
No hole in corner tu’penny this, the auctioneer’s desk has a microphone- mute as yet-
The sale is still an hour away, thought close enough to bring
Single shadows, comfy couples, or boisterous pram parties to view with an eye to-
Stock for shops, ‘a bigger fridge than the one we’ve got! Or-
‘That cupboard could go in David’s room, then Sheila could have the desk’
‘I’d rather have the radiogram; there’s a tin hat with it, and a box full of busted scissors!’
Out to the yard, where treasures more robust, though equally diverse repose neat in piles,
And the piles in rows – walkroundable. Timber by the cubic furlong,
Any number of large, grey, open-ended-er-battery casings? No; inside every one is a white plastic,
snug-fitting-um-water container?
A family of grey pot gnomes, rabbits and ducks- general garden trivia.
Been there for years. Same ones? Or are regular purchases replaced
By some rustic, well meaning arch enemy of taste?
And again and always, the assorted ‘lots’- a crate of the innards of long dead clocks
With several tins of rusted paint and a lawnmower’s skelington to make up weight.
Through all this works the auctioneer with his two brown-smoked assistants,
One further garnished with grime-polished money satchel to oblige cash purchases- no receipt.
As each ‘lot’ is announced the two brown smocks, lovingly and with pride, hold it up aloft,
Or if not loftable, they simply stand, and with long-practiced eyes’
Like ‘gofers’ in a circus balancing act, bestow respectful, value-adding glances,
While the auctioneer, with skilful pause, plucks promises of money from between the teeth
Of bailer twine belted, and cow shit spattered ventriloquists.
At last we come to the bicycle square! – Well, I-er-might have a little use for one-
If they don’t go too high, mind, but I’m not that bothered- honest.
Not many gents bikes here, today- mostly children’s. That’s the first-
The one with the chain guard in the same original green enamel.
That bike had some class once. Still has a little dignity. Retired colonel’s charger?
Passed down by the gamekeeper who’s just acquired a ‘Nip’ phut-phut?
Big ould bike made fifteen pounds and I never bid.
The next gents bike might go easier. Not so much about it- not so self posessed.
Must be alright ‘cos I saw the bloke arrive on it.
Starts at five, goes up in ones, and sticks at nine.
“Come on; who’ll give me ten? You can try a half?”
Someone bids the half and I bid ten. No more bids- and its mine!
I indifferently pay brown smock one, and wheel away my Acle Treasure. Pleasure Bike.
I forgot to look at the rabbits and pigeons and such. I might go again; on my bike.
Advent
These thin, blue mornings, I look out from my wheelhouse and see Old Man Winter
Inching his way on bony elbows, across the marshes- every day a little closer.
His flinty eyes catch the morning sun, and throw it back in a thousand icy splinters.
His dank breath hangs in the dykes, and about the flanks of the grazing cattle.
His long, thin, rush rattling fingers stretch from up and down river inching day by day
To embrace me in his freezing hug. But I have set my barricades of warmth and light.
Though he sleep the night on the ‘Walrus’ cabin roof, I will not let him in
To chill my bones, and ice-burn my throat. Though I daily strip the strands of his icy hair
From my woodpile, and gouge with axe and knife his steel-mirror fingernails
From out the necks of my water-cans, I will not let him drive me from my home.
I intend to hang on to the little I have, this simple day to day affair of glad sights and soda bread
And evil murderous Winter will not make me give it up. He will be hard to convince, I know
As he hurls himself in a deluge of cold screaming tears at the windows of my nights.
But I shall sit lamp lit, by my fire, leafing through my mind, and taking comfort
From the sudden shooting sparks of thoughts of those who warmed me by the fires of friendship and of love.
In time, I have drained many cups of kisses.
I have joined that glorious feast where flesh is shared but not consumed
I have warmed my hands in the fires of a woman’s hair.
Their passions have left pleasant scorch marks on my soul, and now in this winter beyond years
They have left me with a goodly store of memories layered beneath the skin
To gently feed my senses, and keep my heart alive in this last, long hibernation.
(Postscript; The following Spring, I met Valerie- my Love)
Intrusion
This bright, still, frosted day I walked the marsh to drink in the last of December’s calm
Before January makes the snow and fur fly, beyond Coldharbour’s steaming cattle, and on,
Passed Womack Mill, and there in a grassy sea, my Rime-capped boots brought me
To an old abandoned shearing shed. Picture meat’ if I ever saw it.
So standing off, I quickly sketched the aged lines of board and post,
And after marking the line of the sun, I put away my pad and jumped the dyke
For a closer look at this interesting ruin. I found, on circling, it opened fully to the east
And inside, sheltering from the north-west whisper, a pony and a bullock stood, side by side,
Munching quietly on the long-dried hay which trailed between the nosed smooth bars
Of the frail and failing manger- held up only by habit and shadow, on the back wall.
Both beasts turned their heads to look, calmly, not moving, not eating now.
I reached for my pad again, but stopped. Their eyes called me’ Intruder’-
I had no business there that day. They would wait alone, a day, a week perhaps
Until a bright-starred night would bring the Gentle Travellers to share their stable.
Engraved on Valerie’s Window When She Wasn’t Looking
As flying swans,
All white feathered grace,
Clear bright power flashing,
Silver spirit soarings
Riding winds and sunburst streamings
As flying swans
Are my thoughts of you.