Walking on water

You would think a line

should be drawn,

if not in the sand

then somewhere on land;

somewhere other

than across the water,

as something else

than a wave-borne miracle.

Yet that is what we seem to see:

a line made in the sea,

as the upright figure

moves across the bay,

erect, and with nothing to hand

save a paddle,

propelling him forward.

He moves at speed

with only slightest motion.

No hint of nerve,

or even emotion,

in purposeful pursuit

of a line-drawn destination

there on the farther side

of the rocky headland.

You will watch,

and he will reach,

his target: the end of the line.

You stand still, spellbound,

and marvel at this miracle,

or mere mirage,

walking so surely on the water.

Sculpted against the sky

It’s not expected

on the South West Coast Path:

a field, then two, then three

of striking shapes

sculpted against the sky.

Creatures of the Earth

shaped and formed

by another simple creature.

Cast carefully and carelessly

against the grass, the trees,

the sea and sky,

they stand, sit, perch or fly -

it seems at will -

staying still, and strong,

yet always moving.

Moulded to the mind

of their creator, mapping

moments mined

from deepest seams

of memory, these creations

challenge and perplex,

excite and energise,

soothe and comfort.

Bronzed, hewn, carved,

however shaped,

they ask and answer

questions way more complex

than we thought of

as we set further foot

along the South West Coast Path.

The Lost Gardens of Heligan

Lost for years - so many years -

after the First World War.

With sixteen gardeners gone

and absent owners,

Heligan laid down a blanket of neglect,

almost for a lifetime.

Neglect reflecting the decline

from all the features,

fashioned with such care, passion

and excitement from

one generation to the next.

Neglect that veiled

a garden fashioned

only for the years ahead,

and, thoughtless for the moment,

grown towards a dreamed-of grandeur.

That first vision never faded,

but as paths and patterns,

lawns and landscapes,

flowers, shrubs and trees,

meticulously managed,

tortuously turned to bramble,

and a mazing jungle

changed by stealth to tangle,

the gardens grew

into a wilderness.

  

The work of generations

Was now laid to waste,

with decades of dedication

by ‘ordinary men and women’ in decay.

In little time, so little time,

Heligan had gone.

The grandest garden,

could now be wryly named as ‘Heligone’, with the true name - meaning ‘willows’ - weeping.

Yet Heligan had gone

not to the grave,

but into hibernation,

waiting, not weeping, for the warmth

of an unexpected spring

to awake a re-born vision.

The message, etched in limestone:,

“Don’t come here to sleep or slumber”

had been needed; now was heeded.

The spring, and vision,

came by chance,

and Heligan is here again:

‘brought back to life in every sense’.

The flute man

You hear him, huddled, before you see him,

the flute man,

providing interludes

for the sounding quarter hours.

Day in, day out.

Accompanied always

by his faithful sleeping dog,

the flute man is unheeding

of the passing weather

or the passers-by.

He asks for little

as he sweetens the Ludlow air

with his recycled notes.

You wonder who he is,

and how he’s here, year after year.

You have heard it all before,

and thought of giving

some coins, or even paper notes,

for this, sweet-sounding,

pastime.

If that is what it is.

But time passes,

and you think it better

just to enjoy the moment.

And let sleeping dogs lie.

No Further South

It points to this:
we have reached a place,
we’re told,
of pointless direction,
with certainty set in stone,
leaving us alone
to make of it
what we will.

It points to this:
from these still
clifftop heights
the view is infinite,
only horizon-bound.
The earscape captures
repeated waves of sound.

It points to this:
beyond the ground, the grass
the rocks, the stone
below the skies,
the water waits, the water lies,
forever rending,
never ending.

Yet stop.
Here on the mainland,
hard on the Lizard,
do not heed
the word of mouth
saying that you can go
no further south.

It points to this:
the limits that we find
are only limits of the mind.

LOCK

Opposite the lock,
with its companion cottage,

and flowers by the towpath,

reflecting the water’s calm, unhurried flow,

the millwheel turns no longer.

It looks the part, the mill,

complete with channelled leet,

but still no wheel turns.

The function is forlorn.

Yet opposite the mill

the lock has lasted well:

almost two hundred years,

just one of dozens

along this partly man-made waterway

that still remains a watercourse,

God-given.

Passing through the lock

will resonate, not just with history,

but with all the voyages

that we embark on:

yearly, monthly, by the week,

even by the minute.

And largely overlooked.

Yet the gates of every lifelong journey

are opened and then closed.

For a little moment of this passage

we are locked in, locked out.

The outlook changes with each rise and fall.

Through all the ups and downs,

we are forever finding

our own true level.

The strangeness is, we rarely know it;

too often, like the millwheel,

the function seems forlorn:

the passage wasted,

and the flowers left to fade.

It need not be – it is the choice we made.

Oak Farm

Peace.

The very word
is at the centre of the farm.

Close to calming water
and tagged on a metal tree,
created to celebrate the people
caring for, and cared for,
by this forgiving land.
The very word is theirs.

They are a special people.
inhabiting a different world -
at times a terrifying place.
Although apart,
but working with one aim,
worlds can converge, come closer, comfort;
communicate in wonderful
and unfamiliar ways.

They are not strange,
these carers.
Nor are they strangers.
They are singular
and slowly, surely, self-esteeming
as they tend the land
and lend their
special skills to loving
living things.

Here they have a place,
position, purpose, pride:
a pathway to
a rare and treasured
peace.

Here at Oak Farm
you have their word.

LIGHTHOUSE

White. Bright.
A keyhole in the darkening sky.
Pronounced and pronouncing:
Telling through the day and night,
pinpointing presence,
signalling safety.

With radiant light
uncurtaining the dark,
and closing in a flash,
the intervals are measured,
watched and welcome.

This totem, now automaton,
stands still a symbol
of man’s care for man;
cushioning the ships
from shore lines
that would shred
frail craft, shed ships
on rocks or reefs.

The telling time
will only come
when all the lights go out.

HARBOUR

Embracing arms,

a measure of the time and tide,

stand still, stand stoic

against the worst of winds and waves,

cradling charges

in their calmer water

or on their safer sand.

On God-forsaken days

of wind and rain

these greystone structures

collect their craft,

fretting for the unreturned;

foreboding felt from

mortal memories.

Late afternoons

or even evenings

will lighten

when the last one in

comes home.

On gentler, gladder days

of sun and soundless waves

the light, bright walls are warm receptors

for the watchers and the waiters,

observing flying, fishing birds,

and busyness of men in boats,

with others casting lines,

or doing nothing more

than throwing thoughts

out to the blue of sea and sky.

And passing time

until the evening light

nudges the last one home.

Another, different day will come

to change our mood,

and make us harbour other

thoughts and feelings.

Here, at the village heart,

witnessing down the years

every known and felt event,

the ancient walls will stay indifferent.

GOONHILLY

For nearly fifty years
these giant ears
have listened
here on Goonhilly Downs.
Catching heavenly hearsay,
and earthbound conversations.
Downloading distant data
to digest, disperse
into familiar fragments.
Sending signals spacewards
to reflect momentous matters.

Time and technology
take their toll:
The broadcast now is ended,
and the station closed.
The listening posts have moved elsewhere.

In years to come we will look
and wonder, gaze and wander,
amazed at man’s invention,
admiring but not gauging
his achievement and intention.

And so these sixty geometric dishes
become a graveyard of spaced satellites.
Listed, the structures now stand still,
and will tomorrow.
No longer listening.

Here on Goonhilly Downs,
As everywhere, we listen still
but do not hear.
We never have, nor ever will.

Escalator

Heavenward, or descending
the might of the moving staircase is no more.
Out of order, at every level.

My mind takes fright and my heart sinks.
Only my steps move me
in a quest for truth, beauty,
and knowledge: to anchor thoughts,
but let the heart and mind take flight.

Lifted by belief, the rest is easy.
A waiting for ascension.

THE DYING YEARS

These are the dying years.

We all are dying,

as we hide from self-destruction.

These are the crying years.

We all are crying,

weeping for what we might have saved.

These are the lying years.

We all are lying,

failing to face the truth.

These are the trying years,

facing a certain sentence,

trying in every sense.

Yet these could be the vying years:

not one against another,

but trying to come together.

To gather strength,

to gain momentum, action

that might just lead us back to life.

A slightest chance

that these may yet

not be the dying years.

Abney Park Cemetery

Parkland given for recreation, rest
and then, regardless of religion,
final resting.

The park retains its peace.
Though paths have disappeared, the trees remain,
retain their dominance,
sheltering, shunting or shouldering
the dark, deserted and now dishevelled graves.

Falling over each other, these man-monuments,
carve out so many thousand stories
of mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers.
Littered with letters and inscriptions.

Some strut their stuff,
with splendid statements
seeking salvation, status.
Others only seek simplicity,
understated dedications,
fond remembrances.

The undergrowth and overgrowth
hide the buried underground,
suffocate the sculptured words written
for lost or loved ones,
but do not strangle love
which still lies dormant.

This uneven place
today is uneventful.
Bones and bodies rest.
The park returns to nature,
welcomes wildlife,
finds regeneration,
regains the planned for peace.

Birdsong brings a final blessing,
Signalling, softly sounding
a covenant for conservation
which, in the end, is what we will.

CONGREGATION

Theatre.
Keen anticipation
in very near
to every one
of the several hundred.

The ritual is ready,
robed and reverently
irreverent.

Marking an end,
completion,
final examination,
graduation.

Steps to
another world,
endlessly real.

A helping hand
from the Dean,
interleaved with words
of wisdom, wishing luck;
gently, mechanically spoken.
fellow-applauded.

Congregation.
No more than a memory
gathering, garlanding
the moment.

At the final curtain
we are all actors.

Rape

Even in my short span
of fifty years,
where once fields lay
there is today
a harvest of red brick,
brown window, green lawn,
conservatory,
and in springtime
pink flowering cherry.
Sometimes weeping.

And where once the April showers
stained the high-banked lanes
between the leaving trees,
bright buses
now run shadowless.

Beyond these newer boundaries
older ones have gone;
hedgerows neatly prised
away, with only toughest
trees still standing,
waiting for lightning.

It is a broader canvas
and, in April, brighter.
The fields take on a different shape
and colour. It is yellow.
It is rape.

Tredington in July

The couple walked
as though unseen
on barbered green
in Tredington.

The couple talked
as though unheard,
and nothing stirred
in Tredington.

The couple gazed
at small neat
clustered cottages, and flowers
bright but dazed
by summer’s heat.

The couple strolled
as though the hours
had rolled
away in Tredington.

Their hands not held,
yet joined at heart,
the couple looked
as though a part
of Tredington,
for all the world
as though in love.
With Tredington.

And then the couple looked
as if to leave,
as if they knew that what had started
when they stopped in Tredington
could not just be ended,
that the memory must for ever stay suspended
on velvet lawns in Tredington.

And then the couple parted.

The sometime rose

I love the rose
and sometimes I pretend
the rose loves me.

And sometimes I suppose
that I can tend
its slender beauty
until it knows
my love, and bends
in harmony.

But love goes
weak and silent
in uncertainty.
And that must stay,
as love is something roses cannot say.

Fragments

Turning the earth, you find fragments
of fractional size
and no archaeological weight,
but speaking, or seeking, a story.

With stones remaining silent,
animal remains – not known to us
what or whether they recall –
recount tales
in language lost to us.

With the humus then,
humans remain the touchstone,
the trigger for recollection.

In wonder, awe or anger,
and sometimes simply sadness
at the transitory
ticking of time
towards the heavens,
we lay bare
the earthbound remnants
of our forbears.

And on this dig,
unwittingly we expose
and capture a trove,
a mine of magic moments
or scarring seconds,
only given meaning
and fleeting fearsome feeling
by our tiny minds.

Needing no language,
they too will soon be
fragments or ashes,
but either way
earthbound,
and forever turning.

Elgar's Third

It was never meant to be.
Forbidden. And forgotten.
Not to be tinkered with.

Some of us know better,
see fit to follow our first
feared instincts.

Knowing that there is a whole
picture, far fuller
than the fragments
seen or heard.

So with Elgar’s third, written
yet unwritten, now completed
incomplete.

My own unfinished symphony
of thoughts and words
is still a scribble,
intended to make at least
a splendid sound,
yet still not ended.

So many fragments
scored to make a bigger picture,
it lies in wait
hinting at a greater harmony,
and hoping, always hoping,
for completion.

The Snow Line

Here, huddled on the hill,
we are above the snow line.
Separate from the broad green valley
seen below, and silenced
by the soft snowfall.

In this cold world
there are separations worse, far worse,
than white and green;
signs of love unseen,
words of love unspoken
simply sad tokens
of humankind, blind
to the sight
of so much division.

The winter night
muffles, spawning oblivion,
but yearning for warmth.

Dawning, it will come. In months.
By summer, separation
will be merely a memory.
with only green on the hill.

And a snow line still.