Fishtown

They’ve switched Santa off for the night,

leaving a muffled shape

among the harbour lights.

The pubs are mute:

press gangs no longer roam

through alleys bent

down to the water’s edge,

to hunt their own reflections.

King William’s statue reigns

where history was built

among the gulls and chip-papers;

A sailing trawler waits

for time’s return

beside its hi-tech cousins.

And sleeping townsfolk trust

morning will come

with long bright fingers

to undo the dark,

revealing a different ending.

Camden Night

The moon has lost its way,
Meandering home,
Like the drunkard it is.

Pale outlaws wait
By Camden tube.
At bay in restless pubs,
Prophets ignore the hour.

On Camden Road, you can hear
Old men in bedsits
Berating the night.

The canal, which their ancestors dug,
Glints oddly, as if it understood:
Despair is the city’s fate,

Its heart of clay,
Beating back generations.

Bath Abbey

August 2011

That person tapping at his mobile phone,
The woman chatting in the pew,
Will they still be here
At evensong?

Hurrying from tomb to tomb
The young with backpacks - getting in the way
Of that old codger with his telephoto lens,
Stalking stained glass –
Are they all part of one great story?

An effigy arrests the eye:
Five hundred years of still
Devotion wait
Among the hordes
For silence and the darkened hour,

While human voices rise
Past columns
To fine traceries of stone
That bear the weight of time
For now, if not hereafter.

A candle flame reveals
The lighter's face.
Unlike the tourists milling round,
Souls sheltering from life or rain,
Our prayers remain invisible.

Berry Head

The rabbits clock off at six

before the first footfall

shakes

this slumbering fort,

besieged by gorse.

Devonian crags reveal

the scars of vanished time;

and clouds chase guillemots

across a ragged bay.

Waves frisk the rocks

in search of calm:

four hundred million years on,

it’s raining. 

Night and Day

Dark fills the pews,

The graveyard’s quiet too;

Down at the ‘Horseshoes’, fiddles stampede

To the sound of the annual cheildh.

There’s a gold harvest moon,

The pints are in tune;

And all’s fine in God’s country.

The hills of West Dorset

Stretch down to the sea

Past sheep and caravans,

And fields which keep watch

On who we once were and how we should be;

While here on the beach,

Clouds crane for a view,

And the waves look

Almost innocent

Today.