Bloke

When football’s done, he folds away

Until next season.

 Sometimes, you see him in the garden

Not doing much:

Scraping the rust off the barbecue

Or swapping round pots;

There’s the drill that starts up some nights,

As if he’s forgotten

That life is perfect.

Apart from that, it’s just

The odd word in the street

Or chin-wag at Sainsbury’s.

Let’s face it,

If it’s not about Rovers, it lacks an edge.

There’s not much else, is there, really?

Albion Nights

There’s nothing so lost

As a small town at dusk,

When those who can have gone,

Leaving streets to their fate.

Kids, skateboarding by the mall,

Perfect a geometry

That says little of school.

For them, tomorrow is a long way off.

In pubs, locals hoard

The day like change,

Tending a world where

The one thing you trust

Is your average pint.

A St George’s flag

Flies from the Norman keep,

As sunset brings ruins

To life.

Night stretches

To pull down the blinds,

For tourists with time to spare

Despite every plan,

While darkness succumbs

To dreams of Full English.

Pond Life

Someone sent me a box of frogs

The other day.

Point taken.

What do I do with them now?

Untold Story

For Stuart

A friend reminded me

Of a woman long ago

In Brighton days

We called the ‘saucepan lady’.

Unkempt in Kemp Town,

We’d watch her hurry by,

Pan tied on her head

With coloured scarf,

Defying our student theories.

If someone asked,

We’d smile and say her name,

As if we knew her.

When they found her dead,

Some said the pan was stuffed with cash,

Though personally, I wonder.

What we can’t take with us,

We leave behind

For others to ponder.

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.

Brotherly Love

Gestingthorpe 2011

I won’t call you eccentric,

Though we are related.

Your house is full of shards

Gathered from feudal fields

Whose names you know:

Cracked pots and cauldrons; rusting scythes

That would have done a revolution proud.

You sit by the window,

Discussing love, divorce,

Beethoven’s debt to Haydn,

And the fusing of plain and mannered style

In Shakespeare’s verse,

As acres turn dark.

I ask what you mean

By filling your garden with rocks,

Glacial erratics:

Remnants of conflicts

That progress ignores.

Feng Shui, you say,

Hand sweeping the night,

As though that were obvious.

Outside, in the moonlight,

A shriek owl responds;

And the long walk home

Appears less travelled

Than before.

Geek Chorus

Sex is “the opera of the masses,”

They say:

“The poor man’s café.”

Though I love a good breakfast,

I’m an opera nut,

Following the music,

If not the plot.

Each act is an awakening,

A form of rebirth:

Moving the scenery,

If not the earth.

For true fans, opera is everything,

And you know it’s not over

Till the lady sings.