Untold

I saw seven magpies

On a walk

By the ruins of an old fort.

That means luck, I thought.

The fort stares out to sea,

Waiting for invaders who never came.

The birds didn’t stir,

As if they belonged there.

They took off finally, three, then four.

Like omens, I felt.

No five for silver

Or six for gold.

Two should bring joy,

The old rhyme says;

Not sorrow, like one;

But seven’s a secret untold.

Smoke and Mirrors

It’s often like that, don’t you think?
Things don’t turn out as planned,
Unless they’re not:


Those mist-filled moments

Where everything’s clear.

Take your name:
I forgot it the moment you said it,
But still remember.

With dreams,
You don’t need a map.

I’ll meet you here,
At the café
With the faded mirrors,
Wherever you are.

Echoes

The voices aren’t happy today;

The radio’s not tuned

To some antique station;

No one’s whispering rhymes from childhood;

Footsteps shuffling, when they should lie still.

No voices,

So silence must do:

Listening

To sounds unspoken:

The ticking of your brain.




Amnesia helps

Pass the hours, you joke:

The gaps between days.

Soon, the music will start;

Until then, you wait:

Time is a story

Without an ending,

Where strangers rise

From old photographs

To greet you;

And dust reigns

On dance floors,

Where you were once queen.

Old Albert

Not one for idle talk,

Old Albert,

Though silence spoke to him

No doubt.

His wheelbarrow grumbled

With its harvest of apples;

Sparrows heckled

As he passed.

Winds tugged at his cap;

And the sun performed

Cartwheels

Behind his back.

Smoke waivered

In his greenhouse.

His ghost is busy

In the flowerbeds,

Reading weeds their last rites.

It lurks in the orchard

Where we climbed as children;

Waits undiscovered

Like windfalls in grass.

Wrapped in breezes,

He sleeps on,

Ignoring the dark.

Love's Mirror

I have sought eyes that I risked all to find,

Imprisoned in their sight; eyes that I longed to know

Were bright before light cast its antique spell,

Transfiguring love, which first (and last) is blind;

Eyes that held tears from which vast oceans flow,

Stirred secrets only other eyes can tell;

Learning how looks deceive the trust they sow,

Like ghostly mirrors, fated to remind.

Yet your gaze calls me back, dispelling fears

That, out of sight, the heart’s horizon fades:

Absence cannot be loss where we are whole

And moonstruck distance draws our mutual soul.

Recalling these sweet truths, your glance upbraids

This ‘I’ that, lacking you, sheds inky tears.

Et in Dementia Ego

You’re not too old

To fight

At fifty-five,

Lash out at bus stops,

Scream in Sainsbury’s

At the lack of love;

Accost unwilling strangers

With philosophies

That Sartre knew not;

Curse heaven above;

Condemn the play

Or lose the plot.

Be yourself,

Says that wise old elf

You met down the garden path.

If roses prick you,

Kick them back;

When the mower fails,

Tear up the grass.

They can’t ban age

And futile rage.

Ignore those fools.

Dementia rules!

Armageddon

Sirens on song
Proclaim the new coming:
Damnation is waiting for the good and evil.

 
In his limo, Lucifer smiles
On a city’s indiscretions,
And signals his driver on.