Inching towards mortality,
not hurrying to embrace it,
yet the mind increasingly dwells
on the shutters going up
and the shadows gathering.
Hours, days, pregnant with potential
when one was young
– opportunties seized or not seized
because time was not of the essence
– now no longer stretch
infinitesimally
but bunch up like train carriages shunted
into each other by the engine of urgency
whistling, its wheels screeching,
‘Time waits for no one!’
we, mundane thinkers, mundane dwellers,
immobile on our material world,
our matrix, our Mother,
may sometimes look up at Earth’s silvery sister
sailing slowly, slipping silently
through inky black velvet
sprinkled with stellar dust
and, moonstruck, moondrunk, wonder at a world where nothing lives, nothing breathes, yet still imagine walking, wading through moondust, climbing mountains
The dark street’s deserted,
leaving the Narnian lamppost
and the flickering fairylights
reflecting off surfaces
with few to feel their magic.
And why? Most must be
with family, faces reflecting
home-made magic.
Merry Christmas| Nadolig Llawen | God Jul | Joyeux Noël | Fröhliche Weihnachten | Buon Natale
You may spring-clean;
but autumn’s low slanting sun
now shows the streaks of summer’s rains,
the moss which joins the webs in crevices
and corners, and the leaf litter accumulating
on the patio outside.
You may spring-clean;
but autumn claims our attention now.
On this, the seventh day of Christmas, my true love has given me
seven swans, six geese,
five goldfinches, four blackbirds,
three hens, two doves
and a blinking partridge.
That’s twenty-eight birds just on this day,
not forgetting the previous six days.
Doesn’t he know the mess all these birds
in one pear tree make over just one week?
And all the feeding they require?
And then there’s the hissing, the honking,
the twittering, the whistling,
the cackling, the cooing
and the rasping, day in, day out.
I can’t bear it!
And there are five more days to go!
Make it stop!
Twelve Days of Christmas
Fancy, foreign and French:
trois poules,
deux touterelles,
et la perdrix, ideal
for a Christmas meal.
Now what other birds do I
need baked in that pie?
3/ Twelve Days of Christmas
Philosophising woodpigeon
poses existential questions
each and every morning, without … fail:
Who do-you think you-are?
Who do-you think you-are?
Who do-you think you-are? Who?
My very sense of selfhood’s
undercut repeatedly,
I really doubt I ever … knew.
Before I make my own quietus
feathered Plato shifts next door,
interrogates our neighbours … who
will too, in their turn, have
identities belittled by
his nauseating bill and … coo:
Who do-you think you-are?
Who do-you think you-are?
Who do-you think you-are? Who?
I can’t bathe in your seas,
No cow jumps over you;
No Man here takes his ease,
You’re still old when called ‘new’.
But I’ll still bow to you
When they say you are new,
Silver coins I’ll thrice turn
In my pockets, to learn
If more money I’ll earn
And more riches discern.
Then thanks for good fortune
I shall give to the Moon!
Written for a Twitter readalong of Philippa Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden
O moon, it’s time
I wrote a rhyme
to you, Selene,
pale-faced genie.
But rhymes for Moon,
like June and spoon,
make me go slack-kneed,
they’re so hackneyed,
so I’ll just praise you
for each phase you
go through, Tide-queen,
Earth’s mate. Thus my paean.
Written for a Twitter readalong of Philippa Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden
Twelfth Night has come when some say ill-luck
will come to some souls and go running amok
if their baubles and candles still hang, and bright tinsel
and such dingle-dangles which they’re saying long since will
have lost their immediacy, attracting the spite,
malevolence and such-like of brownie and sprite.
So take down the décor, the fairy, the lights
which shine there from Advent to Christmas; Twelfth Night’s
the end of the season — or so it is said.
But what says one Herrick,* a poet long dead?
DOWN with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and misletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all,
Wherewith ye dress’d the Christmas Hall:
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch there left behind :
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected, there (maids, trust to me)
So many goblins you shall see.
Then let us follow Herrick, who knew what must be known,
and keep our Yuletide greenery up till darkness has all flown.
* Robert Herrick (1591-1674): Ceremony upon Candlemas Eve.
or, Tony and Lofty
Tony the Ant 🐜
he just wanted to rant,
so he climbed up the plant 🌿
to talk to an elephant 🐘
whose first name was Lofty,
and ever and oft he
was seen as a softy
till one day he coughed. He
said, “Don’t underest-
imate me, ’cause it’s best
you don’t.” Then he confessed
“I’m not wearing a vest.
This skin is my own,
I don’t want to moan
but it’s not mine to loan.”
Then he hung up the phone.
Poor Tony the Ant 🐜
then climbed down the plant. 🌿
He sighed, “You just can’t
ever rant to an elephant.”
Armed with the fabled fine-toothed comb, thinking verse should work well as a prose poem, I offer this crit as a well-meaning skit if it’s sure to convince all and hit home: write all serious verse out in long form if you want to weather the shit storm which goad online trolls; make them score only own-goals by asserting that stanza’s the norm.
Zenrinji 