Biggles in Stoke Park - February 2011

wide green spaces suit
a brown and white spaniel on
a grey winter's day

Limerick Haiku - 17.10.2010

flecked gold reflected
on the Shannon – mellow guests
drifting on a tide of wine

Easter morning at St Martha's

Thirty humans greet the sun
by a church, on a hill.
'Thine be the glory', they sing,
as squadrons of birds shout
their raucous dawn challenges
from commanding positions on high.
Mist shrouds layers of hills
in this North Downs bowl,
sea-green in the mid distance,
breeze-block grey at the edge
of our sight; O what a morning
to be alive, to be greeting the son...

But if the mist lifted
from our souls' perception,
would terror of the blazing god
blind our hearts and crack our minds,
or would a joy too rich to speak
raise us far beyond this English hill?

After WH Auden: Watergate Bay, April 18, 2011

Garish kites invade the sky,
parachute and dragonfly.
Bright-striped plastic windbreaks sprout,
ripple with each sea-breeze, flout
Nature's muted seascape tones.

Near a beach-stream strewn with stones
four girls stand and plan, while one
smaller brother digs for fun.
Thus the children colonise
one small patch of sand that lies
unclaimed in the beach's vast
runway long expanse. At last
feeder trench and pool are done.

Spindrift flashes in the sun
where the surfboards peak and drop.
Seagulls chase their shadows, stop,
perch on flinty cliffs, await
crab from pool, or roll from plate.

Now a ragged dog strolls by
tired beneath the drowsy sky.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Notre Dame de Lorette

A factory farm of crosses in a field,
Row after row after row, presided over
By twin sentinels, a white stone basilica,
And a 50 metre lighthouse tower. Nearby
In a whitewashed shed, a little worse for wear,
25 quaint boxes, dioramas, with
25 quaint goggle eyepieces, what the battler saw.

He saw massacred fields, all grass gone,
A mash of mud and stones and stumps.
He saw single bodies, one posed peacefully,
On his back, dead eyes seeming to gaze upwards.
Others twisted unnaturally, legs bending wrong
At the knee. He saw open air dormitories
Of the dead, side by side in rows.

He saw the living playing whist, sheltered
By six foot of earth, waiting on the turn
Of a card. He saw unshakable comrades
Hauling their friends through mud, not caring
For shells or snipers' bullets.
He saw hell, the end of things. 

French National war memorial,
Notre Dame de Lorette, near Arras