Rough Passage
Rough Passage is a collection of mainly recent poems full of atmosphere and intensity. The voice is unique and evocative whether in an impressionist, descriptive or symbolic mode. Meaning, movement and rhythm are often created through powerful phrases and images. At times the touch can be light and sensitive at others dark and compelling. Often the boundaries between what is on the inside and what is on the outside blur at the interface of reason, imagination and dreams. In these poems the lid is lifted on Pandora’s jar. The struggle is to find hope.
Harold's Gone
On a nearby hillside
four horses were silhouetted against the evening sky.
A few drops of rain fell like the drips of conscience from a previous time.
But now there are no sacred values and nothing to look back on.
On a fascia gargoyle of the village church
a crow perched,
his beak clogged with black coal dust.
With almost human askance the bird registered the distaste
and indigestibility of the gluepy carbon sediment.
and jerked instinctively, convulsively for fear of choking.
It was the twighlight of Remembrance Day.
A small gathering drifted from the churchyard
to the gothic wrought iron gate.
Of A Night Like This
The street lamp bares its nippled light
On the silhouetted couple at the bus stop.
Damp the cold sweat glazed tarmac
And the grass moist with the livered
Bile of remnant autumn.
Brown leaves slug-like in their decay
Nestle in a swathe of moonlight
Cold blue in its affection.
Sighs and Whispers
The house holds its secrets.
Search long and hard and you will
Find little prows of silver,
Magnetic monuments
Of unspoken memories,
The delicate dance of dust
To the song of ancient hearts,
Unfolded and wrapped around the tongues
Of men and women in spoken moments
Of meant to be truth.