FIRST STANZA
A Taste of Summer
I remember that long summer of doves
out of a gymslip lisle blue stockings
home weatherless for the holidays
to a sky filled also blue with nothingness
and a sun august heaving in a ripple heat
so when he came seemingly from never
on the way to somewhere so he said
we walked that day and talked
along the sands over the sea-sound surf
of what might be talked about
up to Oxford next year Balliol he said and you?
perhaps I said the year after
talked of where and when and so he stayed
and on this other day we touched just lips
my first and lovely and forever after
and so he stayed and later on we walked
in amongst the soft warm round of dunes
touching and feeling the fine sand
running through the fingers of salt grasses
my first and ever after memory
and/or of the likely that he would not leave
for the pearl of bliss lay scheming in the quick of us
we walked and talked along the Folly Clough
the seed-shaped river steeped between high bluffs
where over the gabble of the water falling
we romped the shingled shore in halfling joy
witting soft beneath the rise of statue rock
about sweet everythings touching and touching
more until we more than touched
where the river’s eddies ran through pothole-deeps
to the sanctuary of the sea
and for that far somewhere once he came
he left and the dovey’d summer rained
and in a puzzle of tears the blue skies fell
leaving my first and ever everything
to memory after
©SJW. 28 November 2008. 4:07 p.m.
Baseball
Iter
As of some long forgotten youthful quest
I stood summered in this afternoon of fields
along this streetly path from once Caerleon
most overgrown and far from any byway now
dreamy in some quiet and country hide
to nowhere’s remnant of a empire derelict
where once I maybe from some Celtic llan
journeyed on this fare to Ariconium
with a burden of remembered words
fancy fable rhyme lore stories of songs
©SJW. 01 January 2008. 12:00 a.m.
Old Man’s Dream of a Young Man’s Fancy
Thoughts While Staring at a Farm Field
At the end of a straggle
of wintered trees,
that new leaves
will have to make do,
is a meadow
where once the end
of a rainbow fell
its treasure long gone
taken by moles.
The sky is saddened
for the rainbow
has taken all its blue;
often it sheds tears
which the stream
accepts gladly for it never
has too much water.
The stream is irritated
continuously by minnows
that can never keep still
and scratches itself
on the rocks it flows over.
They don’t mind
for what else would they do;
all rocks are bored.
The field is lost
since it has been
put out to pasture
and nurtures any seed
that is blown its way.
Some are wildflowers
which it gives to children
to make garlands.
©SJW. 1 May 2013. 2:00 p.m.
Ascent Of Man
Co-ordinates
picture a line
to represent perception
that intercepts the beam
of memory’s projection
and at that point
but in the third dimension
imagination’s line
of intervention
making an asterisk
a twinkling star
that marks precisely
where you are
©SJW. 01 January 2008. 12:00 a.m.
I Did It My Way
Blue Night Leaving
Five is the hour
for the want of silence;
where the baritone bullfrog,
at the hint of light,
lows, no… no… no.
and over the wood, in scissor’d song,
a hundred birds in a frenzy guess
at the prodigal sun’s return
and the indeterminate sounds
of the preyed and the preying
have left in the play of night
and undisturbed,
in customary themes,
the poet dreams,
wasting another dawn
for the want of words.
©SJW. 01 January 2008. 12:00 a.m.
Candle Light
Out of the Sameness of Evenings
In a city, somewhere,
a street lamp and a bench
—wrought iron;
that much, I remember
from the way the leaves
dwindled into darkness;
her hat, a cloche, I think,
rimmed in contre-jour,
left her face in shadow.
All this relived in sepia
somber of autumn
from similarity.
We spoke . . .
of what, I cannot say
—trivia
the weather perhaps.
We did not touch.
She did not sing to me.
Yet I was left a captive,
my thoughts in chains,
wishing the days away.
©SJW. 17 July 2002. 11:22 a.m.
