THAT SPECIAL KISS

Turning with the precipitant alarm
Into each other, we sleepily kiss
Before you rise in the pointillist dawn
As the light crystallizes in the air.
Now you stretch nakedly and statuesque,
Dab the babbling clock still, ‘til soon I hear
The jolting of the pipes from the shower,
Your splashing and the cistern’s gentle hiss.

Now you pad downstairs and breakfast briefly,
Spoon clinks dish as you lean by the heater;
Junoesque, you drip-dry, wrapped in your towel,
Which is oh, so carelessly cast aside
As you rematerialize back upstairs
And sit on the bed before the mirror.
Only now, yawning, do you light the lamp
As we murmur our dreams to each other.

Then the rapid massaging all over
Of moisturizer, deft application
Of hairbrush, make-up and touch of perfume
Chosen to chime with the day’s smart ensemble.
At once, you gracefully launch yourself
Into tiny knickers and matching bra
And toss on a tissue blouse bravura,
Arms entering sleeves simultaneously.

Yes - how that last always strangely thrills me!
Next comes today’s smart suit and heels and then,
With a shimmy and a glance in the glass,
You’re finished - and in under half an hour.
You’re no less than alchemized before me
And I’m just hypnotized here before you:
Adoring you, my love - and loving this -
That lingeringly special goodbye kiss.


(2009)


It’s Lisa’s birthday today so this is for her. The picture is one of my favourites and seems to encapsulate the essential Lisa.

A domestic scene which I appreciate more these days, enjoying, as I do, the luxury of weekday lay-ins. Lisa is one of those people who spring out of bed at 6.15 am Monday to Friday without so much as a syllable of complaint. A team of wild horses is needed at the weekend, mind you…

WHERE THE BEE

June in this garden,
Where rose petals confetti a patchy lawn;
The evening breeze susurrates in branches
After the sun has sunk beyond rooftops.

I become aware of another, fainter sound
And find, flailing against the glass,
A huge bee, its gold faded, in our conservatory.

Despite open doors and windows,
It seems to be trapped;
Buzzing feebly, it flies time and again
Into the same pane.

I think he must be old
And losing his way through life;
The blooms of yesterday have dimmed
And now he battens blindly
On to the dried flowers in a vase on the sill
Where he seems to suck and then become still.

Moved by some vague fellow-feeling,
I gently and gingerly take up the bee
And release him into the trees
Where he falls and crawls
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

The breeze turns cold and plaintive,
And I turn back now
Into the house where we live.


(2000)


I don’t know why but, for some reason, bees seem to lose their navigation-system when they fly into our conservatory. Every summer, it happens so often that Lise bought a little fishing net on a stick, the sort kids have, and we use it to rescue and release the bees back out into the garden.

The title comes from ‘The Tempest’ by Shakespeare. It’s Ariel’s song of freedom:-

‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
In a cowslip’s bell I lie:
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.’

MYTH AND LEGEND

Reflecting
On Camelot and Coleridge,
Kierkegaard and the Bible,
Abstraction coalesces
Into images of water,
As I stare into the sea
From a cliff-top in Anglesey.

I’m reminded of the story
Of a ghostly young man
Walking on the rheumy water
In an old sailor’s eyes.
Then, from a misty lake,
Another man in another story
Sees a silver sword rise;
But, sidewinding
Through rotting water,
A scaled and sinuous snake
Is all this mariner can see.

And this hand
Will not wither, Moses;
It only remains firm,
Gripping a rod
That refuses to squirm.
Your stick will not strike
Water from this rock,
Let alone cleave a path
Through any sea
For me.

Time
Rolls out on the tide
And the wind turns
Leaf after leaf.
I gazed out
To horizon’s sunset
And tried to believe
What I had read.

But why look for the dead
Among the living?
I see no young men
In dazzling robes.
I’m frozen
Out here on this ledge,
Clutching maybe faith
Or merely
Some kind of question;
Fearfully trembling now
Over grey waters
Seventy thousand fathoms deep
And not knowing
How I could ever leap.


(1979)


Studying literature and religion for a degree in my mid and late twenties meant my head was often up in the sky whilst my feet were adjusting to marriage and fatherhood down on the ground. I’m not sure that I ever experienced a crisis of faith as such -because there always were more questions than answers for me. I have, however, had several epiphanies – usually when gazing out to sea – and this kaleidoscopic poem began its gestation during a solitary couple of hours during a 1974 holiday in Wales.
It was a hot day and I was lying on a grassy cliff-top looking down at the bay where, I remember, these brown and white cows kept venturing into the shallows to cool down.

I have another recollection of Anglesey cows: each morning I would walk about a mile from where we were staying to the village shop for bread, milk and a paper. Mike Oldfield’s famous album ‘Tubular Bells’ hadn’t been out long at that time and I had a recording which I used to listen to on a portable cassette-player. There and back from the shop, the cows in the fields would follow me as I tinkled along on my way in the early morning sunshine. It’s a very vivid memory.

There’s a lovely, light, little Betjeman poem called ‘A Bay In Anglesey’, too.

I took the picture a few weeks ago on holiday in Portugal. It's the fabulous coastline of the southernmost tip of Europe, Cape St. Vincent - what the Portuguese call 'the end of the world' from which explorers like Columbus used to set sail.