MOONSHINE

Old, grey ocean rolls in
And siren stars slink out.
Now the evening wears thin
And, with night, comes sidling doubt.

Crawl along the kerb of the shore,
Kidding yourself it’s all for experience;
Never satisfied, you always want more,
Cruising for some new, blue radiance.

There she is: ancient, vapidly proud,
Blue Moon playing her cheapest trick,
Gliding behind a rainy cloud
In the dark sky louring thick.

Skewbald charlatan rides, can disappear;
Two-faced, she can wax and she can wane;
She’s nothing but a chameleon-fakir,
Making idle fools wonder if they’re sane.

She’s just a grey, dead stone
Stuck up in a void of black-blue,
Pale, pocked and windblown,
With no more magic than me or you.

But still the old heathen exerts a pull,
Mesmerizes with her illusory rides,
Making us passive, making us dull,
Turning us to her magnetic tides.

All things pass in this way
And flat, black sand strikes chill;
While you hesitate to go or stay,
Moon’s false motion holds you still.

Swing back from this sibilant surf!
Tramp that guttural shingle – inhale!
Mount the steps, cross the turf,
Shake from shoes a riddle gone stale,
Kick it back where it splashed from
Then stride alive the peopled prom.

Never mind having come this far
Or where to go from here:
There will always be another bar,
Another smoke and another beer;
Wind in your face makes you feel free:
Toss back your head, shake that philosophy!


(1981)


Conceived in Llandudno during a comparatively happy period. Why then so much doubt and disgust lurking behind the puns and symbolism here? Maybe it was that lack of ‘magic’ mentioned in stanza 5. The magic would arrive after much misery a decade later and – praise be – it’s still there.

I like the ‘Pull your socks up, lad!’ air of the final stanzas (hence the poem’s second-person narrator) and the ambiguity of the last line: was the philosophy shaken off or shaken up, I wonder.

Of course, this was written when you could still smoke in pubs and long before I, at last, quit.

The picture of Lise was taken many years later by a different sea, in a galaxy far, far away (Koversada, Croatia, actually).

MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE

The photograph on my Mother’s headstone
Has faded whilst others nearby stay bright and clear,
But her memory remains, each shade and tone,
Despite her absence here.

On the shelves, old volumes sleep, long since read;
The spines of paperbacks slack and the pages brown,
But whilst many of the authors are dead,
I may yet take them down.

Skin wrinkles, bones ache and hair withers grey;
Getting out of that armchair makes me groan and sigh,
But the flame still burns strong within the clay
And the shadows dance high.

The oak in winter has froze like dark stone,
By the graveyard path it stands, naked and sere,
But the vernal pulse will climb its backbone
And wake another year.


(2010)


I’d had the first verse of this for months but didn't know where it was going. Then, one day whilst waiting for Spring, during the coldest winter in the UK for over thirty years, the rest of it suddenly arrived.

Today is the fourteenth anniversary of my mother’s passing so it is fitting that I include this poem now. A couple of weeks ago, I visited Gilroes Cemetery and was uplifted by the sight of a blaze of Autumn trees facing her headstone. The photograph however, was taken at the church of St. Mary De Castro in Sanvey Gate during that long awaited Spring and seems to compliment the poem effectively.