Traveling Man

 Train’s tracking north,

when he spots barren trees,

feels an ancient pang

- missing a special child.

Even disconnected – like the coldest

winter twigs - he hangs on – and hopes

another summer lifts and melts the ice

on hard converging tracks.

Alone, in time and space,

one glance of hares in spring,

the sound of a child laughing,

could dissolve his eyes

and turn rails - left and right -

– out, away – and back - into a beating heart.

Hot breakfast

 Half forgotten’s only half remembered;

something niggled out beyond awareness

today as we were busy cooking breakfast

and though I stood there frying, looking steadfast,

a monster kept on swimming under Loch Ness;

- so scary I can hardly dare remember.

It’s getting darker early mid-November;

best to watch I do not get too careless,

slip the anger out in all its vastness!

Better hold it in by staying stuck fast.

(Despite the smiling looks, I couldn’t care less)

and I will sure ensure that I remember

to get you back, you bastard, this December,

even though it’s adding to my hair loss

to plot a future payback for this breakfast.

It’s over – you and I will quickly get lost

in swamps and rivers, take another compass

reading out, away, from this old breakfast.

As memory assembles – we’ll remember.

Choices

 If ever you play Scrabble

with one arm over a loved one’s

shoulder - then - and only then

will you smile down at a board

- that universe spread beneath breaths

and get a sense of the next letter

- your strategy -

that is – what  - and how - and when - and whether

to bother to feel for a next little word

- your play.

Midnight Slovakia

Tiniest flakes

spatter our windscreen;

moonlight catches

lumbering giant fir trees,

limbs drooping snow

and, as we clutch and gear change,

I swear a giant wakes

with an out-breath – sssssshh –

and a fulsome white heap

swoops to hammer transient glass.

Breakfast

Eating his breakfast
alone, young Andrew sits
and sings a shanty as he eats.
Shall we look and listen as he munches,

tears the air around
with Music of the Night?
Divisive toast and Marmite
- cut with sound!

No Star ever sang out from the heart
more truly,
or chorus-singer flowed with sound
so thrilling.

No blackbird called for light-on-earth
so earnest,
or wave crashed out from sea-on-rock,
calamitous.

Does it matter what he sings?
- of love or battles,
sorrow, loss or pain?
Does it matter?

Oh yes, it matters as long
as hearts jump glory in that song;
sincerity, exuberance, no care:
rare.

Hubbub

Noise inside this room is loud:
no voice seems ever quite as bold as Andrew,
my autistic son
- his voice is missing here.

He can sing – louder than a horn –
as long as loved ones standing near
listen to his rising tone,
resonate a chest, a core

and now I walk out through a door
to stand in rain, suck the breeze
and clock a waving tree;
beat my beating heart.

Phew

The moon’s a cube tonight
- so square I drop back in my
house – terrified by corner, angle!

I have another look outside,
pulling back my floral nets -
thank God the corners have revolved
- the moon become parallelogram,
a few new stars chipped off!

And, as the moon descends,
it turns and squashes
back into that perfect O
I used to know
and sinks, a lonely tear,
down into a slowly rising sea.