Lewis Carroll

‘jump down’ said Alice;

‘here’s a colourless rabbit

I followed for hours’

Down's Before Birth

Down’s before birth

If you could change this life

for a real one,

 - say -  with a fuller story

wherein you have a new handle

marauding through a spanking world

maybe in a place more lost

-       would you go?

And how would you feel about your new life?

Imagine you’re ready,

standing moments before birth

in pounding rain

shivering with all anticipation

and calmly

turning down your little dial of mind

to nothing – wanderer -

with such a lot to give:

perhaps it’s not so dark and cold

as you fight your way into a sweeter handicap;

rebirth

as fool, magician, simple creature, king.

Are you going?

I put Andrew to bed

remembering without fail

to sing Scarborough Fair

eyeball to eyeball

head to head

and I know he’ll probe

– honest as a boy –

for one more burst

- a final verse -

of mutual joy.

Writer's Block

 A mystery – this blank page with blue pen –

and my duty to write a grand poem;

without engaging hope.

Instead, melting into zero,

atom by - fizzing - atom

equal and equally dissolved:

me, a pen, ink, page:

blank – nothing.

Jed

 My father-in-law – Andrew,

was a Ukrainian refugee fighting the Nazis,

and got frog-marched into Russia to salute Stalin

passing - on a steam train - then - also on the next

- 30 minutes later – upright and mustachioed

- and he saluted Stalin yet again - after another half an hour.

It would be cold there on the steppes waiting for the true or false

man saluting - three times - at the front.

Cold. He survived fighting the Nazis and came to England

where he learnt new words like hairdresser, bus driver,

security guard -  but it always was the drink prevented him

holding down a job – and the singing in Ukrainian – loud,

like a Cossack, and the comrades he left in the snow.

Andrew, his grandson, snoring in a bedroom next door,

equally struggles with English – to be understood –

but can lead a sing-song, get an entire bar

up on its feet in a jiffy. Likewise, he’ll never

hold down a job and he’s loud as a Cossack

drinking lemonade in a closed-eye dream,

wiping his mouth with the back of a hand.

In both men’s lives, spent and spending,

they have simply sung more notes from their heart

than other fools and magicians, genies and kings.

North Star

 Dreams, of course, - are something –

(but shadows)

compared to green grass or thorny roses,

froth of hawthorn in early spring,

summer’s lazy river bank

or cooling hedgerows brown in fall

when a nightingale rouses and carols;

(but, growing older)

not wiser,

I found a shining

- constant –

certainly you,

my love.

Easter

Some regard

life as hard –

but when a snowflake, catapulted

from  a  cracking storm, falls and

settles on an

open palm,

beneath

a cross;

it’s also soft.