Yeats could feel

a desire to be young,

greener than springtime trees,

and sing assembled songs

to sweetly hit top C’s,

and play like butterflies

(less caring how land lies)

ignore the path – so long

- that leads into Byzantium.

Play

Sons, alive in my mind’s eye,

wear guitar and tee-shirts, lyrical ones

strum and (in sing-song) blue notes fly;

faces aglow like hot stones.

Strings are shimmering side-by-side

and faces stand eager in the bar-room door;

enjoying the craick, along for the ride

of brothers and magical music once more.

Maybe

The first word of any new day

could maybe be yes or maybe no;

both words seem equally valid

reactions to onrushing light.

Maybe look romantically back to yesterday’s love

or glance for tomorrow and hyena laugh:

inexorable fate is pushing through now;

growing from substances, maybes and dreams.

Maybe laughter is tearful and ugly's a beauty

- something is nothing – and maybe we’re falling

conscripted by newness, up, into destiny;

hello and, well, thank you, maybe today.

Dance

There’s harmony

in Andrew’s dance, hidden

in rhythm and infinite

orbit, suggesting

‘Care less of scorn

or judgment or gossip

but feel for the real song

in movement and tears.’

Turn immortality,

sweet nature’s harmony

infused, and infusing,

body and soul.

Hunger Games

At the end of our little flight

- right among the scrambling moments

when people panic, stand and panic again

(grabbing their luggage) a lovely girl

twirled and kissed her handsome boyfriend

- open mouthed like a hungry fish

unhinged her jaws and swallowed head,

shoulders, torso, then his legs.

She looked around and gulped down a fatter girl,

whole, and formed a bigger plan for dinner

- wings and fuselage, engine, petrol, oil,

all inside her belly, masticated.

Frustrated now, she turns her beady eye

towards the airport, city – walks along and hugs her belly, sighs.

Stopping,

most people on a flying train

would ‘get’ that space is time

- that space is limited,

- that time is ticking fast;

and an emptier tunnel is coming,

where (at a moment when brakes won’t work)

the tracks run out and we don’t know

who will steer or drive the engine on

but if you ask Andrew

to stop singing and dancing

he’ll look direct and quizzical

to say ‘Oh what!?’ and then ask

the big bad ask we all could ask;

‘Are you mad, mate, are you mad?’

Autumn

Plentiful, a few leaves rattle overhead;

uncountable , brown collateral

-  mulch of a future generation

and, every second, a dry cornflake floats

or plummets onto muddy autumn ground;

to be soaked and eaten by water, worms and earth.

Whilst airborne, no longer fixed or allied

to a mother tree with her branch and fire; deep, deep roots,

but, re-formed, sways away from her great connection

(with soft-hard edges) into a new collective.

Heading for chemical, mineral, damned decay

in a spinning fall from old body to new body

at the turn of the season, heading inevitably into

a turn of the year.