Hope

I’m walking into Hastings
Down a long and sunny slope
Past the Toad Hall Dental Clinic
To the Post Office of Hope
“My Tony’s dream is failing,”
Sally tells us in the queue -
And Bob’s been with the same firm
Since nineteen sixty two
While Bob and Sal are chatting
Jasmin wanders to and fro
She hugs Bob’s youngest, Sammy
How soon the youngsters grow
Then the lady at the counter
Says Sally’s credit’s bad
But while the sun is shining
She refuses to be sad
I buy a stamp and post my card
Climb up the sunny slope
And I wonder how the car is
In the Kwik Fit Hall of Hope

The Autumn Catalogue

Imagine if our clothes
Were living things
And in the autumn they withered and dropped
Green pullovers turning yellow, dying
Blue jeans turning purple, dead tops
Turn-ups, curl-ups
Denim peeling away
Everywhere you look
People losing their clothes
Streets littered with remnants
Small brown snagged squares of tights
Scraps of socks
And everyone nude for the winter

Fat men with fields of once hidden flesh
Wobble along the wet pavements
Old thin women
Wrinkled and wafery
Huddle in Lowry groups
Like sticks blown into a corner

And naked through howling
Icy winds and squalls
Of snow, everyone struggles gamely on
Until the spring
When fresh clothes buds start growing again

From Searching For Blue Sea Glass (the book)
available from Rabbit Press

Another Day

The week clicks past
A ratchet and cog
The shudder of morning traffic
Judy coughing on the carpet
Licking her swollen paws
You are reading
Propped awkwardly on three pillows
You didn’t sleep well
Your arm hurt and your back
Freefalling in your dreams
I look around
The second hand
On the cartoon clock
Moves another notch
My Gaudi mug steams with coffee
Behind my eyes
A vague ache
I can’t pin down
Blurred shapes shrug in the angular light
Judy is panting on the crooked rug
She wants her breakfast
I must get up
Get started
On my book of the maze
I stand barefoot on the rug
that will be whipped away
before the day is done
A turn of the cog
A tick of the clock
The pant of the dog
You drop your book
Sigh in your sleep
It’s just another day

A Walk in Bedoin

A pale sphere of softest mauve
And the sharp thistle thorn

A black butterfly
Wings wrapped, eyes closed
A leaf snagged in the sunburnt grasses?

A butterfly, a black and yellow dart
With eyes and face on its tail
To confuse its enemies

The kamikaze cricket
Who leaps into the wind
And tumbles along the cracked asphalt road

The wire fence vibrates
Around the abandoned quarry
The jazz of the donkey’s trumpet

Brambles and blackberries
Gunshots leap across the valley
As the hunting season starts

Scattered rock, blinding white, purest pink
The red stone outcrop
The scratched names of travellers

Mont Ventoux
Moving implacably through the dark cloud
A ship that will never reach its destination

An artist’s light
The unmistakable sounds
Of Provence

Race in Provence

Each step I take
on the dried-out grass
releases a dozen grasshoppers
like a starting gun
in the run-every-way-at-once race.

Arlenc

I am the clouds
rising from the volcanic basin.
I am the shadows
racing the Doré
as it ambles north.
I am the hills
woven with pines and mist.
I am the dart of lizards
chasing flies on hot stone walls.
I am the jazzy full of coffee
and the dry
of last night's red wine.
I am the rumble
of log-laden trucks
in the sub-zero winter.
I am the listener
to tales of home
on the balcony
above the half-tamed garden
of cherry trees
and hard mountain soil.

We’re All Going On A Summer Holiday.

Yes the words of that great Cliff Richard classic ring in my ears as we prepare for our Summer Holiday. We’re off tomorrow – heading for central France for a couple of weeks to stay with Jill’s folks and then further South for a week in Provence. Whilst there I will be mainly eating drinking, playing Scrabble and writing. I’ve some work to do on a children’s novel, a few other ideas to polish up and I might get started on a sit com. And of course some poems.

Meanwhile my first blog anniversary passed and I missed it. I’d hoped to do a bit of blogging this week but for some reason I never found the time. I looked everywhere for the time but it obviously didn’t want to be found. Sometimes time just likes to hide, have a bit of fun. Sometimes it meets up with Tide and they wait for a man. But, to be honest, that’s quite a rare occurrence.

A year on the blog, eh? Who’d have thought it. Maybe I have to make a new blog year’s resolution. To be a better blogger? To blog more often? To give more and visit other people’s blogs more regularly. Any of you out there with a year or more blog experience? What would your blog resolution be I wonder?

Well, just time to visit a few blog regulars, see what they been up to in the last week. Then off to bed. We leave around midday. We’ve three lots of people coming to look after the house, look after Judy the aged Border Collie and to water the tomatoes and courgettes. Back in three weeks time – the beginning of September.

Au Revoir