Call to Prayer

Here the sun-loungers

Worship their own

Brown-fleshed god

With sunscreen

Soak up the words of cheap novels

Drift through consciousness

Like boats

Loose in the bay

A wind rattles the sunshades

Flaps their bleached white folds

Tosses the plastic lilo

Into the water

Where it also drifts

A small bird darts along the water’s edge

Dips its beak nervously

Into the blue-shadowed pool

Wailing voices rise and fall

Across the valley

From the loud speakers

On the mosque

On Geoffrey's Hill

Am I channelling Chaucer or kicking at the flotsam

and jetsam along the hard shoulder? Forget

those scribbled lines on bus tickets and travel vouchers.

Into the bin.

The moon’s umbra lost to fog

Smothered whispers and the trampling of hay

A curse. My laptop fails to charge.

An upturned pail.

Yo. Yo ho. Yo ho ho.

My sweetheart came clad

in the naked root of ginger. Barley shadows

shifting, unkind pearls strung around

her salty neck.

The Muses, lost in mundane operations,

Fetching the washing, sweeping the floor…

Their scalpels slice the beetroot so…

Exactly so.

And now? The thoroughbred that rushed

the windy fields like clouds, is slowed.

But, oh, what folly. The clasp is rusted.

The diamond lost.

Mother's House

A memory of my mother’s house

A deep, clear lake

Sharp with colour

And the smell of the woods around

But fragmented

Like gravel

Sprinkled on the water’s surface

I could almost stand up

And walk through those rooms right now
I could walk out

Into the overgrown garden

Hang from the rusty swing

By the unwieldy climbing rose

Crimson and overblown

Left to the cold wind

See my father’s shadow

Bending, pulling a weed

The house that we sold

I've passed it since

From the road it hasn’t changed much

The holly tree in the front garden

That gave so freely of its Christmas berries

Gone

The rooms and the garden

Stealing other hearts now

Winter Trees

Winter trees

Etched into

A winter sky
Of scabby grey

Giants

Forlorn beasts

Stark

Can a tree be lonely?

Laden with snow

We feel their nakedness

We are patient for them

Or waving angrily

But we know

That anger is our own

Giant shadows

Of ourselves

Spoils of War

Imagine, after humans have left the planet
And the new owners of Earth
Are digging about for signs of our past

There will probably be a TV programme

Intergalactic Time Team

Beamed across the universe

Aliens, delicately sifting soil

Looking for ancient artifacts

Trying to discover what our race was like

Excitement as the first items are found

An ancient sword, bullets, a rusted flamethrower

An unexploded mine

Sniper

Mum gives Tarik a hug

Don’t cross the Square

It may be further via the church

But it’s safe. You’re not in open view.

And tell him, Belma sends her love

That might be worth an extra loaf or two

I know he has the flour still

And while you are there

Ask him, What news of Ivan?

Mum gives Tarik another hug

And whispers a short prayer

Go now, she says

And do not cross the Square

Learner Drivers?

A trail of smashed milk bottles

The pavement’s milky wet

Billy’s football squashed and burst

Billy’s quite upset

Mrs Jones’ geraniums

Fit for the compost heap

Mum’s vase bounced off the sideboard

You should have seen it leap

And grandad’s bicycle’s been crushed

He’s in a proper fix

And the wall where grandad leant his bike

Is now a pile of bricks

Three lamposts bent like coat hangers

Our cat has run away

You have to learn to drive a tank

And the lessons were today