Larkin

Heard him on the Roberts’ radio,
And dissecting him… who else but Motion?
Someone who loved life despite the
Gloom and prediction;

A man who let religion seep, die
Through his fingers:
Palm sweat, the black of his nails,
The soapy rinse of gathered dirt
Entombed under the steel of his
Hurried watch:
It all ran…
Slowly dousing Holy water
With streams of mudiness,
Mingling, trickling on to the ocean

And running free…
A curious hope that even he
Himself – perhaps – could not see.

Heart-strings

From the root my vines will
Chew through soil, entwining
Yours: deep, intricate, taught and
Thickening, embedded and warm in
You, until the worms eat at
Me – that I fear.

Injection of Fate

How long the world cocooned
You from me – held
Warmth in such suspense
Those shivering nights
As I lay close to prayer.

There was a choking
Of ice that night too,
Till your flash of blue
Bit me deeper than death,

Till the air and dusk
Injected my neck like
Venom, needle-sharp
Heroin I had hovered
In cold for,

And there was a scolding
Heat rushing my blood
Like religion – like a
Carnal electricity

Catching our flesh
In its current,
Paralysing reason as
It taught us to breathe
And fly and glide.

Christmas Dawn (A Carol)

Still he slept – the little boy –
In a drench of nightly grey;
His anticipation brewing up
With dreams of Christmas day.

But golden tinge then warmed
With dawn the hills of quilted snow,
Stitching magic into Kentish slopes
Till they kindled into glow.

The boy awoke with nature then
And his smile near caught alight:
A Narnian canvas the world was lain
In a crystally Christmas white.

His fingers clasped a blade of straw,
On his lips there passed a yawn -
The baby King exhaling hope
Like sunrise, newly born.

“Youth is…”

Like sketching out
life in pencil:
A fear of ink
indelible.

Her Autumnal Essence

She and I, the texture of
Colour: heavy, bold
Smears of it, saturating
Canvasses of endless tomorrows
In a drenching
Douse of regal gold and African
Red.

Our pillow-palette of
Seasonal shades
Mixing as when scorched
Summer’s leaf surrenders
To the quenching
Crunch of November’s
Throb.

The Garden

Wading through Outback
Hunting the plummed cricket ball
That in the pregnant clay
Had somewhere thudded.
Drenched in red and
Squidgier than dough:
Thick, sun-roasted,
Aboriginal -
And young legs sank
In the slow sponge.
Our Eden was like that.

Velvet Skies

Back in the days when dusks and dawns marked increments of time
And cares slipped with the sun
We bore ritual to the little pock-marked sink,
Drowning ourselves in its portal of night.

Then, there were velvety skies
Beneath which our sacred immersion took place
And we accepted the other in Baptism,
Washing our faces in the same clunky tap-stream;

As water swirled hypnotically
Stray strands of knotted hair kissed your tilted neck;
And soon, in the eyes of the mirror and me, your shirt, or blouse, or leotard
Removed itself with the faintest jig of your hips,

Shuffling its way over you like a shedding of day –
A final sheath – and all worldly concerns of you and me
Disrobed themselves ceremonially
As your fingers uncoiled heavenwards,

And the material caught the carpet, and your eyes caught mine.
Lights doused, and a figure drawn out of dark
Encroached on me with the offering of warmth,
And the jolt of the current rendered me hers.