Hunting Heron

Where the tide lies low, music oozes swell;

Slow waltz in the sway of the bladder wrack,

Where eddies seep and spill from pool to sea

Then back again into the liquid glass.

A form stands craned upon its stilt like legs,

Watching and waiting, biding its own time

For hints of silver blue beneath death’s beak

That queries quarry, then spears it right through.

With ballet recoil in her long white neck,

Just an elegant vase of feathered steel,

Our pterodactyl rises in two beats,

Gliding on silk to where an ocean sleeps.

Peace Within

There are times when all your struggles seem too deep

To fathom, when your soul is lost in dark,

When weight of expectation is much more

From those you love than those you do not know.

Despite the turmoil that can plague your mind

To make it spin, a vortex of pure pain,

The answer lies within; to know yourself,

Where all your values wait, glowing in gold.

Now is the time to shed some light on them

Which will bring out the brightness of their worth.

Stay calm and with patient breath break through

The dull black glass that is obstructing you.

Winter squirrel

The last acorn of autumn fell just here

Where the late red flick of your tail shook still,

There in the shadow of a rustic oak

You heaved a long sigh that chattered to death.

Gnarled roots of this ancient tree cradle you

In your forever silent hazel tomb,

With a mould of leaves your duvet of dark

Sung under the robin’s mystic lyric.

We find you there and lift you gently up,

Propped by the rot of aging lichen twigs,

Laying you softly in a warm earth bed,

Then whisper goodbye prayers over your head.

Evening pulse

A gracious twilight oozes from the sea

To still the drifting clouds with lilac calm,

While I am harmony with dipping blade

Into the coursing indigo beneath.

I laugh out loud to hear the shrill clear pipe,

The oyster catcher's signature above,

And watch the contrast of their urgent wing

Against the measured progress of my beat.

I long to rise with them, into the air,

Then circle round the blackening rocks,

But I surge onwards with the racing flood

With your sweet flame inside my heart, as blood.

Lizards

A strange incarceration;

That permanent guard duty

Of the crumbling fortress wall

With nothing to look out on.

Through winter hibernation

We had kept an open mind

On chill prospects of the sea

And now that posting closes.

Dreaming in our tombs we make

No bones about the mute point

That we suffer, until spring

Liberates our forking tongues.

Magnolia

Flamingo flock ascend the veil of dawn

Through this skein shroud lace over my lattice.

With rain over the lake I see you borne

Into the frail air. Swept by the night wind

You seem in a fluster, alarmed by light,

As it catches the pink in you, blushing.

Yet in your nervous haste to part my sight

You remain hauntingly open. Such dew

As has not risen from your secret kiss

Is silver on your wing, and my thoughts trail

A phantom spume, hung in this morning bliss.

Down on the water green I leave a sigh.

Then turning I return to where your head

Lies pillowed pink upon our dreaming bed.

Friendship

If friends could see inside me now

There would be no false impressions.

The rings of years that give me age

Are like the truth in resonance.

My wood reveals the secret grain

Leaving me naked to the sky,

Emotion wedded with the air

Causing sweet tears that seed this love.

If being all to friends were gifts,

And were those gifts the breath of life,

Indulgence would be happiness

To show that friends could never part.