Welcome
The books are available in the following formats:
WORD
PLAIN TEXT
SAMPLE POEMS
Memorial
His trail a path that only he walked on.
We cannot trace the slope of that journey.
And when, at last, this traveller had gone
what maps there were, consigned to history.
The more you search for clues, the more you know.
This is not so. Ignore the things you hear.
An echo does not sharpen as it goes,
and each retelling smudges with the years.
And do not say you thought that he was brave.
Who knows what fears he had or hid inside?
Or that he holds his secrets in the grave.
We guess at what he did, the lusts denied.
So when you speak of him make sure to say
we could not grade the dust that was his stuff
but once, he was like us and walked our way.
He lived and died and that is good enough.
From The London Plane
Fisherman at Prayer
How did that sullen countenance begin?
Blasted from rock and dragged across the hills
then shaped into a face, cracks mortared in
with clay and moss, to keep the muscles still?
His uniform a frayed, rope-knotted weave.
A statement made though not a word was said.
Unpacks his kit, this shepherd of the sea,
descends stone steps his father used to tread.
Instinctively looks up to test the sky.
A storm mislaid: the rain did not appear
He kneels to touch the swell, the friends who died,
an age which disappeared but holds him here.
From The London Plane
Bull Dog and Owner in Motion
Does not rest on earth.
Rather, four paws placed precisely down
as if a ballet.
Claws, en pointe, pin the ground
ready to pounce.
Bluster and short-stock barrel.
Fur-lined enforcer
fully armed, snarling animal
mirror of the man
shaven head, jabbing finger,
shouting his skewed point of view.
And in anger
they bob together
in an age-old dance
of aggressive posturing
and barely curbed violence.
From Combustion
Rembrandt
Saskia is dead, and in her passing
the fragility of life is laid bare.
Endured again, the rigour of mourning,
the disappointments, misfortunes, we share.
No mirror so harsh as that held by death
in which few dare look; still fewer study.
With what artist’s eye did you scour its depth?
What reflection seek? What image copy?
Though pain and sorrow may mature the brush,
add shade and substance to its armoury,
to trade love, contentment, for genius
who would fix that price or pay willingly?
From The Likeness is Applied to the Canvas