Violet Grove

The morning sounds of Maxwell Street enter the room,
and join the clock ticking on the bedroom mantle piece,
the wood pigeons in the Convent's trees,
and the distance rumble of traffic on the Sands,
Voices pass the time of day
with obituaries in the morning sun.
On cloudy summers, beneath the fruit trees,
and round the cloths poles, we used to run.


In a boxroom of delights,we searched among
the musty refugees of a fifties childhood.
The Scots magazine and the willow pattern vase
have become my anchors.
In the constant world of the weekend house,
my heart lived, not I.
Where the clock marked every hour of my infancy,
even now as the world speeds by.

Catching my Eye on the Train

She sits opposite,
eating,
slowly.
Automatic eyes
looking through the departing platform.

Kitchen lights are on in the towerblocks.
In twilight yards,
the orange jacketed
knock off.
An abandoned bicycle,
two boys smoking in the park,
and always, optimistic washing lines
defy the season.

Then there's only me in the window,
and you.
The silver ball on your ear
swinging with your jaw,
slowly.
Automatic eyes
looking through my reflection,
into the night.

Ebb

The clock ticks
and every five minutes
a finger separates this page
from the next,
sweeps down the new words to be read
and smoothes them
into pages past tense.
Gazing through the letters,
a pallet knife
smears gold across the ocean.
Starboard,
a breaking wave
disturbs a gull
and betrays the silence.


I've read every word,
without understanding
and read their shape,
their sound,
and listened to the turning page
against the passing seconds.

A hand of wind

A hand of wind
sweeps across the barley
and presses a cold shirt against my chest.
On my cheek
a drop of rain from a lonely cloud
came to nothing.
But your hand is still warm my love
and in the silence,
a bird  sings.

I reach for a pen in the night
to record a church bell
striking two.

In the melting snow
a drop of ink.

Lines at Seven Thirty

In a curtained morning twilight,
dull fingerprinted crystal from the night before.
Evaporated wine,
thick crimson painted on a finger,
then sweet on the tongue.


Out here, surveying a semi-detached estate,
mug of tea in hand, stretch aching limbs.
A blackbird catches the sun’s first rays
over the six foot fence,
and in another street a car pulls off.


While America sleeps,
there’s lunch in Moscow.
Balkan mines lie waiting for a child at play,
death on the Serengeti,
as a man steps off a platform in Japan,
and a bottle is uncorked to welcome the antipodean night.