The Poetry of Rob Radcliffe

Well, I’ve made it to my poetry blog twice in a month! I’ve started writing a novel, and meanwhile, I want to start getting through my backlog of poems, and publishing them here on the blog. I’ve no idea why I would keep them filed away now, the rainy day of a future publishing contract is as far away as ever. So, in the words of Rod McKuen, I’d rather be a poet read, than one who postures for posterity. I might even get round to writing some new poems soon! Watch this space, and please comment if you like a poem or something about it

This poem was written many years ago, in between jobs, one dark (in more ways than one) Friday night. I think it’s safe to say it’s one from my window period

This Town.

So cold, the moon wears a scarf
Of cloud, bombazeen in mourning,
Quarter of her gone as if by cancer.

The sky drips spiderthreads, not water
As such, just so much as a lover might give
Of tenderness before a quarrel.

Belisha beacons wink, not for traffic
Or children, just the night – met by silence
And a vigil of criss-crossing darkness.

And such silence, the gleams
Of wet light on pavements, the blood
Of a Friday night, in this town.

‘s been a while

Yet again I find myself returning to my poetry blog and another year has passed without updating it. It is not that my life stagnates, it is that so much happens! The last year has been a time of constant re-awakenings, and re-negotiations with life itself. I have completed one year of my journey into becoming a person-centred counsellor, only 2 more to go, 3 if I include the Master’s Only recently did the idea of bringing my writing into the therapeutic arena emerge, and only recently was I able to to consider this in a pure sense – not, look at me, see how I write, but “I write rather well, how can I use this therapeutically for myself and others”. I have been on a journey. Scrub that. I have just begun a journey. Not that this post is anything to do with that – I wanted to post something, a poem, and dug through the rather sparse output of the last couple of years. Not the most noble of subjects – I was ill, and wanted to write. I had forgotten totally, that I had written this. Hopefully, I will write more, as it looks likely I may be running a therapeutic writing workshop over the summer

It

It grows in me,
symbiotic after a fashion,
shall I watch it,
pretend to accept its presence,
its slick motion through the gut,
its reproductive rumblings
as it appropriates my body for its ends?

It’s a life form, that’s all,
bacteria or virus, I evolved from it,
I share its cells even though I grew
to know a pain it can’t imagine
in its simple divisions and multiplications,
ignorant in its blissful simplicity.

It does not strive, it just is, then is not,
without fuss or ceremony or worry.
It has no face to lose, no memory,
it is just cells, a set of building blocks,
passing on its form, its structure.

Shall I watch it, let it use me up,
accept our symbiosis, its invasion?
It will not let me be, I heave again,
slave to its ignorant, ingenious persistence.

Been a tough couple of years for me, losing my Dad suddenly then seeing cancer take my mum away. As the literary one of the family it fell to me to read at their funerals, and I couldn’t just pull something from a book, so I wrote my own poems. They were in some ways the hardest poems to write, because as well as expressing my own feelings, I wanted people to understand them and be touched by them as well – and not just “poetry” people, but family, etc. For some reason, as I read the last lines of each poem at these funerals space 18 months apart, I turned towards, and directly addressed the coffin. I realised later it was, in essence, because the poems were a form of last goodbye.

I was not really going to publish them on my poetry blog (which has been neglected of late) but I showed one to somebody and they said other people might appreciate them, as there appear to be stock funeral poems that people always use, and these were a little different, so maybe people might be able to use them in some way.

I don’t know if that’s true, but if you do stumble across these little poems, and feel you could use them for a memorial service, feel free to adapt and use them as you wish.

Sailor. For Dad – 1934-2007

You sailed into this world
Seventy-two years ago,
And your life unfurled
Like the sails of ships
On the seas you loved.
As you journeyed we got to know
You for a while as you slipped
Between the islands of our lives
And stayed a while to laugh and love
In the harbour of our hearts.
But now it’s time to sail again,
To say goodbye, to bid farewell.
As you sail from shore a final time
We’ll keep love warm as you journey on
Until the day we sail ourselves.
Father, husband, granddad, friend,
Sail on, you’re free, sail on.

The Laughing Girl. For Mum – 1934-2009

Where did she go, the laughing girl,
The dancing queen with her cheeky smile,
The bonny lass we loved?

Her voice is quiet, her body still,
She fell asleep and will not wake,
I’ll tell you where she went;

She’s gone to find the laughing boy,
Her flame haired sailor and his smile,
They’re happy now but far, so faraway.

And yet we do not lose them,
They leave behind some essence,
In rush of leaves or swell of sea,

Light of moon or warmth of sun,
Each splash of rain, each waking flower,
And always in our minds and hearts.

You’ll always be here inside us -
And in our hearts you’ll
Be forever dancing, in the stars.

Mum loved to dance, but for the last 2 years of her life she couldn’t even walk.

I hope you’re dancing now, Mum.

The months, to paraphrase Sylvia Plath, have glided by like ticker tape, and this poetry blog is not the only project of mine to have been neglected what with one thing and another.

I have been writing on and off, and have given the odd public reading, but nothing much – a lot of my time has been taken up with my terminally ill mother and my ailing business – it saw the economic crisis months before anyone else, and has been struggling, but I will find something to pay the mortgage, I’m sure!

This poem is about my father’s sudden death in hospital (in August 2007) – I wrote it this April, and choked up when I took it to a writing group and started reading it. However it is now over a year since it happened, and I feel it is an appropriate time to publish it on my blog.

The references to Last Post and sailing/travel images are references to my Dad’s 13 years in the British Royal Navy (where he became a Chief Petty Officer) and his love of travel. I did write another, simpler poem for his funeral, which I publish in the local paper on his birthday as a memorial – it ends “Sail on, you’re free, sail on.”

Am not sure of the literary merit of the poem, come to think of it, but feel I need to publish it to move on.

Last Post

We went into the room and saw memories cooling already.
Such slipped-awayness in his face, tube protruding
From a mouth newly language-less. How many breaths,
Kindnesses, harsh words, did those lips let go when
Blood still gave them colour?

A brother and sister stand with father
Like the ocean between them, standing on shores
That all his journeyings could not undistance. Like gulls they
Hover over his beached body, whalebone pale and colder with each
Tick of the callous clock.

Eye to eye for just this moment,
Last stir of embers in his flaming hair,
We stand as grief knits memory in our minds.
No last handshake but a kiss and then we leave his last post
And close the door on all he was.

A brother and sister drift away
And leave behind this man who gave
The gift of loving, suffering life.
Together and alone, tears and memories
Flow behind as we leave him in the wake
Of all the journeys she, and I, must take.

Wow, no post for a couple of months, the 2 in one day! Something must be happening!

Well, in fact a friend of mine called Aryamati (she is an ordained Buddhist!), is on a committee at the Museum, and had been asked to organise an arts event, so came up with the idea of a poetry session at the Museum Cafe, Cafe Muse on Oxford Road, Manchester.

I have not ventured out to live poetry readings/events for some time now, for a variety of reasons, but when I was invited to read some poems at this session, I was more than happy to support it – not only by reading my poems, but also by taking some pics and doing a kind of mini review here on my poetry blog, which I thought would make a nice change from just posting my own poems!

Apologies to begin with, that I did not write down any names as I was taking the photos – so if you appear, why not comment to say who you are!! Also, although I read my poems, being the one with the camera, I do not have any photos of myself! Maybe next time!

Anyway, after Aryamati’s intro, and my set, this serious looking orator drove the nearby chap in the audience to drink!

The poets soon got into their stride and kept the audience on the edge of their seats with word wizardry:

Members of a poetry group read from their works:

This poet made himself – and the audience – smile!

This veteran of many performances at the Town Hall, gave another fine display of woven words!

All in all this was a very pleasant evening of poetry and conversation which will hopefully be repeated soon. Thanks to all involved – and if you have any more to add – please leave a comment

Haven’t posted for a while – have been busy with this thing called “life” – it is incredible how the months rush by. Anyway, I am not going to say much today. Am due to give a reading at Cafe Muse at the Manchester Museum this evening, was sorting through some poems for it, and found a recent(ish) one. It has Buddhist leanings, I guess, but is also a reflection of things that have been beginning and ending in my own life of late. The title I use for want of a better one – it may certainly change or evolve in future!

Beginnings and Endings

Beginnings can be kind: A first drop of rain,
Tip of the sun rising at morning,
First green shoot that signals spring.
Awakenings of all kinds, these beginnings,
Like a newborn’s joyful snatch at breath.

Endings can also be kind: A lull in the rain,
Sunset drawing day to a close,
The scatter-art of autumn leaves.
Sleepings of all kinds, these endings,
Like a man’s last troubled snatch at breath.

We make so much of our beginnings and endings,
Clinging to wakefulness, dreading our sleeping,
Blind to the beauty of cycles as
Rain gives way to sunshine, day to night,
Spring to autumn, our first breath to our last.

Our ending too can be kind, it is not so hard,
Without endings there can be no beginnings.

I was struggling for something to post today, as recent times have not been times of any substantial creative output. So I had a dig through some older poems, and thought most of them might need some reworking before posting here!

In any case, I found this one from the mid 1990′s. It’s a love poem of sorts – but a realistic one I feel, containing the nerves and uncertainties that can prelude a relationship – is it the right person, should I take the plunge, what if it all goes wrong? If I’ve learned anything over the years it’s that nothing’s permanent – including relationships and feelings within them. Maybe the only “constants” are uncertainty and impermanence – but if that’s the nature of things, then it’s perhaps a natural thing, in balance with the weather, the seasons, the tides….

Tides

Almost close enough, your voice,
Like the stretch of sea that touches shore
To dwindle and fade to perspective.

Gulls would know in their squawking ignorance
That tide always returns to sand -
To roar and soak and take residence;

Why do I stand here, a wise man with net in hand,
Doubting the inevitable cycle of waters,
Doubting nature – if only because I must be a man,

Unaware of my hand in front of my eyes,
Unsure of the imprint you make in my mind when
Rockpool creatures in their dark would know it?

Then your voice like a bottled message
Rescues me from silence, hits shore, tells me
That tides, low or high, are planned, are perfect.

I’ve been noticing that now this poetry blog of mine has been around for a while, it appears to be established a little in the search engines, and is getting a fair number of daily visitors. This is all I ever wanted – I struggled for about ten years sending off poems, only to (apart from the 2% of acceptances) get rude rejection slips or hints to the effect my poetry wasn’t up to any kind of standard. So I struggled, and even with the acceptances, I would probably have managed a readership in the ten’s, rather than hundreds… Now I’m into the hundreds daily, so that’s pretty edifying – I just hope most of you stick around to read the poems when you get here In any case, to receive a comment like I did the other day, appreciating the words, and indeed offering a kind of artistic exchange, was a pretty amazing thing to happen, as I think my poems speak for every man and woman – it’s all about communication and expression, so I hope people appreciate the work.

Anyway, realised I’ve been neglecting the blog lately (circumstances are hard, but that’s no excuse) – so even while I may be going through a dry period writing-wise, I do have many poems that I feel deserve to be read. So here goes with a poem from a period that was very creative for me, back in the late 90′s/early 2000′s! The weather had been very hot, and I had been drinking a good deal – when suddenly the weather broke, thunder began to rumble, and the heavens opened, and I couldn’t resist just going out in the yard to let the water flow down and experience it fully – after which I wrote Downpour.

Downpour

Furnace of rain
On roof, hoofbeats
At window, tongue
Of storm drooling:
Just glass and brick
To keep me from the thrum
Of automatic gunfire.

It is this white chaos,
Tracer of rain in night,
Makes me stand outside
And taste the flak
Of clouds, dumdum
Bullets smacking
At the heart of land.

It will not stop.
It will not stop like
My hand that spars
With words in the flurry
Of the pen and page.
It will not stop;
But my flashing hand
Assigns a state of pause:
There, words like rain
Going out to sea,
Falling away like a lover,
Bequeathing a dry silence.

As timelines go, the last few months have been pretty shocking for me. In August my father died suddenly and unexpectedly, and a month later my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and has since been stuck in hospital, as well as having poor mobility to start with. No wonder then that I have neglected my poetry site, and indeed the only poem I have written was the one I read at my Dad’s funeral, which I may or may not post here in future, as it was largely a personal piece. There have been emotions aplenty, but little tranquility in which to allow those emotions to distill into thoughtful and considered language. It comes to us all, and we know it, but when sad events strike they still come nonetheless as a shock to the system.

In any case, I thought it was time to post a poem, and in some ways it is quite appropriate that I should “dig out” one I was toying with this spring, while out walking. I had originally envisaged it as part of a larger piece, and am not even sure if it is finished (like most of my poems!) – but I think it deserves a place here, being as it is a warning, I think, that now is all we can be sure of, and to savour the now, for living for the past or the future can be a dangerous habit when we never know where we might meet our end on the timeline…

Timeline

Shatter of stumps on the green, thwock of a golf ball,
A girl playful in her own solitary world, a coated horse,
Fields thick with insects, fading doppler of a plane, all
Stir my awareness of this moment in the timeline.

It is our moment, from breath to breath and smile to smile
And kiss to kiss, drinking deep of melting time
As seconds pass and those unaware
Are marked by knowing strangers.

Footsteps carry my senses through conundrums
Of thought as I observe each moment in the timeline
We share, each humming conversation and explosion
And the drone of flies, of cars, of fleeting sights

As swans dip and geese parade. What human
Thoughts are left in the dark as sleep comes to all
Except for the still watcher counting the precious
Moments, knowing that now, this moment

Is the only forever we can know.

Regular readers of the Poetry of Rob Radcliffe will be aware of my fondness for Wales – and recently I have been exploring again, this time managing to scale Snowdon (well, at least on the train as far as Clogwyn!), find Dolbadarn Castle in Llanberis, and also spend two days in Betws-y-Coed in North Wales. The second day was a damp squib where I ended up trying to find Swallow Falls with a bag full of expensive camera equipment, and instead ended up walking through a constant waterfall of rain! However the Thursday spent there was a lovely day, and I managed a great walk into the middle of nowhere with plenty of sheep! Upon my return to the village, it was an idyllic midsummer’s evening with birdsong, and that was where I discovered the Pont-y-Pair, or bridge of the cauldron, and the foaming, rushing water of the river Llugwy that passes beneath it. As I walked across the bridge – well, this poem gives a snapshot of the experience, which as well as being about “romantic” love, also encompasses the Buddhist ideas of mudita (sympathetic joy, rejoicing in the happiness of others) and metta (goodwill to others).

Couple in Betws-y-Coed

Where Llugwy churns under Pont-y-Pair
And the river’s cauldron bubbles through this
Prayer house in the woods, as I crossed the bridge
A kissing couple stopped me in my tracks
And asked if I would photograph the two of them.
So I framed their love in the viewfinder
And froze a moment of them cuddled on the stone,
Waterfall boiling like laughter and love behind them.
I walked on, and turned to see them staring
Eye to eye with hands held tight.
Where Llugwy churns under Pont-y-Pair
We waved – I shared their joy – I wish them well.

I have some poems up my sleeve, for now here is one about finding one lonely person amid a crowd of strangers – and how simply listening to them, acknowledging them, made them open up with their pain, their issues – and how a sense of connectedness arose despite wildy differing circumstances from my own.

The Strangers

The strangers passed her one by one
as she asked for directions
and I stopped to stare at my own tears
in her booze bleared eyes as she explained:
“just the one drink after work,
Just this one last drink”.

In a minute her lifestory unfolded -
married, with a son, a full time job
and the alcohol, the alcohol,
the hurt, the suffering it caused her
“But it hits the spot” she said,
blinking my strangerness away.

She left for her one last drink,
went to undo the demons for an hour
as i walked into sunshine and strangers,
eyes sparkling with suffering,
and no distance left between our breath
or our beating hearts, no distance at all.

Well, I’ve been busy lately bustling about, doing lots of new things, and the writing seems to have taken a backseat. Either that or the words won’t come in the right place at the right time, and even then rarely in the right order. Still, I’m experiencing lots of stuff so I suppose those words are gestating and will come when they’re good and ready.

I did write this last month, it’s based on my curiosity about life elsewhere in the universe (and there must be, seems like an awful waste of space otherwise ) I’m also intrigued by the fact that we all came from this single point in space and time, so cannot really be all that separate – and even the other side of the universe was once right here. We often think of ourselves as separate from the rest of space time, but I feel we’re actually an integral part of it as the system seeks to achieve higher and higher levels of consciousness. There are particles which share properties, and even if they were a million light years apart, one particle will affect the other instantly, defying the laws of physics. Who knows, maybe one day that mechanism will be used to send a message in a bottle. I hope we hear back – and soon Anyway, enough of scientific wafflings I’m not even sure if this poem is finished – ah well, one day I can revise it…

Cosmic love poem

These words are formed of stardust,
Sift the atoms you will find the signature
Of a shattered star, some cobweb in the sky
We sprang from, faint yet still revolving.

Night’s planetarium opens its illusion show,
Planes and satellites glide through networks
Of stars, galaxies dwarfed by distance
Nestle on the ends of branches.

Why were we cast so far from anything
That a message in a bottle at the speed of light
Would never reach its cosmic shore
In the lifetime of the sender’s species?

The sky is silent while machines click and beep
To track the static and the footprints
Of our making that our eyes can’t see
As we trace the fragments of the cosmos.

So many stars, there must be others looking
Back, maybe there are others who know
Of love or who have come to this conclusion:
Love is the universe as it seeks to know itself.

Things have been, and continue to be busy lately and it’s been a fallow time for my writing, but I have written some, and spring is often a productive time for me. I will post this brief poem for now, it is quite self-explanatory and rather simple, kind of an epilogue of Zen Love Poem…

Metaphor

The fire burns and I paint snowflakes
Into the picture for her, white flames
In her twists of hair, smouldering in auburn.
Something wrong with the canvas or brush
Or my artistry leaves her eyes empty
And her skin stroked cold. I finish
With something Rubenesque, yet Dali-ish,
Staring at a palimpsest of all she never was,
And all the things we might have been.

A short poem to kick off my 2007 poetry postings – a little late, as January is almost over! How the time does fly! Anyway, this short poem was inspired on my last trip to Llandudno (and I am hoping for brighter nights and slightly better weather so I can start my journeyings again soon). The poem is about a sunset I saw on the West shore – was quite spectacular and beautiful, and I watched the cars lined up as people sat there watching the sunset – and although I will never know them in person, I felt a remarkable bond with the people and all the other sentient creatures sprawled across that beach. I got the line “star stuff” from Carl Sagan, who inspired me when I was a kid to be interested in the Cosmos through his TV series, and now I recall, the first episode of that series was actually called “The shores of the cosmic ocean”. It’s very easy to forget that we live in a vast universe, and that the atoms we’re made of were actually forged in the early supernovae of ancient galaxies

West Beach Sunset

Lava from a distant eruption of sunset,
Light flows along flats of burning water
To my wandering feet. These elements
Have been, and are, and will be my being
As I take my form with these curious others
On this beach where we sprang from star stuff.

Gulls scratch cuneiform meanings on a coin
Of sun as it drops to let darkness
Cool and solidify among rocks.
Then gone, its photons linger until
Galaxies spiral like seashells
And we, their offspring, burn and are bright.

Sometimes I wonder whether some of my poems are too personal, too full of recent turmoil to post – maybe I should keep them for another day, another month, another year?

I have not made a post for a while, things have been happening. It’s funny you can meet someone and you just have this feeling that something is going to happen, something at least that transcends the ordinary for a while and makes life strange. I met someone recently who turned me inside out, and woke up a lot of things in me that I had kept sleeping quietly. I wrote Zen Love Poem (although didn’t title it until later) about this person just after the second time I met her, because I felt a story was unfolding, the old story of two people getting to know each other and all that entails, the pitfalls of conversation, the disguises we wear, the mistakes we make, the gamble we take when we choose to let another person into our lives, the way the past casts its shadows on the present, the beginnings of affection and the acknowledgement of the unfolding stories of each other. Of course the story ended, all stories end, I knew it would end somehow, it is the nature of things. Thank heavens I am getting good at the Buddhist idea of letting go – and so, in releasing this series of loose haiku, I let her go…

Zen Love Poem

For Michelle

Twists in your hair, the swell of your smile,
Side-stepping reflection I puzzle over
In the half dark between us.

What is this disguise you have brought,
That you play in fancy dress
To my stumbling harlequin?

Quickly we play the game, bend rules.
To and fro we pass the dice
Of questions and half-answers.

You are not your form, nor I mine,
We shift from posture to posture,
Struggling with the act of being.

Mantras in our repitition, the habit
Of saying the the same thing over
Until there is something to say.

The breath you hold in parenthesis,
Inserting your surprise, suddenly
Remembering so many beginnings.

Let go of the past; remember that
Forgetting is sometimes
The first step on the path of truth.

Open your mind, take my hand,
Palm to palm a little of each other,
It begins and ends with hands.

This private story I tell in public
With the breath of loving kindness.
Tell me your story.

This is one of the very few poems I’ve “written for a purpose”, so I hope it suggests there is some merit in this practice. Usually I have to wait until some urge is tugging at my attention, until a poem is aching to be written. Sometimes life affords few such moments, so it is good now and then to be given a reason to write something about something to get the machine working.

I have slowly started venturing back into the Manchester poetry scene. There used to be a great night at the Frog and Bucket that I used to attend with my friend Louise, and I would read frequently, along with a cast of some great people. But life kind of changed and other things took over – so that drifted away along with a lot of other things! It was almost as if I went through several years of exile. Anyway, now I have started writing again, I decided it was time to get out there a bit more, so I started going to a new writers’ group (which I still go to, despite getting some pretty negative comments on two very good poems), and also looked at any current poetry nights. I know there are slams and such, but one that struck me as a good place to start was the Freed Up night at the Green Room – central, and with friendly organisers who replied helpfully to my email enquiries (thanks Steve and Dominic!). So, I went along, and met another poet I had met over the internet through her excellent poetry – watch out for Room without Doors!

Anyway, it was a great night, meeting some great people, and I read 2 poems, which seemed to go down quite well, and overall there was a nice mixture of the serious and the comic, with some great characters and great performances. I would recommend the Freed Up nights at the Green Room for anyone in the Manchester area, as it is a supportive atmosphere, open mike, not competitive, and just gives everyone the space to read their stuff. More info can be found at The Green Room

Oh, getting back to where I started, the nights have a theme each month to encourage new writing. I did take an old poem, but thought I’d better write something new as well! The theme for the night was ghosts, so I wrote this poem, based on my experiences over the summer visiting ancient Welsh burial sites such as Tinkinswood in South Wales, and the Cromlech on the Great Orme in Llandudno.

Ghosts of the Tomb Builders

Cross-legged by the Cromlech, I watch summer ghosts
As they bury their dead, here by the stones
They left as mark or memorial, these tomb builders.
Did their tears water the grass of this untended place,
Did screams tear the air and slow down hearts
By this nameless tomb where ritual
Has given way to history? Did the bones
Quietly resurrect themselves, in the wind stir,
Or did unkind visitors remove their traces?
Eyes closed, I let the dead answer, show me their grim
Procession, surely something of grief in the hands
That crack bone and place the pieces of their
Dead so carefully here. These ghosts are five thousand
Years away, animal furs for clothes, skins
Still flecked with the blood of their murdered;
Yet not so different that I cannot feel eventual
Tears muddy their faces, brute survival giving way
For minutes, to the pausings and stirrings of grief.
A spider weaves now where the bones once were,
New dead have found in this their resting place;
Yet those human ghosts still lay their claim,
Grim purpose in the shape and aspect of the stones
Still standing; those ghosts still whisper, remind
The living that so much, and so little time has passed.

As the clocks go back, the nights draw in, fireworks fill the air, Christmas decorations threaten, and the air gets colder, I thought it was appropriate to bring this poem to a wider audience. It has gone down well at readings in the past, I only hope it goes down well at my new Writers’ group tonight, as I have decided to take it along. Normally I would take a recent poem, but I think the season demands another airing!

Darkfall

Almost November. Someone pulls
A drawstring, tightens sky,
Murk seeps into streets
With a smell of smoke as crisp as leaves;
Stars start to look colder.

The country is at war:
Flak every night, boom of munitions,
Enemies sizzle in midair.
Cars are targeted as fallout and shrapnel
Keep the wise within.

Rain offers an uneasy ceasefire,
Killing off squibs and forcing retreat.
Desire smoulders in front of TV sets,
Interrupted by a sinister knock -
Not witches, these days, but killers.

Without this darkening, pausing
Of the world, we could never
Learn to treasure summer,
Not appreciate the skin of safety
Our windows, walls and doors provide.

Just two months, then it’s Christmas.
Afterwards, days will grow healthy again.
Today it was twilight at 5pm.
In this dark, just walking home is fear,
And fear is every passing stranger.

I’m becoming very fond of Llandudno and all it, and the surrounding North Wales coast, has to offer. I recently returned there and spent several splendid October days, but this poem was conceived on my first trip there in August, although my mind didn’t give birth to it until late September.

It’s about walking on the Great Orme, about being alive, being at one with nature, and about being aware of one’s own mortality in the midst of natural beauty that itself is not eternal.

Llandudno is naturally fenced off on both sides by two mountains called the Ormes – Great Orme and Little Orme. The Great Orme is a spectacular natural habitat for many kinds of wildlife, with spectacular sea views and many pleasant walks. Despite being popular with tourists, it is always possible to find a remote spot and indulge in solitude with the spirit of the Orme (norse for sea monster, perhaps worm…)

The photos in this poetry blog entry were actually taken at the moment I believe this poem had started to gestate in my mind, as I looked over the cliffs and saw a group of bleating goats! In the future I am hoping also to use video to create audio visial accompaniment to my poems, and perhaps publish on DVD!

Great Orme
Llandudno, August 2006

From stone to stone my feet
Trespass in these avenues
Where heather forgives my steps,
Creatures-become-stone my
Pavement as the wind sets
And a tarpaulin of sea smooths
Out from periphery to periphery.

Out here the dead whisper louder
Than the living shout, goats
Keep counsel with wind, their quick
Questions, summations, might
Be nothing more than hellos
As I perch in their world
On the edge of my tomorrows.

Hours from anywhere and
Just a second from death’s
Forgetfulness, gravity holds me in stasis
As moon swells up the hemisphere,
Drags wave after wave on rock below;
The goats and I hang on like
Bleating and determined gods.

I have walked and found sanctuary
On this headland that will give way
To sea in a century or two, so firm
Beneath my feet yet like all the world it will
Follow the dead creatures of its birthing
Into other avenues of existence,
Perhaps a sea kingdom next;

Yet for now the stone bears my weight
And time has yet to do its worst
Half way through our stone and flesh lives;
I will come back here when a few more
Days have dandelion-clocked; when vision
Drags my feet and I must have faith
That I and the living world still spin.

I spent a few days in Llandudno recently, a trip I’d booked as soon as I returned from my last visit to Wales to stay with Louise and Phil in their beautiful country cottage. I’m finding lately that going away is preferable to coming home, a big change for sure – I’m feeling a lot more comfortable with “getting out there” than staying in my comfort zone of routine and habit, which is entirely as it should be.

I’d never been to Llandudno before, but fell in love with the place as soon as I got there, perhaps it was the sea air switching on and sparking dormant synapses – it was also a moment when I realised that something had been missing from my life for many years, viz the constant, gentle sussurations of the sea. I lived in Swansea for three years as a student, and the ocean was a constant companion; getting to stay out on the coast for a few days brought back a lot of memories, of nights spent on the beach reading poems, getting drunk and smoking, and always the waves, the ceaseless barrage of the waves against the shore.

So here I was again, a different place – but sometimes places are made up of things we carry within ourselves. In any case, I had a great time, climbed the Little Orme, went up Great Orme on the Victorian Tramway, walked for miles, and also visited Conwy, where I managed to get out on a boat and out onto my beloved ocean, as well as venturing into the maginificent medieval castle.

You would expect that I had many things to inspire me, and indeed I started a number of poems which will bear fruit, but one poem demanded to be written, and came from an unexpected source. Walking along Llandudno promenade, I came across a stone set on the paving just by the beach, with a sprig of flowers held in place by a pile of pebbles. The stone was a memorial to five friends who had died in a speedboat accident off the coast, on the 25th August 1992 – almost to the day, which was why I assume there were fresh flowers there. The names and the ages of the dead – all in their late teens and early twenties, struck a deep chord of pathos within me, as did the fact two of them had been engaged to be married. I did not know the circumstances of the accident, but the memorial stone and its words struck me very deeply, the tragedy of young lives cut short – and so I will let my poem speak for them and my feelings.

Only The Tide

Only the tide is certain to return to shore
Memorial stone on Llandudno promenade

A stone commemorates close
To where exhilaration killed them,
Fresh flowers here tonight
As I walk with their voices
Carrying on wind and wave.

Imagination paints faces under
Cold depth and air escaping
Giving way to water as eyes turn
To pebble, hair to seaweed before
Their flotsam bodies lay to rest.

My tears mingle with spindrift
And the countless weepings here
In dark with a mother’s grief
Or a father’s rage and the waves’
Eternal echo of unfinished lives.

What joy as they sped before their dark,
Sun in their hair, laughter-kissed hearts,
Becoming the velocity they sought,
Quick and alive until that second
When the end sent broken bodies to shore.

Fresh flowers, a stone to anchor memory,
Allowing pain its tides, but nothing can ever
Undo their joy or scrub their quick spirits
From time; in the thankful dark I pay my respects
To five beautiful dead who did not fear to live.

The longer the internet goes on, the more it comes to resemble a kind of living, constant time capsule, the artefacts not deliberately buried but more lost in the constant avalanche of new pages. We might expect one day to find our own image, long removed, cached in some archive we’ve never even heard of, and one day the Internet may well be littered with references to our names long after the virtual pages survive us.

A few weeks ago I decided to trawl the net for a few names from my old University days. There was one particular person who was a very good friend of mine, fellow poet, drinker, smoker, and traveller through time. We did readings together, drank together, and after I left Swansea we stayed in touch for quite a while – but as my life took over we lost touch. It’s funny how in our memories we expect things to stay the same – when I found a reference to him, he had moved to an entirely different city and was doing the last thing I would have imagined he would be doing for a living (well maybe not the last thing, but the drabness of it seemed to reflect my own situation, where my poetic life had slowly drifted away from me through the chains of full-time work…)

Anyway, here’s the poem that came out of the feelings and memories that came out of seeing his photo and brief bio on a web page. I read this last night at my literary group, and my audience like this poem a lot – they say my new voice has a maturity my earlier poems lack. What do you think?

Old Friend on a Web Page

His picture opened the wormhole
Between the me of now and the me
Of yesterday, dna freezeframed,
Stirring up forgotten photons.

Like it always is the difference
Came from changes in myself
And the entropy of experience;
He was not the same of course

But I recognized the configuration
Of his face, leaner now perhaps,
The hair shorter and the eyes haunted,
A parallel version of himself.

These were intersected seconds
Between now and the years
That simply didn’t happen
In the same continuum as mine,

As if we fell through cracks in time
Or split like particles with different
Properties as we sped to our own
Alternatives and imperatives.

It is easy to believe in ghosts
When the living haunt us
And faces drift like stars from view
As lives like galaxies expand.

Are you only swirling electrons now,
Image of an absent friend projected
From a distant point in time
To ask your questions of me now?

If only the living could speak
As loud as the dead through history,
His living voice might beckon,
Tune in from the static of memory.