Moray Suite & other poems

Hanging in the top six feet of the

ocean, at the silver surfaced time,

a seal, whiskers dripping,

chews upon a fish,

flipper-handed, gentian.

And a touch

orange of sky

is above, behind.

Where gymshoes tread the way, 

 the road of raftered slow-built gold 

 unfolds rag-robin and burdock spray 

 dusty hands and windbrushed mind; 

 and road-scuffed denims, a sexy behind, 

 go freer here 

the bleached edge of the scarlet poppy 

 holds its power against the corn, 

in myriad red-admiral colours 

an archipelago of white shudders 

 in a wing. 

 encurved by 

 fan spiral tails of 

 lyre-bird kelp, 

 fluorescence of lilac silver 

 shows forked on the maroon sea weed 

 bleached sand is a reef 

cold bright turquoise moves into foam 

cobalt behind, turning in 

 welts of light, wetting 

 rolled white clothes; 

wash in and taste the salt, toes sinking 

into shadow and water-shifted finings 

dance lightly, dance a light dance 

between the retina and the lens 

sight-sunken in darker clarity 

brownness of a glance. 

Hold the darkest glance. 

 Country-punched landrover 

turn your crenellated tyres 

 right down the alleyway where 

compromise lies. 

 Run and reverse, spatter him 

star-shape, and cut his wires. 

With what warmth, and shadowed tan glow 

 and hidden ivory’s eye, slightly blue 

you 

 dip your sunlit hair. 

Solar cord touching 

 underwater 

 a sandshift’s sparkle. 

Sun on oasis where swallows sing, 

 goldgreen barleyfronds in the freshness here, 

poppies and water, and a people 

 tied to the beauty. That falters in our world. 

Two voyagers from outer-space found a way. 

 Silver on the black Berber’s hand, 

 greenery before the desert storms. 

Love in the day. 

Branches, sprayed in oak’s greenery, 

 bend in a bright sky 

beyond the hazel of your body. 

 Memory, warm with you, 

shimmers of wind-touched 

 northern bays beneath clear 

hurricane moons. 

Now, over the image of journey’s nightfall 

lives the impact of coming home 

to you. 

 To the sunlight framing. 

My tidal colour 

My bite 

My coral star. 

dawn flames and fires across all the seas 

beyond the curve of earth, racing to beam 

into this bay where we wake to the fishermen’s 

fire, orange on the shore, 

beneath glowing growing higher in the sky 

and thickening pink pollen 

of the band that moves slowly round 

to the sun; to the rhythm of the sea’s turquoise 

the wild yellows unfold in the sun’s waves 

and the sand’s slight damp; and the light 

flies in around us for the day. 

And evening draws the bars of night across. 

Not dark confusion but space’s quieter side 

We turn to now; nor lamenting colour’s loss; 

The earth allows the starlight here to hide 

Beneath the petal’s curl, the grass’s bend. 

The meadow flickers below the cirrus grill, 

Its dusts of brightness darkness hold; 

Like countless fists held tight to kill, 

The pollen grains are wrapped in petal folds 

To show the sun, tomorrow. 

In the dimming I have come 

To walk and feel the river run, 

Suntanned, unscared. 

Barefoot on the towpath stones. 

brown wheat ear and the carmine sky 

taken by a round of white, and blue-brushed 

by the wren’s song in a cleft of alder’s thigh 

where green leaves, unfilleted, spade the light air. 

brown river, fluid, soft in evening 

as a girl’s underside, rippled by pale and 

peachlike smiles, turning inside like 

a grain. And webs of refracted sunshine, 

filtered and chucked with a splash through the 

edging, move over shallow stones, under willows 

streaking the light; 

and Light alights the tide. 

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