Settlements

 

The Orchard
for Rope Walks Square, Liverpool.

At night you sleep soundly,
rain an anointment -

curled at the centre of old apple trees.

You came here through daylight,
brambles and nettles,

to bring home your offering,
your handiwork, your heart.

Cloth made of ships’ nets,
yarn made of feathers,

dye made of daylight bound into dirt.

A city with a river,
a port and a village 

embroidered in fine silks,
grey gulls and rust,

outlines of warehouses tied in with knots. 

The sunlight is your needle -
it has sewn you right in.

You can not see yourself - 

in the glare of the textures
the haphazard walls, the shine of new 

streets, the rips in the sail, the rope in the hole,
the calloused tongues of songs 

sung bold and blue: the orchard
conjured to enfold your sighs 

with rainy scents of apples
ripe and forgotten. Do sew little child,

sew the sky white and silver. 

The moon is an orchid.
You are the thread. You are also the light.

 

 

Settlement

To disappear is to understand
all of this self,-  

these currents and tides
as the river to my west slides on 

and I am the cloud in the heat
and a diamond of sun through glass, 

a flick of a wood-pigeon’s feathers
on the beech’s branch beyond, 

bringing the ridged touch of the bark
of the old tree at the end of my road 

inside for a while: a spark
bursting forwards into the day 

and this is now legend –
detailed, savoured 

spoken into now
and you in your absence  

are the sun on the edge of the glass
the time on the kitchen clock: its turn and click 

you are the heat in my throat
the need for water, for thunder.

You are my eyes in a greying room.
I see through you. I do not see myself 

as a comfort of darkness
is coming over the hill

and into our valley
where the trains rush through

and sometimes the geese fly

over the terraces and over the bridge
where we are reaching in somehow

into our brushed silk selves 

to find the sop of blood in our brains
and our ears throbbing dull,

we are burying –

going under into the day
and out the other side.

 

 

 

 

Inside the Vicarage
a memory

 

I keep passing
the dark oak panels, turned
wood banister, the foot of the stairs.
I am looping
through high-ceilinged rooms –

the Lancashire moors far from the window
beyond the garden’s wall 

where the pond is well-tended
and the sparrow’s well-fed 

by my grandmother’s hand
trained to come to the ledge
in full flight every spring –

but it is winter and the window grey

as I circle into the kitchen,
back into the hall,
though all I can see in detail
is the oak’s old eyes
the height of mine,
pulling my child-steps ever on

~

A window is open. The latch
scratches the sill as it knocks
the paper screwed with rain drops,
driven in by an afternoon flash
of lightning. The library shelves
rock, rumbled by cloud weight -
mute embers in an untended fire. 

The light is unravelling
vanishing into an afternoon
of colours so similar their edges
are felted. Sodden wool rots.
A rug slowly unravels.
Wool decomposes into sludge.

The books are mashed
pools of ink and slurry.

~

Speak slowly room, you sound
like a wave on a shore

beyond the moors, at the
rocks of distant seas.

You sound like salt against stone
deep under ground

in the hill’s wet cover.

You sound like a summer rain
gone sour with too much heat.

Here the room is belted, open
wind at the covers

gale-rush over cushions
buckle of goosedown.

 

 

 

 

Old land

specked with stones raised to the sky -
a stone cross where we worship

outside on the hill,
with the wind in our mouths

and the whisper of the sea’s rise
in the bucket of our ears, we are

the substance here, fish and shell,
hair swinging with wet ends of rain,

a sprinkling on the wind
coming over the sea,

the cross is carved with a pattern
we trace on the wind,

the lips of the sky trace its edges
and suck at the dark of the shadow,

suck off the salt; the pattern
falls into our eyes is the rhythm of the sea, -

how it washes clean inside our bones,
our flesh like fishes, the land a table:

we eat ourselves here,
and edge slowly and

nothingly into the richness of rain,
its pummel on our blooming cheeks,

skin porous, the clouds deepening over and into
our eyes, we see only water

and how the earth drinks us
feeds on our time.

 

 

Notes towards poems on time

 

The rain is like dust.
It falls on us and rusts the sky’s blue.

Clear white skies
cloud crisp cotton
fine branches against grey

*

You are pulled away from me
down to the country
while I am still
on this muggy day.

*

We walk the long lane to the trees
where the blossom falls and sticks.

Behind self
there is heaviness.

It holds down my bones
and sits them down.

To be lifted out of place is painful.
To be taken from my roots and flung afar -

*

Midsummer and the city is alert to the light.

The crescent moon fell between the clouds
behind the trees outside the
window, the bay
a frame for it’s travels
holding me in time – a map of progress.

The moon reached through the sky
stretched its arms and heart
but was also static, cold stone
high in the heights

as I turned -

It is I who am turning
moving beneath him 

apparently still, yet shifting
across the midsummer.