(for David Coomes)

One morning early,
before what used to be breakfast,
you sigh finally, like a breeze,
step out of the moral maze
and into something quite new,
unproduced, unscripted

The pain disappears,
not gradually but all at once,
replaced by something cool and warm
and healing:
something quite new

Through unexpected channels
you give birth to yourself, look round,
breathe out:
someone is holding you
and there is no sea

The touching clumsiness of old life falls away, and
you move in different directions,
impossibly free

You reach out for heaven again
and touch it
easily

You come back from the future
as if it were the normal thing to do,
with a cheery wave,
breaking up pieces of the past,
tangling with my emotions

Being a rational kind of guy,
like Rembrandt,
I can see how the lines work,
making shadows,
creating a room full of pictures
and women talking

but I have a gut feeling
about the way things are going
– cause and effect –
and I can’t avoid the conclusion that it’s your fault,
though that kind of chaos
is hard to pin down

In the end,
or the beginning,
there are grandchildren

I don’t know exactly where they started
or where they will finish,
and whether I should warn them about the future
and women with red lipstick,
or simply reassure them
about the love of God

which is more than a gut feeling
a wave from the future
or a room full of pictures,
however magical

In the chinese gardens
where streams strain dark cold autumn rain,
a white-faced bird escapes over slippery stones
and I, watching, fall headlong,
lie prone on the perfect patterns below the willows

Looking up, I see a change in the sky:
a ruined castle, narrow alleys and ancient graves –
storytellers all

Advent lurks in the chaotic hills and crescents,
in the waves driven across the cunning causeway:
something is certainly coming

I need to rise, but there is mud on my clothes
and I am not ready

An angel passes:
I am lifted to my feet
by the wind from his wings

Should I be afraid?
Am I ready for peace?
Is that a star shining through the clouds
or the end of life as we know it?

A blast of brightness bathes the hill:
I have to decide

> A poem written about ten years ago after an incident in Scarborough

It is my father’s birthday,
and I spray magic on his tombstone,
expecting not resurrection
but cleansing

Surprisingly, the dirt falls away,
and his name becomes clearer:
I wait for half an hour as instructed,
then do it again,
and the marble is white
– whiter than some snow

If I had better magic
I would make his whole life clearer:
I was ten when he died
and can remember almost nothing
except the time he ran up the avenue
chasing the moon,
and I followed on my bike

Now he would be 105 –
that much is clear.
To keep his grave clean is the least I can do,
and the most

Here where the road ends
(So long, Mary Ann)
the blood-red moon
shadows the thin lighthouse
and I am faced at last
with that long-approaching menace,
unable to answer questions
because your face is blurred

Back in Ward 14B
they go below your fragile skin
refusing to divulge key information
depriving you of your liberty
in case you make a run for it

making allegations
using foreign language
sucking your bright
life out and spilling it
into the sea

There is no more road:
the cliff edge cracks, revealing
poison beneath –
grey rocks dumped there vainly
for protection

None of this was our fault:
we played on the beach as well as anyone
though you never liked touching sand,
and the sea could not be trusted

Look for a new road –
one that leaps from the shore
and into the horizon:
there will be a sunrise,
and it will fit us
surprisingly well

Faint sound of bagpipes in the shower room:
a nice touch,
otherwise just what I might expect:
everything stripped down bare

Nothing to complain about:
clean, neat, white, neat, empty

Nothing left lying about:
no sign of life at all,
like a sterile cell from another dimension,
alien,
unfolded just for me:
a grand design

Outside, hollow night:
extras stroll stiffly in the street
to deceive me into thinking
this set is real

Sometimes they look up guiltily
but never stop

Like dancers down by the river
free before 10pm
they beckon to me without passion:
deep water lapping at
plain flood plain

The magician need not think he has me fooled:
all this catlike, cunning plumbing
will disappear tomorrow,
scurry back into some quantum state
paradoxically certain

Behind the curtain
he tries again:
the same old last-century trick

conjuring bagpipes
from thin, thin air

White claws
ready to strike

from overhanging bushes
ice re-forming on

hidden water
the sudden sound of silence

under grey blankets
the solidity of cold

slowing the universe down
I stop and reach for fire

using the speed of light
All shall be well

>> Bit of an experiment in form: one of this year’s sequence of Lent poems

A poor woman
walks across the landscape
carrying fuel for her fire

Stopping and looking,
the painter includes her
in his masterpiece

I carry no fuel:
I dream of mountains
and summer lakes

Can I be included
in God’s masterpiece
without ruining the view?

I stop and look

>Inspired by a moment from the BBC programme Civilisations

There are runners on the path:
my father died today,
my mother in two days’ time,
nearly 40 years apart

and we are all heading
in the same direction,
downwards and upwards

In the end we are memories,
dependent on the hearts and minds
of other people
as far as this world is concerned

The church is those who went before,
those who live
and those who are to come

a cloud of witnesses
bearing the weight
of approaching glory

I watch the black cat in a window
down the street,
far enough away:
it is beautifully catlike
against the venetian blinds,
black against cream,
like a dream
of a cat

I do not see it move:
is it a live cat or a model cat
sculpted out of storm cloud
or coal?

I do not move: maybe the cat
watches me and wonders
if I am real

Maybe God watches me and wonders
if I am real,
or cleverly shaped
cardboard

I see the cat’s ears twitch
and am reassured:

God is still watching me

Yet again, my plan was to write a poem a day during Lent, instead of giving up chocolate or wine. A rather severe upper respiratory tract infection has put paid to that in any genuine sense, but I am now trying to write a poem for every day of Lent.