At Venta Icenorum a man runs
along ancient walls after sunset
a shadow against the sky

Is he running into the future
or into the past?

When we look through dust-boxes of your memories
we see the past:
secret pictures with no captions
fading postcards from forgotten journeys
diaries of household chores
keys with no locks

official documents no longer valid
dumb cassettes and lost technology

and then with no warning
we see the future: our own boxes
dumped in someone’s bedroom

our son and grandchildren
looking older
searching for something
they can make sense of
something that can bring us back
or send us on our way

shadows against the sky

This is a poem from my new book, published yesterday and called Waving from a Distance. One or two other poems from it have been used on this site. It is available from Amazon, should you feel that way inclined.

Time shifts and slides
sometimes slow, sometimes fast,
sometimes black, sometimes white,
sometimes red

Nine short months a howling wilderness
in distance travelled, like a refugee,
waiting for something to happen,
a death or a birth

Dark frontiers must be crossed
and there is nothing written down,
no instructions,
nothing certain, nothing to show

You glimpse the future
then it darts back into hiding

and just when you think it will soon be over
you must travel to a new place
where there is no home
where there are people who may hate you
who wish you were not there:
papers to be signed

and you have no power
except the power within you
which seems so small

This poem was also part of the alternative carol service. I hope its relevance there is fairly obvious.

I slip into sleep
but the conversation continues

The word that was in the beginning
changes in my absence:
to me it sounds the same,
and the story unfolds

The difference may be subtle
or not: the level of sound is the same
and it seems to make sense

but the word has been corrupted:
something different has entered in –
something alien

and when I wake
a split second or hours later
I think I am there, in the same place
following the same thread

but the word is not as it was in the beginning
I cannot answer those key questions
there are gaps in my knowledge
and new characters

I try to cover it up,
laugh easily, swear I have heard it all
but I have lost something

I need to hear it from the beginning
the start of creation,
stay awake this time

People are starting to look at me
strangely

So; you are here again.
Something solid near my grave:
something I could almost touch.

Except that when I reach for you,
my fingers slide through
your body: there is nothing
to stop them.

We are like that:
we can do tricks you only dream of.

My fingers used to slide
through your hair, but now
you do not see me. That too
is a trick, but it is a secret.

We all stand here and watch as you
come with your flowers.
It is kind of you to come. I see
you do not bring her.

I try to touch you, but
I always found it hard. Now
it is too late. I know that.

There is a light somewhere, I think.
It may be
a way out. Sometimes I feel it behind me, or
in the distance,
but there is nothing to touch. We can only
scream into the silence, watching you.

It is a trick. I hope you do not find out
how it works.

This is another poem from the past – ten years ago, to be precise. I am not sure I would have written it quite like that now, but as Bob Dylan and many others said, things have changed. Me, for example.

We walk into the glen,
not knowing how far

The path is good, but in the air are drops of rain,
which we mistake for midges

Nothing bites:
the hills of Harris rise up
on both sides, and we look hard at them,
hoping for the holiness
of golden eagles

set apart,
sanctified,
somehow free

We cross the bridge and sit in the hide,
waiting patiently, which is hard for us

We prefer highlights
and instant replay, but
the sky is empty

In the end we head back to the road:
just after the bridge,
joking about the lack of penguins, we see

sudden shapes in the sky
and rush to focus

There is no doubt:
three eagles play
in the unreachable air

Glued to the ground,
we stand in awe,
grateful for this grace,
this unearned revelation.
this resurrection of our hopes,

amazed that there was no prayer involved at all,
just jokes about penguins

Of course, jokes about penguins
are prayers too

This poem was written after a holiday in the Outer Hebrides, and a glimpse of golden eagles after we had almost given up looking. Of course, you never give up looking. Do you?

We sit silently at the front, dumbfounded:
before us, close on 300 sons and daughters of Blakeney House:
no more stout Sir Thomas, no more learned sage,
no more Crome and Walpole, no more history’s page –

just a pleasant spot
on the North Norfolk coast, slightly susceptible
to flooding

Those young eyes gaze at us,
relics of a bygone age,
consigned to the ark
(honour of the school, apparently)
and we gaze back, aghast
at how many years have passed

Echoes of the abandoned school song fade
across the playing fields
(was it joy we used to know?),
its tune stuck firm in our muddy memories
despite our efforts to finger it out

Did we really belong here?
No caps, no sacred lawn,
no gowns, no ties, no tuck shop,
no visions of selfish fame,
no absorbing aim,
no playing the game

Yet something lingers on
as the drizzle strengthens into a downpour outside:
the same gateway, a certain
sense of direction

And where have we been,
falling through cracks,
disappearing in unlikely places, or
sticking unexpectedly hard to those things we knew?

Those ancient, eternal things
are slipping away now,
and we do the same,

leaving a faint memory in younger minds,
something one Friday,
some old guys sitting there,
a ghost in the machine

This is a poem I wrote following a visit by a group of us to the City of Norwich School, where we had started our high school careers 60 years earlier. It borrows generously from the school song, which I have to say I still regard fondly.

I sit in an optician’s chair,
tested by the flashing of lights,
trying to see more clearly,
but it is no use: I remain addicted to the illusion
that life is fine as it is

finite, filled
with stories of demons,
mystery beating in ancient blood:
but there is unexpected trouble
in paradise

I shout at the sun, suddenly,
and slide right past
the fundamental point

Then, like a moth trapped in a window,
wings outstretched,
I realise that touching the floor
is not a dream

A momentary mystic,
misfit in this wavering world,
I am touched by grace again
and the joy of returning

God passes into me,
and I into him:
we empty ourselves
through the narrow, incomprehensible gate

This is a poem I wrote almost exactly five years ago.

In a grey summer dreamworld
you wear a coat of many colours
but remain invisible

until someone touches you,
when you radiate
that cool, unreachable light,

changing everything:
hell into heaven,
for example, or
absence into closeness

The yellow bird perches
on a child’s hand
and disappears

Sometimes it’s hard to remember

I am lost in here, beneath the brambles and the weeds
My grandson’s grandson looks for me
He wonders what sort of man I was
if I was somehow like him, searching

He could hunt down the histories, line by line
but like me he is impatient
darting from one part of the graveyard to another
straining to read the  collapsing inscriptions

hoping for inspiration, fate, some kind of
inner knowledge or
voice from beyond

He could track me down perhaps
from documents and records
but he prefers to travel graveyards
and I am here, really I am

lost in the thorns
hidden for years
shapeless
removed

The sun is going down
He is not far away now
We are much closer
than he would dare  believe

The track to the edge of the saltmarsh
is rough enough:
beyond that, the sky dips

I opened my eyes when the war ended, and
to me it was normal:
the broken buildings, the emptiness,
the echoes

There was no blood to tell the story,
as there is none here: just a map
in three dimensions –
an ordinary survey with graves not marked

But there is mud, sucking away flesh,
given the chance,
blind to ambition, even the smallest dream

Here is the unexpected future,
drawn with a dreadful beauty:
a man with the Second Coming in his hat
tells stories of healing
and the true nature of time

Out there the sea spreads its fingers silently,
paints new patterns on this naked body,
challenging the traveller to guess
which path leads home