Ageing

You avoid the sun
Etching lines on
Your skin. You are
The artist, not the sun.

Mortal

In the end, we are not our layers. Our leaves shed.

Cracked and worn out, our souls Try to move on.

My dearest friend

He passed away. Did he?

Surely he is here? Surely we

Will see him, hug him, be 

Hugged by him again?

I believe he has not gone

He has

 just left his body

And is more present, true

Present, real present, as we

Are, more. He is now more

Both deeper and lighter,

So free that he can no

Longer be

Framed in a picture.

So free that there is 

Not a corner of the

Universe he has not 

Reached. He has become

One and is now everywhere

We are sad because 

We cannot see him, but 

We can believe him and 

Love him forever , as we 

Did before, our dear Dumbledore, Harnaik, Arnie.

Passing on

When there’s no answer on Google or
Too many and too frightening and
No knowledge in your body to tell your
Bones how to do what they should

How to pull your feet up and put them
There, on the next step, without thinking
Under the rest of your spine with all its
Grand thoughts of time and catching

A sunset via a riverside path or a quick
Nip across the bridge before the rain Spills over and the supper time hunger Takes hold and what? What were you

Saying? Stretching your mind through
Each tingling finger, gingerly curled bent
To keep the shaking at arms length
Hiding from yourself the quiver that

Delivers curdled messages up the Tracks  into racks of pain dangling wee Teeth in front of a brain squeezed back into a
Blank corner, nothing on the wall now

That the..Now that the…Now that the
Heart is closing up shop and has Packed up all the memories but has left The hooks, thoughtful for the next guest.

Raven omen aum

The Future carries the wings
That move Past through
The doubting

Crater crack crater cracks
Tomorrow grills
Today in

Light and yet back it comes
Unearthing doubt again
Miraculously.

Hallowed trees

When branches sink their roasted
Leaves into next Spring’s earth

The Dead meet the Saints and Winter’s
Angels light the leafless dark.

A sigh of relief

Today I was told
That, according to new data,
The radiotherapy I had
May actually shorten
My life even more.  

There’s no turning back
There’s no switching off     
What was on
But there is always
Something science has
Yet to put her finger on.  

Cancer sidestepped the norm
Just by being born
And carries on in that vein
Plotting new ways to counteract
Natural or man-made attack.  

Let’s focus the energy, now,
Make our own gamma
Knives out of sheer love,

And when we have hacked the Radio cunning and counterproductive Reproduction with our own sweet lines,  

The bitterness of everything
Will ebb away and the
Body will breathe out

How old am I? My age is…

A leap of time
Between Death and
Knowing;  

Curving
Round my soul,
It streaks out to the
Stars, becoming light,

It fuels
Me on or in or
Back or round,  

Depending
On how I look at it or
Listen in.

Mrs Jenkins, Blue Zone, Ward E.

She shakes her hand, no
Visitors to lift her spoon
To wet her wise mouth.

Epitaph for Grandpa Pete

Stanley
Peter Merer,
Architect, sailor, spitfire
Survivor.

Zoom up –
SWERVE, the tropics
And dales, war to peace:
Air to sea.

He ruled
New colours and     
Shapes that could tame breezing light
Like the best
Sails and wings.