the morning sun is come
to paint the robin red
and daub the shadows golden
which take me from my bed
but as I rise to greet him
the dreams of you remain
and though the night is cast away
no thought of you could wane
so the morning sun is come
and lights the dawn anew
but like the robin on his breast
I wear red dreams of you.
rhyme
STANDING STONES
are their souls afire still
from the mountains long since dead
and capped perpetual winter’d chill
no more the flames of Vulcan’s dread?
they stand to watch the eons die
no mortal mind may fathom well
as beneath the countless skies
these sentinels no secrets tell.
so silent stands their mystery
as before man from clay was born
that none may know their history
from then until the last sun dawns
The Poetry Reading
de la Mare, did not care
and Cummings could not come
Auden sent his deep regrets
as did Betjeman.
Housman was a bit put out
by Yeats as absentee
who was with Thomas down the pub
drunk with Bukowski
so of my little soirée
is much best left unsaid
it serves me right I’m sad to say
for inviting just the dead.
Swifts & Swallows
swifts and swallows
swoop the hollows
first to heights unreckoned
then to shallows
o’er fields left fallow
the summer suns they beckon
sleek and narrow
feathered arrows
shot not from a bow
but they impart
like Cupid’s dart
such fantasies to glow
The Last Page
should endings come in day or night
the epilogue is ours to write
whether will or fate intends
it’s to this final page we wend.
Lines On A Summer Morning
joy lives in the cuckoo’s call
that echoes on this woodland morn
extolling to us one and all
that spring has mothered summer born.
June 19, 2021
Lychgate
keep the lychgate free for me
that I may spend eternity
somewhere ‘twixt the day and night
that place where wing-ed dreams take flight
not quite life but not yet death
in the measure of my final breath.
The Virgin Way
he had not walked this way before
nor set foot upon the trail
which his ancestors travailed
a million nights ago or more
when man’s footsteps were as small
as those of beast or bird or game
without the will this wild to tame
and to make from summer, fall
so this forest waits for him
afeared of what his presence brings
for the ending does begin
when man looks on everything.
Epigram
what evil lives under the sun
save all our good deeds left undone
the robin (fragment)
regard the robin’s Sunday best
that with such faith his heart is blessed
he wears it bold upon his breast
