Constraint

By Gub (Eden Holme, 26 July 2025)

We have so

Little time 

Leaning against the empty carcass of the wind 

The day pulled short;

the tight string of

Life’s purse

The jewels

Of purpose

(Of meaning) 

Held, diminutive

In a bag of velvet constraint, 

As if our sole asset 

Were significance, 

Without which we would 

Perish 

As paupers 

But this is entrapment 

By ego of consciousness 

And not the source of light

In our being 

Meaning is but a flicker 

Of the projector’s 

Trailer,

The feature throws 

A bigger picture into space 

An expanse of story on which 

All things pervade, and sense 

Is senseless -

To follow such vastness 

We must be invert

Become what we are not, 

Exhale our something 

And become nothing 

With the oneness 

That is the gift the

Black purse hides 

The most valuable gemstone 

Is the uncut jewel,

Whose reflected light

Is never released…

Tilia

She dances on the beach in the rolling mist, 

Glistening legs

A small breath inside a giant exhale 

Every stranger she encounters 

is a promise of play

I watch on, as if given a chance 

to visit myself in a different childhood

Where I still trust

Where I move towards, not away

Awareness grows up and out 

like sweet pea tendrils on a cottage trellis in Solva

Until I have the point of view of the sun

A large pendulum marking small units of human time 

Cosmic arch above stone arches 

The past sings a Vierne lullaby in St David's Cathedral

But it is the young playing for the old 

Role reversal 

That marks the fall of civilisation

The sign of the apocalypse

will not be famine and pestilence

but the gaping mouths of 

ostentatiously ornate organs

silent in empty churches 

When there will be no master, apprentice

Nor congreation

We will have forgotten what the score was

Or what we worshipped in the first place

We will water our gardens

Rendered restless and mute

Like the last speaker of a dead language 

who cannot convey the way 'lime' - 'tillia' - 'tei'

invokes all at once 

tree and its blossom, 

The specific scent of summer,

The movement of the wind's visibility cloak 

longing and mourning 

a surge of the heart 

and a burial. 

 

Lullaby

By Gub (Eden Holme, 14 July 2025)

And when they say 

Truth is a circle 

Arriving as it does 

at the precise 

Point of departure 

It’s a path 

That returns

And Enriches 

Us Again

A Rediscovered

Trail

That destination 

Unsought,

not manufactured 

Comets

Don’t lie

Their  heavens

Herald

flight of angels 

passengers 

In benevolent 

Ruses

And time 

space 

And life 

That endless 

Speculation

Of god, of man,

Of whose muse 

Is whose ?

Let me die here

In the quiet of a night 

Sky

Blossomed  by a heatwave in 

Mid-July

The earths heat 

Keeps the icy 

Weight 

Of that dark celestial 

Berg 

At bay

And beneath my feet

My dog lies

Tongue stilled 

On jaws of

Sleep

And the Sun 

Not yet born

In the heat 

Of a new day …

If peace had a sound 

It would be a quiet whisper 

Of love

The chant of all the lullabies 

Sung to dying babes

The crisp white linen

That falls around 

A still corpse,

The lifeless 

Demure

Body that

ghosts 

Gift

The living 

Something 

To pray for

As if awakening 

From death had some purpose

When the passage of life’s

Reward is the bequest 

Of matter 

Back to our maker 

Ashes to dust 

And dust to ashes 

Each ember a star

In the fire ….

Now I know

By Sil (13th of November, Hereford)

This morning I stood on the door step and trimmed Scully's hair 

I thought of my husband mowing lawn in late autumn 

When grass blades have lost their exuberant thrust

A chore I will never have to do again

I remember touching Mia's fur a week before we put her down 

It was dry, greying and lifeless; she looked like a stuffed animal displayed in the natural history museum

Scully's fur, now a death shroud 

Is how how I know that it's time

I took the dogs for a walk along the river

Luna darted all over the place

Scully trotted gingerly along the narrow path, 

falling further and further behind 

And for some reason it felt like he was moving in real time

whereas I was caught up in the sped-up funeral march a the edge of the universe, 

where matter falls away from matter faster and faster 

Unravelling,

as if it were the fraying seam of a sweater when a child catches the loose end of a thread,

and keeps tugging at it

I stared right into the eye of the sun 

And said: 

This is my future

And yours, too, star

We're just riding biological trains that are moving at a slower pace

Watching my dogs die is how I know the destination

Is how I know the perfect darkness at the end of time

Route 66

By Gub (24th of January)

Life is a box of dirty tricks,

An old red can

So many things have kicked.

Rust on the outside

Bright tin within

It can carry fuel

But the cap leaks.

If we knew the road, 

knew which way

It lay,

The stops would be longer

The rush would cease.

More time to pray.

But our eyes are fixed on the 

Car in front 

Horizons' un risen

Prizes ahead 

Rewards on the side 

Are lay-by's 

Of delay

So many Miradors and 

Vistas unseen,  

Another time we tell ourselves; 

Another place 

Not today

Someone else's

Dream.

That's the case with

'route 66'

A journey that seems infinite 

Is but a short stretch 

Soon the carriageway narrows; 

To a single lane 

The distance ahead 

a fraction of what behind us

Lay...

Smiles, tears 

The laughter; shed,

Either remembered 

Or forever

Unfound

Hills,  valleys,

Snow capped peaks 

Blue sky ;

Clouds

Beaming

Or

Un glimpsed

Become part of eternity's sleep 

The red can's

paint, flakes of rust ..

Life's stains are miasma; 

Vital blemishes 

We now crave; 

Cling to the slightest 

Furrows in dust 

feverish searches for footprints 

in sand 

Seconds  to evidence 

That moment of being; 

Any sign 

We were here 

Shaping light 

and shadow 

The sun, dunes, a vulture rising above the castellations of the  Red Fort 

Another day

 - spared

Knowing 

What we cannot see...

And seeing what we

Could never know ; 

The world in a grain of sand

an eternity lost 

       and found 

In the palm of 

a hand .

Death did not..

By Gub (the 6th of May)

Death 

Did not do 

What death could, 

And extinguish all

Life in one blow.

He takes what he wants, 

In one’s or threes,

And sure; amidst occasional human battles

Multiples of these.

Over time 

Well all eternity, the 

Score he fells will run a trillion or more 

But these in aggregate 

Sound excessively dramatic 

In the fullness of infinity, they are but the gentle popping of candle wax around a universal wick.

A slow flow

Back into the tallow…

That feeds a continual flame

The prospector

By Gub (the 16th of May, Eden Holme)

The day 

Is overfull

Uncompleted

Tasks abound

I pull at rocks 

A Palaeolithic sifting

through time’s rubble 

Lowing like a bull 

From side to side 

My pendulum 

Moves nothing 

Forward 

The edge of each swing

Shapes a  parentheses

Between which my body and 

Mind rock 

Marking hours 

But without progress

The prospector

With no prospect 

Other than

To prospect

Then true treasure is not buried 

In the find 

But in the search?

An empty house

By Gub (4th of June, Hanging Bank Cottage) 

Every other day

I return

Here 

To this stone grey shell

And scrape another 

Tile from 

Its mosaic

Undoing 

30 years

Of history

A cleaner fish, 

Skirting around the behemoth’s

Body

Zig-zagging amidst the shadows of a leaf dappled carcass

Beams not bones

Holding the sky aloft

Walls withstanding 

Wailing winds

This small stoned

Sanctuary 

With all the wants and wishes 

Of a world 

It’s weeping joys

And cosmic sadness 

Empty now

As a life un-spun

Here the soul of time

Feels exposed 

As if each door

Were both and opening 

And closing 

Of pathways 

The whole house a stilled heart

Through which lives once flowed 

Like blood 

And love 

Followed a rhythmic 

Pump, 

Dilating 

In time with the rise and 

Fall of the day

It’s hard to stay 

hard to leave 

The past is a prisoner 

In the present 

Captive to being unchanged

Every second is a threshold 

To a future 

Un-forged

A house that was a home 

Becomes a house once more 

Yet the life it held, spills forth 

The leaves above, the fields 

Below

Gyrations of shifting greens, 

Dark greys, brilliant blues 

Canopies of light 

Through which swallows

Dip, 

And hedges shelter the trill whistles

Of the wren.

We are not where we think we are,

We are not what we think 

We are

This

unlocked 

Moment

An empty house 

In late spring …

E-human

By Gub (15th of July) 

We can’t trade  happiness 

Nor purchase time 

Love is the only measure of  

Sanity 

Yet to define it

You need a sharp quill

To  draw something so soft, 

From such an abstract 

Mire of ego, need, 

And counterfeit reasoning

Love isn’t pure, 

It’s complex.

A molecular chemistry

That can poison, or save, 

Like a serpents venom. 

unique in its efficacy, 

On each one

Of us 

What we gift

What we take 

Is distinct.

This  precision in DNA 

Ensures 

No duplication in distribution 

Nor exchange 

Rilke’s sharing of 

‘Protected solitude’ 

Or Keats’ ‘selfish love

Which cannot breath’ 

IS the difference 

 

The echo of my call

In the darkness

The owl’s cant, or is it a

Nightingale or a jay?

What you reply in song

And what notes you choose 

Divides and unites

No love is the same

 

It is forever so

No single day 

comes again.

Beach snapshot of the apocalypse

By Sil (Hereford, 3rd of July)

the waves will polish

boulders into pebbles, pebbles into sand

then backyards, deckchairs, mould-strewn walls

will be sucked into the grinder 

the Holy Spirit will descend 

and you'll speak in tongues 

all human languages 

and the language of seagulls 

dogs 

and fish too

but on each day

God will erase what he hath created the night before 

He'll take Adam first, then all the animals

so you'll have no one to talk to 

And you, Eve, 

will lie naked on the wooden deck of the beach pub in Borth

watching the last sunset alone

What you get

By Gub (Borth, 29th of June)

What you get …

On an beach in June in Wales 

Is a mosaic of stories 

Laid out 

wide 

Against an opaque 

Slate Sky 

Of Green and blue

marine

The sand leaks

shimmers of light

That mirror the skin

Of an Atlantic seal

And elsewhere 

Miniature feet mark

Steps that fade

With each

Hop forward; 

Seconds in life lines

That run hap hazard

In abandonment 

Of worry

Time’s face has no dial

On a beach in June in Wales.

The curve of the dolphin’s

Back rising above the rollers

Matches the zeppelin boards of a  school of surfers 

The sea swells with cries 

Of Terns, undistinguished from the yelps 

Of children’s rompings

 

The gyre and gimble

Of evolution’s tug,

back and forth 

Between land’s beckoning 

purpose

And the ineluctable 

And Eternal

Draft of the sea ….

Our flight

(By Gub, 21st of January 2024, Hereford)

The inner journey 

Is just that -

So rumination is best left

To its own inertia

Progress

Lies in the outer worlds 

Of falling leaves 

and russet trees

No passage 

Sailed is entirely solo,

Even the wind that haunts

A friendless crossing 

Once Blew through populated seas

Hauntings

happen

when

Memories and souls

Reunite

The haunter's power

lies in evoking 

What the haunted has

Lost..

What tarnish

Can be lifted 

By a light

Rub of the lamp

The luminesce 

Of a past love

Aroused - 

And flames 

Reignited

Around 

The shared  story -

Recall with 

Vigour and all imaginative might

That great surging forth

The height of the waves,

The thrill of those white crested

Beacons,

The energy of the seas ocean

Hurling us up towards 

The shimmering 

Sun

And above the endless cycling of the tides,

Our flight 

From grief...

Like Christmas Morning

(By Sil, 24th of January, 2024, Hereford)

a candle in the autumn sea

love is a child clasping a leaf 

under flaming sycamore trees

at home, she peels off every garment

sleeps naked, curled up on the kitchen floor

exuding the sensuality of 

a summer day at the beach

her skin has the appeal

of fresh snow on a hill


a canvas for the gentle brushstrokes of your fingers

she will pucker up to receive your kisses

and wipe them off

love knows the rule of return and re-entry

that snowdrops

will eventually break through icy ground


that a poem is not just for Christmas,

when you arrive, defeated,

an old hound

that lost the fox's trail

she’ll make you feel 

like Christmas morning

and when you’ve made your bed in the guest room

love will always call your name

for she knows that 

although you hide

you always want 

to be found 

Knife

(Gub, 24th of February, 2024)

Life's a knife

Sharp as tatara steel,

Indifferent to time,

shredding;

years 

It's slicing motion turns 

calendars to 

Tick-a-tape

Un blunted, 

But for the dreams 

That escape 

The shining blade

and arise 

Uncut, 

As bold as any daisy 

That escape the scythe's

Toil... 

Juggler

(6th of July 2024, Sandler's Wells)

you perform your best stunts

the woman in the front row 

withholds smiles

close enough to see your fingers curling 

on the edge of that next straw hat 

you briefly caught and released

not close enough to smell the sweat 

streaming underneath the shimmering leotard

contortionists sinew 

with a pirouette, the acrobats

conceal that moment 

when they have stepped into the wings 

and the masks come off 

arms relax

they don't owe us their true faces or their slumped torsos

this is not a ticket to their souls 

later I see you at the edge of the stalls

folded under a metal ladder 

in your black cloak of anonymity 

to your audience

you exist only in a pool of light 

crossing the fourth wall 

my eyes search out yours 

I want you to know that 

I have spotted you

my watchfulness separates me from 

those who look but cannot see

in my world, I move like a film

but my audience only sees in snapshots

they want to see you teeter

but they don't want to see you fall - they say

sometimes I make a gesture

as if I am laying down a sharp sword

like I could fight with my bare hands 

or not fight at all

when you stepped out of the limelight 

you gave up on the applause

has the audience left 

or will there be another curtain call 

in this auditorium and at funerals 

I am always sat on the last pew 

they sing

lord of hopefulness, lord of joy 

but I'm outside, following a child 

amongst the graves

Sleep

By Gub, the Whimble, New Radnor 

October 2023

On a damp peat

Path  

Cresting the green rich brow and 

Flanked by heather and gorse,

You picked that

moment and 

Said don't look back 

And 

Don't look forward,  

Let time

Stand still

And so it did 

As it has done before 

And after, and will

Again

For those walks exist 

In a lateral form,

And linear time has 

No place there.

They are for us 

An eternal stepping

A place to dream

To touch a heaven

Of sleeping giants dressed

In green felt cassocks 

And watch miniature versions

Of ourselves trip 

Lightly forward,again,  

Down the sheep 

Stepped Path…

And view a world which has 

No object, no subject but itself and know that 

Time is a liar and well rounded lives 

Are little more than practiced 

Wakings in all the morrows 

Of the universe.

When we returned home

You understood all this, 

And answered that 

Call - as you should;

with  sleep.

And then there were none...

By Gub (Last week in Felmin, Nov 2023)

Where body and mind meet

There are no days or nights

To remind us of what has past

Of what is to become...

Only what is.

Clouds drift above and stars

Fill the sky

The mountains' peaks,

Are dials signalling; compass points

In a slow passing infinity.

And yet we do count

the years -

We rest in time - Jurassic; ages

Dawn.

For without man

There is no measure

Of the universe or it's might

Or god's sight -

Our weak, frail, humanity;

Like a blink, a water droplet

Sliding down the hourglass

From here to oblivion.

Meaning yields to meaning

Only because without causality

Everything is dust

Belief

Is disbelief

So the carp rises to the surface of the pond,

To experience the buoyancy of water in the air, and in that moment masters the acrobatic dominion of two elements.

Velcro souls

to the naked girl toddling on the beach

your're out of sight and out of mind

as momentary 

as the footprints she leaves in the sand 

new dawn, new dog on the leash 

she surrenders in the arms of the present 

to me 'now' is a stranger whose grip-like embrace  

I'd like to refuse 

I close my eyes against 'now' and lock onto 'yesterday' 

when I could still run my fingers through your knotted fur

I want to burrow in that memory like wild thistle tangled in your hair

With claw-like grip

You and I, lock-and-key

Velcro souls 

Punctured

we're going through daily rituals

but life has been punctured

we're not whole

and we're silent on the matter of shape and size of the hole

I look at the same sun- bleached peaks

all is as it was and yet none feels like a present I can own

I want your soft underbelly on the courtyard stone 

soaking up rays 

I want you lapping at the water bowl

Another car, another black dog

the universe has fractured

I can hear the radio signal of 

'my life that should be' 

as if it were a patient 

only a wafer thin hospital curtain away 

I am waking up

with you 

pushing my palm up with your wet nose 

when I walk downstairs you bite my ankle  

and in the middle of the night your claws scratch the wood 

as you can't decide where to stettle

you never stop stalking the dinner table 

all tangled up between our legs

we shout 'get off, Isla', 'get down, Isla' and 'go away, Isla'

but nobody ever expects you to follow commands

your high-pitch bark 

is meant for rallying sheep and completely incongruous in a town house 

and it's always my job to tease out the tangles in your hair 

I'm the one you follow around

as if pulled by an invisible thread  

in this world you always find me

and never collapse at the bottom of the stairs

and I don't have to lift your hips, flaccid like snow

or remember that death smells like rust

another car, another black dog.