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?
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 …
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.
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
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 ….
(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...
(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
