poetry from lost beauty

I speak as one

I speak as one who must be alone,
I have no choice – the fire takes me.
My voice is quelled and quenched
and dampened down. Retreating
to the deep reaches of inner seas,
I sit with only me for company,
part my lips and whisper lightly
to the burning breeze:

take care, take leave,
repeat this song;
reprise.

I sing as one whose dream is spent,
whose crackling soul has seen its best.
I am ageing, as each man has before me,
each soul surprised by the advancing
of inevitability – yet why would I doubt
the dazzle of things foretold?
I part my lips and breath rasps out -
a light and burning breeze:

take care, take leave,
repeat this song;
reprise.

The Shiel

I weighed the maltman’s shiel,
turning the grain as the soil was turned before,
and sit now swirling golden light from eighteen summers,
bringing the glass to my lips
to taste again those dusty moments on the malthouse floor.

Heft heavy like the iron shiel,
I turn my gaze on scrubbed distillery walls,
ask – what might I have forgotten
and what might I have never learned?

Tonight light snow swirls and flurries
as, in this golden winter’s pause,
I sit and think of men whose labours
yield sipped fruits that warm cold hearts.
I conjure rain that soaks the ground – prepares the soil,
evoke the sun that warms the ground – prepares the grain
for turning with the maltman’s heavy, balanced spade.

Heft heavy, like the iron shiel,
I turn my gaze on white, stone cottage walls,
recall, at last, what I have forgotten,
and know, at last, what I will never learn.

Orange (for my daughter Jenny)

You are orange,
fire in the evening,
a winter sun and sweet
fruit of the season.

You are orange, an
uncompromised soul;
you are the deep
colour of your life.

As others see your sun
and feel your heat,
I clamber up through
torn forests to stand atop
your snow-tipped peaks.

You are orange, an
uncompromising rise
each hopeful morning,
a day to be lived,

each night
a joyful setting. Yours
is an orange life
and a fateful loving.