“The richest man is he who sees wonder each time a bird takes flight.” N P Smith


I PICKED AN APPLE


I picked an apple from the bowl,
it was russet and hazel,
uneven in shade.
I bit into it and tasted it’s flesh
exposing the seeds waiting in
it’s core and I wondered.
Awaking at midnight I saw the moon’s
curiosity had got the better of her,
as she had crept close under
cover of night to sneak a peak
at the sleeping world
and I wondered.
A river trout broke the surface,
for a second free from it’s
fluid prison, it gasped at a midge
before breathing water again
slowly it’s form undulating
making me wonder.
And a dove taking flight,
denying gravity’s purpose,
slipping loose from ties
that prevent me from soaring
aloft and swooping through
the invisible seas above,
always makes me wonder.


Is that you


Is that you I hear,
at times,
in the half light shade,
a silken voice as though all
the world’s songs of love
are a single melody,
caught and carried to me
by precious memory.
Is that your touch I feel,
sometimes,
in the morning mist’s
promise of light to come,
when time blinks and
I feel a hand pass
over my cheek leaving
a tear’s ghost in it’s wake.
And as I lay pleading for the
night’s pity to grant mercy
and take me to where all
is possible, I place a kiss on
the dark nothing beside me
that is you.


As sleep ebbed

As sleep ebbed into dawn’s first touch,
the morn still held fast by night,
there above the snow gilded streets of
a town’s first winter wake,
flew a silent flock of creatures unknown,
swift and with purpose,
a ghostly grey shimmer
against the dark’s dominion,
tiny bodies and blurred wings
caught by the ice mirrored lucency
of fading moonlight.

My Ghost is there still

I loved
the slight crunch
of fallen needles underfoot,
the seeping balsam hint,
redolent of something past,
just on the nose then gone,
the secret glade of baize like grass,
where drowsy with calm,
I would sit against the thickest bark,
just in the shade, to gaze
at the contrasting glare
of sunlight swatch before me.
I would follow the beck,
knowing where every foot
needed to be placed,
slow and deliberate as
that place became me.
And by the bridge,
where clumps of violet Bluebells grew,
their delicate petals bowed,
shy or tired, vivid against
the deep emerald of wild garlic.
My ghost is there still.

In the shadow of a smile

I woke in the shadow of a smile
from the Morning Star born,
and as she leaned close
and let slip a hush
upon the waking world,
I saw in that moment brief,
that all the love once thought lost,
was never lost at all,
but drawn by her breath
into the sapphire light,
there ever to remain
as the Morning Star’s bright.