Red Sunset 16-4-3010

The sunset was supposed to be red and dramatic because of the volcanic ash, but it wasn't much differnt from usual.

Japanese Weeping Cherry

This Japanese weeping cherry
can be Ortonesque
Should I, with a little click
Of my mouse
Intensify its colours, soften the focus
Highlight this , fade out that?

Allen says any twat can photoshop
Or drag and drop a shadow
digital wizardry is not photography
when correction of exposure
takes a split second after the fact
real photographic imaging
is done in dark-rooms
with concoctions of art and science
And hit and miss excitement
After hours of work.

Carla says to reproduce
Natural lines on a computer
(As in the Japanese Weeping Cherry)
Is cheating. Any amount of tweaks
To the Japanese Weeping Cherry
Do not improve the interpretation
Of its beauty and form.
The multi layered cubist effect
Of HDR by photomatrix
Or pontillistic mousing is not art
Art is sweated and hurts
Art is allowed to be ham fisted
(but not good art- see what I mean?)


Maybe it takes a poet
Not a photo to show
the soul of the Japanese Weeping Cherry
Expose the dramatic tension
of erupting flowers
The colour of knife wounds
Across a scarred sky at sunset
waxy, like the dribble of candles.

Nik says just tell them this
If they want to know
Japanese bloody Weeping Cherry
Forget the photo
Plant one on the veranda
Open the eyes and breathe
In it.





Home thoughts from abroad

For Mum
one year after we said goodbye for the last time.




When a dozen daisies
upturned their faces
to eggshell skies
and the sun
warmed your back
enough to shed
your winter twinset
your eyes danced
like teeming pools
you drank the scented breeze
like a parched anemone gulps soft rain
i could see your spirit wriggle
splash like a blue tit in a bird bath.

Dad bought you a brooch
One year in some desert place
bright enamelled freesias;
another more temperate time
stems of fragrant blooms
packed in cool cotton- wool
from Guernsey
as if you were still
In love.

You filled the house
with narcissi and irises
you loved blue and yellow
hummed about your housewife chores
and recited Browning
because you had been scorched
by the flaming tropical sun
And the English spring
gave you back your youth
and life.

They had brushed your hair
a hundred strokes
it spread on the pillow
a cloud of apple blossom
in a Kentish orchard
your hands soft as petals
did not want to let go
of mine
your face expectant
as an April pansy.

Coastal Erosion 2 -Pill boxes

Pill -Boxes


Pill boxes, crash to the beach
from the receding cliff-line
tired of watching, waiting
for the waves to bring the invader .
Barnacles conspire with seaweed
to camouflage the concrete blocks
A secret last bastion
against the relentless hunger
of the sea .


They march along the sands
Where once a chain of beacons
Spread news from point to port
and red-cheeked harvesters
reaped a sea of yellow corn;
Where church bells rang the changes
announcing life and death
and calling men to succour
sailors wrecked upon the rocks below.

You walk the strand
On bubbling cockles
And ammonite fossils
Your feet over printing
Those of dinosaurs.

Last Supper

I doubt the mouse
poised on hind legs
sniffing Easter morning air
in dribbling sunshine
to nibble at a thistle
thought about anything at all
never mind Judas kisses
sins of man and resurrection of the dead
or whether he had been a good mouse
the concept of paraquat poisoning
would not have been on his mind
as he staggered a few mouse steps
keeled over and expired

I doubt the mouse
cared that I cared
About his immortality
more than I probably should
have done.

Ophelia in the frogspawn

Primordial quickenings bubble
breeze stirs glaucous potage
April rain disturbs surface tension
sunlight and weed shift patterns
Bring her into brief watery focus
her face watches the willow break
Through a frogspawn lens.

Catkins

Salix caprea at Murton Park York 4th April 2010



We called it pussy willow
Considered in our hamlet
unlucky to cut , incarcerate indoors
before Palm Sunday


We laid the branches
in the path of the donkey
bearing the triumphant man-child
grinning to his Passion
through the village street.
Hosanna.

On the riverbank a she-cat yowls
for her doomed kittens
destined to drown
in the swollen brook.

Salix weeps
droops its whips into the stream
life-lines for dying innocents
their spirits reborn in furry
earthly forms clinging.

Snow in town January 2010