Lays these ten thousands of years,
— footprints in the sand —
to climb their hills
towards cloudless summer,
astride the fallen;
castle and crusader’s tomb.

Now morning breaks
in a flight of doves
— swiftly — over the hojah’s call.

Their caliphs — marauding kings —
theirs the scimitar’s flash
and silk woven into time,
dripping the jewels
that legends break like morning
over Arabia’s
whispering sands.

And we settle deeper
huddled towards our mugs
teeming with tea,
as the world unfurls its tragedies in teletext,
over a plate laid waste
with Battenburg.

And somewhere, at the back of our mind,
there’s an island
rich with fudge coloured stone
where evening lingers
over a land
of forgotten sleeping gods,

And incense rich
of sweet wine — drips —
and we can taste the past
among the fading shadows,

Where,
not a screech is there
in that clear clean air
to stir us.

And now mourns
the summer’s scramble
back up the mountains
it melted down.

Its beach toys in decline, wilt,
and deflated bob — hobble —
jilted by a lithe wave
of wind blown sand,
cutting its course
across the seaside roads.

Cold winds to follow
brace the place
for September’s rains.

Now distinctly middle aged, this place,
and stout around the waist,
trudges in slow varicose gasps
towards December’s darker days.

Forgotten the tears, like the sudden storms.
Looking back finds only days when everyone’s Dad
was a war hero and cloudless flew the skies
with stories of the Spitfire – the circling Cessna
becoming a Lysander flown dangerously far
behind enemy lines; while at ground level
Airfix figures re-fought desert conflicts
across the shadows of children playing in the sand.

The spell breaks. A voice from a future the past
didn’t foresee refocuses the daydream into
the eyes of a child now grown – a daughter
in young adulthood stands among her words
— who will look back too, on June days
as if no rains ever came to take them away.

I observed
as you held my words
in a half nelson;
loose-leaf, limp bound,
the manuscript bent double
and folded back
across its spine,

And you read me aloud
frog marching my own
ideas past me,
and for the first time,
I understood what
the rumblings in my soul
sound like;
and the shape my thoughts
take in someone else’s mouth.

Then you put my feelings down
and picked up a sheaf of papers
— all yours; you gave me
a reading of what was
going on in inside your mind.

I heard every word,
looked up to the oak beams
that crossed, re-crossed the ceiling;
they listened intently as well.
Then as they creaked,
your home shifted slightly,
finding a more comfortable
posture in relation
to the wind outside.

You had read me
— and yourself —
before letting me go;
with good luck for a wish
on the shake of a hand …

Casts anew the figure of a man
flesh and blood cut into morning,
heralds the crossing of the seasons,
as spring invades and rampant sun
purges the last damp dark corners
a winter seeks in its trauma of
retreating cloud.

The wars that wore this place
to crumbling stone
brute elements now torment;

The shrieking rains a winter
scorches to its summers that sear;
and wound this place with its past.

And us …?
What of we who seek
some order to things
in the flaming Arab consonants
the risen sun picks out;
where once the castellated gate
held the lands
these crumbling stones now crown?

Where the thistle claims
its obscure victory
in this corner the nettle stings,
and the bramble ploughs its way
over the bones of the beast.

To these abandoned years
a harrow adds some
well hidden neglect,
dug into soil,
it is powerless to turn.

Old tractors never die
just — rust to dust — become
part of the fields they ploughed.

I love gardening, you said.

I know, I remember you knee deep
in damp autumns, drizzly praying into
beds of clogged earth;

Trowelling at weeds till the light
going, went, and brought you in
to tea, sherry, and Evening Primrose.

I love gardening, you said.

I know, and you told me why;
a gardener always looks forward, you said,
to another day, another season,
that next patch of clear sky
and there to work in.

That’s why, you said;
as you toiled towards your next tomorrow
— until that next winter came,
and so quickly, took you.

Introducing the bitter-sweet
summer fruits sharpening
sugared cereals
-milk blushed by raspberries.

It would be years before
my father would wear
a wrist watch.

‘Till then breakfasts
were always at the mercy
of this scarred face
cracked the length
of its enamel.

Time rationed to the
top of the hour slowly filtered
into the morning traffic,
when towns seep out to work.

Then the ache poisoning
the pit of my stomach.
A classroom reeking
of stale learning;

Victoriana by rote
and loathing.