once more slowly, tentatively we come together,

our caution tells us to inspect one another closely

as if playing a ‘spot the difference’ game,

we wonder pensively where each of us has been

whose company we have kept and on balance 

whether danger lurks within the answers we receive,

there is an awkwardness at first,

we used to embrace warmly, a cheek offered

a ‘bisou’ placed on both,

now neither of us are sure, what the other will accept

settling for a stroked arm or a gentle pat,

feeling our route back to the way we were

feeling ridiculous but neither crumbling first,

then there is wine, food, conversation, laughter,

time is rewound, guards slowly gradually fall and

all too soon the carriages await,

a good night, recounting events and as we travel home

glad that a friendship has survived,

the jokes, the old stories shared escapades and 

the hand-sanitizer on the toilet shelf.

*

© Graham Sherwood 09/21

day by day, week by week

inch by inch

I lose this wondrous child,

her words become longer

conversations diverse,

my magic is seen through

old jokes raise hardly a smile,

where I once steadied her

she now steadies me,

her new friends are thieves

and steal our time together,

she is grown and I sigh heavily

*

© Graham Sherwood 08/21

like lemmings, they tumble forward

crazedly in blind panic,

desperation fuelling knotted-string muscles

this is an evacuation, there is no decorum here

men and young boys leave first,

babies unaware, are passed hand-to-hand

as at a family celebration

where everyone wants a hold,

and for what?

father forgive them

they know not what they do.

*

© Graham Sherwood 08/21

their land is not your land

you have no right,

if there is to be a battle

so be it, stand back

let the brutality begin,

it cannot be your fight

you do not belong in it,

the people will decide who

will win their hearts and minds,

if weak, they will be controlled

before slowly, steadfastly

they will discover a strength

their land is not your land

you have no place within it.

*

© Graham Sherwood 08/21

in those teenage years

we slept, unconsciously entwined

like tangled laundry

sated with desire bleached love

conjoined spent serpents

having eaten each other,

in those teenage years

we were thoughtless, oblivious 

to any impossibilities

nothing could sate us, we lived

we ate, we danced, we fucked

each day identical 

without the need of a name,

in those teenage years

I wrote poems for you

I have them still

torrid, emphatic treatises

of undying love, and

in the quiet of the dark,

I imagine I see you

and read the words once again

*

© Graham Sherwood 08/21

woken again by words, lyrics

the rhythm of a vowel-less heartbeat,

the score of life’s music

a muffled metronome

swaying in one’s breast,

a scribbled line of troubled water

the pitch and swell sine wave

silently breaking shore,

a finger-drumming impatience

alters the beat, recording

the helter-skelter of each day

as the music changes its song

*

© Graham Sherwood 08/21

I watched the land burn

fire dripping from the tumult overhead

I ran and ran,

my fear turned to curiosity

edging closer

my skin warmed and dried,

fire at first precious, then valuable, 

became traded, the world warmed 

and it was good,

now I watch the land burn

from foolish animosity and folly

and with renewed fear I run.

*

© Graham Sherwood 08/21

it seems every sort of cloud

gently ambles by, a veritable cloud catalogue

slowly, like a cartoon scenery backdrop

passing our saucer-like eyes,

we’re high on the downs,

marvelling at an incredible vista

eating lunch on Ted and Doreen’s bench

looking down like gods on mere mortals

in the Lilliputian villages below us,

here the day feels like a week

a time-stretch, easy, where

silver gliders glint and then disappear

like paper airplane birds

invisibly scratching the big blue

wheeling in giant condor circles,

we eat languorously

our cheese and ham sandwiches

have never tasted so good

*

© Graham Sherwood 08/21

5.30am until 7am

Monday to Friday before school,

up at 4am on Sundays 

finished by lunchtime,

If you drop and break anything

clean it up and never lie to me,

such a scant induction as a

sixteen-year old village milk boy

in 1967, the Summer of Love,

the hippy anthem ‘ San Francisco’

scrolling through my head,

in the rain, I wore a floor-length cape

always bare forearms

in the snow I could hear George

trudging to work three streets away

crunching the freshly fallen powder,

first tea stop was at the boss’s house

always radio 3 on low and the smell of

coffee and dog hair, mingling

with Mozart,

homogenized silver top, 

Channel Island gold top

and sterilized red crown cap, daily

butter and cream only at the weekend,

we were always half done

by the time the Co-op float started,

always guaranteed a scowl,

I had strong throwers’ arms

the metal carriers held ten pints each,

one in each hand

I was paid in cash, always in half-crowns

the fittest I’ve ever been.

*

© Graham Sherwood 08/21

10 years old

we’d be out all day

in that long hot summer,

each cradling a bottle of spruce 

and a cheese and apple sandwich 

wrapped in a waxed bread wrapper,

either to the swing bridge or 

the vertiginous drop under devil’s tooth

if we were feeling brave,

otherwise it was climbing trees

the whole gang, urchin gibbons

just larking about,

hiding in Patterson’s wheat

or tickling newts, near cherry hall

only us lads, no girls allowed

unless we played kiss chase

in Hawthorne Rd,

the days were long but all too short

and then we went our separate ways

divided by something called the 11-plus.

*

© Graham Sherwood 07/21