Your ironstone village idyll is forever soured

the quaint stone cottages dulled and tainted, 

now turn from red gold to rust

decaying slowly as do you.

You, the selfless nurse, now being nursed

a spouse not two-years in the ground, and

left to embrace brief interludes

of pain, tears, grief and making do.

As your cancer slowly masticates

a favourite song coats your lips

like warm poison, a whispered,

‘only half the man I used to be’

And those of us who know you well

concur you’re twice the man 

we ever were.

*

© Graham Sherwood 07/2019

The thirty-three degrees circus

has upped and gone

the colourful itinerant jamboree

unhitched its wagons in the torpor

of a listless night

and secretively rolled away

to newer climes,

leaving us behind, lucky

to have enjoyed her spectacle

sad at her promiscuous brevity

*

© Graham Sherwood 06/19

I don’t keep the curtains drawn in the summer,

being at the rear,

the sitting room is not overlooked and

I like to watch the day slide away, 

the trees briefly silhouetted until darkness

smothers the garden’s subtle colours.

I wasn’t expecting lightening

it wasn’t forecast, just one flash 

both surprising and rather disappointing

the blackness turning to a negative

resetting instantaneously, as did my attention 

to an old concert on TV.

I don’t know how long the figure 

had been standing there

outside the patio windows,

it just seemed to have loomed into view

as if focussed by a lens,

no features just shape, human shape,

greyness in front of the black

immobile.

I ought to have been frightened

nagged my thought processes but

there was no fear

as I walked tentatively to the window

and stood there, face to form

no words, no movement,

both transfixed sandwiching the glass.

after and age I returned to my chair

I don’t know why,

the form remained motionless

an intent voyeur.

I realised that I was crying

a relieved sob, as if in recognition

as the dark shape moved

with an almost imperceptible nod

before fading out join the blackness,

as the music faded in

‘us and them, after all 

we’re only ordinary men’.

*

© Graham Sherwood 06/2019

(lyrics Pink Floyd)

You are crying

that distraught, devastating wail

as if there has been news

of the death of a dear one

or the cruelest of disappointments

I am laughing 

a jaw-aching ecstatic howl 

with sublime tears spilling

relentlessly as my shoulders

heave uncontrollably.

As you face the mirror

and I stand at your shoulder 

our faces are identical.

*

© Graham Sherwood 06/2019

I am ageing,

the world I thought I knew

 is in flux around my unsteady feet,

contorting in metamorphosis

as traditions, conventions 

codes and civilities

that, once held dear, lie

butchered and defeated

by the sniggering barbs

of wanton change;

change without progress,

a weakening fluidity

for facile inertia

easy meat, fast-food humour

masquerading as a fashionable

paradigm, 

hollow and politically toothless,

I am ageing

the world I thought I knew

is demented and 

recognizes me no longer

*

© Graham Sherwood 06/2019

Ancient knowing walls and an ivy-hidden gateway

jealously enfold the earth’s green aromas

damp soil, vegetation and softened wood.

Aged wisdom, old tools, straight lines

where canes, sisal and markers sign the paths

nets, sticks and cloches stand sentry for tender shoots.

There’s a calm here, a wash that cleanses

the mind and softens the heart,

bringing a warm melancholy, peace.

Even the raucous scrape of a spade

is damped by the peculiar, intensely heady climat.

Time is slowed, breathing slower

herbal scents arrive as onshore breezes

seeping from the valley below.

And out of focus, barely seen

Mevagissey’s lost boys

go silently about their gentle business.

*

© Graham Sherwood 06/2019

Yourself, an accident at birth,

the twin that survived

as your sibling withered and died.

Clothed, fed and nurtured

you grew, flourished became beautifully

nubile, fruitful, child-bearing.

We grew, from you, as you, in your image but

made mistakes, were careless, ignorant

becoming selfish gluttons 

for wealth and visibility, but

mother you embraced us still,

acknowledging our naivety.

You gave us freedom, independence 

travel, learning, experience, culture

showed us how to understand the stars,

think for ourselves, make decisions

some that hurt you savagely.

But the crucial secret that you held, 

you hid from us, as a mother would,

our brief predecession, 

before you take your own rest 

your work done. 

*

© Graham Sherwood 06/2019

The kitten arrived on the very first evening

as if summoned, and 

being more than happy to be petted by anyone

was christened Floozy

not very French admittedly,

pouffiasse would have been more appropriate.

Nonetheless Bea had found a friend

who would come every day

for favours and attention, but

being a French mademoiselle offered

very little in return.

Later, as Bea finally gave up

and fell asleep in her mother’s lap

we ate fillet and drank claret

thinking life gets no better.

Sunday, a real Sunday

nothing stirs but  the fodder grass,

it’s tall again but not ready for the blade

needing sun as do we.

Only the fractured peal of the Eglise St Martin 

measures out the day’s stumbling progress

with an atheistic clank.

Eagerly awaited holiday books are finally creased,

and mysteries, adventures and romances unfold

as a lazy guilt seeps from our bones, and

we exhale from our routine lives.

It’s early half-light, the day already overcast,

and picked out in the car’s headlights

a weak bulb glows through the baker’s window.

The intoxicating aroma of crusty bread

indelibly France.

The greeting is heartfelt, it’s lunchtime for him

loose change is dropped into

the glass dish on the counter, a bientot!

and an insatiable desire to bite

the end off the baguette before starting the car.

On the drive home, skies clear to pale grey,

I skirt the ancient redundant windmill, that

once would have ground the wheat,

and the pigeonnier sentinel amongst

the dripping vines.

It will be dour today, but

the thought of breakfast bread, ham, melon 

and superb coffee will lift our spirits.

St Emilion, a happy ghetto wedged in the limestone cleft

multicoloured terracotta rooftops 

juxt and cheek by jowl 

spill from the plateau to the cote.

This town is riddled like Emmenthal 

its Gallo-Roman catacombs, now

fill with wine,

a tourist trap nirvana seethes

with many tongues.

But early, before sunrise

a medieval torpor sits in the lanes

and through the alleys

imagined likely bladesreturn boisterous from a masque

.

© Graham Sherwood 06/2019

~

Once set and lit a fire is free, 

it burns however it wishes untamed,

the defiance of steel blue

sedition of callous green,

the delinquency of sharp orange

and the assassin’s tongue red,

the flames writhe tortured

in their wanton destructive spectrum.

A wind might seek to move its will

to bear its heart a certain path

but the fire’s business of burning, 

of charring, gnawing and consuming

is its own, unchallenged.

But, a fire’s life is short

a one-way battle to ash, where

death is inevitable,

a long, degraded death.

Be sure that life

rekindled from the embers

will be a new fire

not a reincarnation of the old

~

© Graham Sherwood 05/2019

~

Midday and still cold

bitterly cold 

stinging nostrils and earlobes

cutting, steel grey under a weak sun.

November at Sacre-Coeur

the uneven pavements white

fractured by ice, treacherous.

The starving artists mistakenly

took you to be Luciano Pavarotti

and made an embarrassing fuss

each wanting to draw you.

We four wore long overcoats

well below our knees,

reminiscent of your father’s

railway greatcoat that you purloined

for those beatnik sixties poetry readings.

We sat outside like mourners 

nibbling delicious gougeres and 

blowing steaming hot chocolate 

constantly pestered by students

one who resembled Francoise Hardy.

I should have paid her 

To let me just to sit there

and look at her beautiful face.

Later, at the Musee D’Orsay

we saw her again sketching,

I bought her coffee from the brasserie, 

Sacre Coeur bathed in the last glow

of a weak russet sun, was

framed by the café’s circular window,

a perfect cameo.

That evening dining in Maigret’s restaurant,

one of the many in Paris,

a delivery of fresh morels and chanterelles

were carried straight past our noses 

and changed food forever.

~

© Graham Sherwood 05/2019