4am quiet, your laboured breathing

and only the angry conversation 

between bottle and glass,

your compliant friends

pierce the suffocating silence.

The world sleeps but not you,

it’s time to fetch up bile

spit it out, watch it slither,

rich cynical venom,

language of the darkness

the cleaners will swill away

*

© Graham Sherwood 11/2019

Dull muddy browns,

deep sombre marooons 

copper greens

a sodden cortege 

holds the smell of death

as their sluggish parade

inches past my window,

russet horse chestnut leaves 

quiver and await 

the chilling polar axe.

We light fires an hour early,

newspapers slide to the floor

as we doze, and

dream of shepherd’s pie

and 1990 Pichon Lalande.

*

© Graham Sherwood 10/2019

Fifteen, a sticky age

for us young boys back then

in more ways than one.

Girls, legs and breasts

loomed larger than football

or cricket in the maelstrom 

of hormones orbiting our loins.

You were ‘the’ girl, the one

holding court on the grass, we 

suitors, littering your gaze

in that warm summer

of L-plate love and lust.

How beautiful you were,

how curious were we?

Oblivious 

to the cards we would draw

the decisions we’d make

the paths taken.

Now fifty-years on

we meet once each year,

with our partners of course,

those same old faces

knowing, reminiscing,

reliving the aroma of grass

the warm stroke of that sun

the unsatisfied ache, whilst

keeping precious secrets safe

*

© Graham Sherwood 10/2019

We stand here for a fragment

a mere blink in time,

tasting the air with our tongues,

feeling the earth’s warm breath 

on the soles of our feet,

we worry, we worry for our survival

for food, water and our children’s future,

when we finally leave them

to take our place in the dust, as dust.

Our fears are not humanitarian

they are personal, ashamed

of behaviours past, and how

our fingerprints mark the land,

we wring our hands and ring our bells

to signal feigned regret, embarrassment

that our footprint left such a heavy

stain on this tiny piece of space

in this minute fraction of time.

*

© Graham Sherwood 10/2019

Heavily laden charcoal cumulus, so low

they might scratch my head, gather and 

circle the cottage like a witch’s coven and

as if cursed by its melancholy spell,

my brio, slowly strangled on this dull Sunday,

draws me to paper and pen.

Like many others, here I may use pretence

to be whomsoever I will, 

hero, lover, villain, cad, 

writer, vicar, soldier, god

the pictures spin, circling in voracious form

a carousel of possibilities and slowly, surely

my rescued ego dances in the rain,

*

© Graham Sherwood 10/2019

Each time I come to the village, 

I try to slip in on a different route

as if to catch the old place off guard.

My favourite gate is via the station,

now demolished, the bridge modernised,

over the stickleback heaven brook of my youth, 

with a nod to an old friend’s quaint old cottage

remembering the damp chill 

of the tiny circular stone stairs.

Now it’s a pristine grotesque domain

locked away from local eyes.

I always slow for the cemetery,

uttering ‘hello mother’

through my guilty eyes

making promises I know I won’t keep,

pondering if I’ll ever have the nerve to return.

The old scout hut has gone, the paddock,

the old school too come to think of it,

an asphalt playground turned to lawn.

I never stroked a four on the cricket square

but still feel myself smarting

at being one number off

an autographed bat in the raffle

as a child, 

ironically at the time

my father seemed more disappointed than I.

Senses gather quickly as I turn into Church St,

past the elevated old school and The Limes,

a slalom of parked cars, unknown in my day,

strangle the road, the High St is the same.

The old bottom-end appears to sigh

as I wriggle between its buildings,

a postcard comic-strip of my childhood

sliding by as if cranked by a handle,

my element of surprise having faded.

*

© Graham Sherwood 10/2019

Just a name, a person long forgotten

a face that flashes, fades or fixes

in the mind’s eye for a split-second,

only to dissipate and become the

thin mist on a memory,

a vague photographic persona

half in the black and white margin

a melancholy wraith, witness 

to his own anachronistic ensemble.

*

© Graham Sherwood 10/2019

The morning after and washing-up 

in a trance, half awake, fondling

wine glasses, their perfect curves almost erotic

in the warmth of the water and soap.

Recalling how you had talked openly last night

of how your life has changed,

of how those things you’d longed-for

waited for, will now no longer happen,

your sadness, salved by my red wine.

Then I remember you as that young girl, 18,

who still hides behind those burning green eyes,

that flash at the cruel irony of it all,

how you’ve discovered fate has broader hands

than you realised, shaping you, moulding

the path you’ve walked.

As I hold up the clear, brilliant glass

cleansed and polished like a life,

caressed with a soft white cloth

to make its skin shine,

I think more clearly now

of how I could have protected you.

*

© Graham Sherwood 09/2019

Late September

and Bea is still picking thumbnail tomatoes 

scoffed like sweeties from a tub.

Every corner, cleft and crack

holds curled up brittle leaves

that rattle in the slightest breeze.

Around the shabby garden

plants already look defeated, and 

surrender to the change of season.

Damp cobwebs drip and 

trampoline between brittle stalks,

threadbare tensile silver flags.

In all this, it is the smells 

that heralds change,

mushroom, moss, and manure

flung on nearby fields,

impatient birds on a wire

like black clothes pegs

about to leave for warmer climes.

*

© Graham Sherwood 09/2019

Driving home Sunday,
Oxfordshire evening sunshine 
burnishing spires and flaming
rape fields too bright to look at.
Mulling over the day and
you asking me if I’m okay
more than once
due to my uncharacteristic silence,
my brief absent-minded answers
‘Of course’.
It’s like coming up for air whilst swimming
only to dive straight back beneath
the reminiscing waves, to
warm end-of-summer stroked thoughts
of the little ones careering busily
over garden obstacles,
their parents chatting over wine
and obstacles to busy careers,
‘Are you okay’
‘Of course’.
Summer’s lease coming to a close.

*

© Graham Sherwood 09/2019