It’s an unseasonably warm November Monday

and anxious trees stand rigid, taut

seemingly bewildered by the mild and calm,

their demerara leaf curl hangs softly brushed

in smudged watercoloured splendour.

Delinquent ivy, still boasting green

is wound tight around their trunks and clings

like a mithering child to its mother’s skirt

on this hopeful washing day.

Suspicion hangs dripping

for confusion holds the broken tiller,

course set for winter but with no breeze

lies becalmed in autumn.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 11/2018

Supermarket car park

11am

Big Ben strikes

a lone cannon roars

silence

a distant siren

someone else’s emergency

I hear laughter

a young child’s glee

met with stern disapproval

then a thought strikes

isn’t that smile

that happy heart

what they all died for?

 

© Graham Sherwood 11/11/18

It is impossible upon hearing a sound

not to interpret its meaning,

for sounds are the skeletons of words

meanings are their flesh, as

conversations become torsos

shaped by the timbre and music

of words spilling from our lips.

 

We ascribe a landscape to sounds

adding colours seasons temperatures,

slow torpidity grey dark cold

rhythm movement green bright heat

staccato birth yellow glowing warmth

comfort harvest russet burnished dusk,

sounds are our core, our fibre, our bones.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 11/2018

Global News, is the new religion

Celebrity broadcasters the new Apostles

we are subverted by Anxiety and Fear.

There are No More Miracles.

once again we are Helpless

Cowed, Wondering, Ignorant

the New Messiahs are Powerful and Corrupt

we await further NEWS

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 10/2018

Do the eyes betray one’s soul, they

the architects of a mind’s undoing,

traitors of thoughts

librarians to emotions

witness to our crimes.

Are they kinsmen or adversaries?

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 10/2018

On the occasion of surprise

or exposure to the new

we may experience elation or devastation.

 

Upon constant repetition

or affirmation of a norm

we become familiar, cognisant, comfortable.

 

If repetition becomes urgent, anti-social

or intrusive

we are prone to divorce or ambivalence.

 

In the search for contentment

we should seek balance

 

of time, of experience, of voice

become selfless.

 

© Graham Sherwood 10/2018

 

I never dream of my father

although he’s often in my thoughts

and looks down to my desk

from a teenage photo in uniform,

 

I’m now older than he

by some six years or so

a strange and uncomfortable feeling

that I will forever appear his elder,

 

I last spoke to him in January 1987

when I held his lifeless hand

but cannot remember my words,

 

I knew he was proud of me

and had made him cry once

with that pride

words then were unnecessary,

 

Were we to ever meet again

it would be the river bank

both staring intently at floats

an occasional glance decorated by a smile

 

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 10/2018

 

I gather the last tomatoes

a few hanging stubbornly green,

there’s place on the sunny sill

where they can take their chance.

 

As I harvest, a golden blizzard

pulses, swirling around my boots,

broad leaves intersperse the slim

in a chaotic unfathomable kaleidoscope

shackling my shins

some getting caught in my hatband.

 

Here, in this mesmeric cauldron

there is a gentle but primeval ferocity, where

I fear I could become lost, hidden from view

my skin turned to bark, blood to sap

limbs to boughs in final rest

between the damson, apple and the gauge

 

© Graham Sherwood 10/2018

I bring bread, wine, meat and sweet berries

and lay them on your kitchen table.

Both unsure, we fidget,

you busily preparing food

me clumsy, with a troublesome cork.

I risk a glance at your easing profile,

you, amused by my fumbling efforts

offer a welcome sympathetic smile.

Midnight,

and the wine has wrestled with our tongues,

talk rides lightly on spicy breath

eyes stay camouflaged by stained glasses,

in purdah,

water stays untouched.

Now is the tricky stage and

One of us needs to make a move,

there is no bill to pay

and both unsure, we fidget once more

to await the telling signal.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 06/2015

 

Arriving after rain

we had to duck under wet low hanging apples

to find Jake’s place, cleverly tucked away

along a narrow, pebbled path,

the South Hams appearing to unfold

like a map before our eyes

a green patchwork, gently undulating

from the garden hedge.

 

Start Point light in the distance

a solitary chalk finger, blinking

at dusk as the sun was setting,

its twenty-mile warning flashes

three-short, three-long, three-short.

 

We gradually became accustomed

to the property’s gentle breathing,

the knocks, the taps

the heady smell of sweet wood

and with the wood burner lit

the cottage began its conversation

as we listened cradling Bathtub and tonic

 

After supper, pasta and Morellino di Scansano

we were both surprised at how quickly

after some thirty years

we remembered the rules of cribbage,

fifteen two

fifteen four

two for a pair

one for his nob

your box.

 

Pegging spent matches

on the Wills’s Star  cigarettes board

that still reeks of smoky pubs

 

© Graham Sherwood 10/2018