Oh! for the opportunity,

to let her look into my

nonagenarian eyes,

to hold my hand

and to hear me say,

 

“Well Bea, how’s your life going so far?”

 

And she’ll kneel close,

close enough for me

to feel her breath,

as she whispers the words,

 

“It’s going well Papa, really well”.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 11/2017

I choose leather stone and wood

the smell of dusk and pencil leads

colours made by music notes

the snap and flap of paper kites

the chaos of a lightening fork

movement through a horse’s loins

the hidden weight of snowflakes

the taste of ocean spray

 

© Graham Sherwood 08/2018

I will remember the day I met you,

that you made me special tea,

the badly washed-up mug unnoticed.

When I arrived with a friend

you were wearing men’s pyjamas,

and eating pancakes with a fork,

your face stopping me in my tracks.

From your tiny balcony

we smiled and pointed

across the dowdy roofscape

toward the lights and music that so beguile you.

Such fragile open beauty

an innocent beacon facing west,

in search of your tomorrows.

I shall tell others how we met

before the world knew you

and all your many faces.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 8/2010

I can no longer look at your beautiful words

for fear they will search me out,

spilling effortlessly, still wet,

and warmed by your tongue

damp word bees, wings fanning out

to lay their glorious painted eggs

burrowing down to grow within my psyche,

And what then?

I’ll waste and hollow, a shell,

my words mated with your own

emasculated, dry, deserted,

a starved poet parched.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 08/2018

We are all of the sea

there is salt in our blood,

the salinity of our beginnings

that we brought onto this land.

We stand to look at the waves

see the tides stroked by the moon

and feel the same motion

the roll, the rinse, the draw

perpetually repeated.

With eyes closed we list

involuntarily, primordially

toward the magnetism of the waves,

fearful that we can never return.

We, destined to scramble up the shore

two steps forward, one step back

must make this place our land

a new place.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 04/2017

I can only draw them

listings, diagonal with dates beneath,

faceless names that tug my heart

 

William, James, Sarah, Charles

Mary, Ann.

 

No pictures, no weathered creases

searching eyes or family noses

indelible identifiable,

 

John, Harry, Annie, William, Elizabeth.

 

No memories recounted, visits made

habits mocked achievements scored,

names repeated, infant deaths, census scribble

 

Dorothy, Mary, William again, Margaret, Harry too.

 

The ones I met but didn’t ask,

didn’t make the time, unimportant then

no holiday postcards no box brownie snaps

 

Judith, Diana and me!

 

 

Graham Sherwood 04/2018

I never intended to be on this stage

getting into a such a rage,

no, not at my age

I haven’t got the courage

I’m a writer, a sage

a poet of the page

better off backstage

and I’m no longer teenage,

or on a minimum wage

moaning about my baggage

going out on a rampage

causing lots of damage

ending up in a police cage

You see I’m nearing old age

sorting out my dotage

looking for a cottage

in a sleepy village

paying off the mortgage

clearing out my birdcage

moaning about postage

play the odd game of cribbage

down at the vicarage

sprucing up my image

a man of serious vintage

but I followed all the signage

now I’m being held hostage

here on this pub’s stage

spouting out this garbage

it’s a bloody outrage!

 

© Graham Sherwood 08/2018

 

Beware strange men in lycra

who colonize our path

riding carbon fibre horses

(quatre de front)

to escalate our wrath

 

They’re easily identified

in their peletonic host

bright highly-sponsored torsos

(cuisses de gammon)

seeing who can sweat the most

 

They swoop in slick formation

a multi-coloured snake

in search of hapless cyclists

(velos a l’ancienne)

left in their reckless wake

 

A supersonic phalanx

of helmets, gloves and cleats

measuring their pulse-rates

(qu’est-ce que c’est merde Strava?)

on infinitesimally small seats

 

With narrow skinny arses

arms and legs of knotted string

they breeze up hills like they’re not there

(hors categorie)

descending on the wing

 

So beware strange men in lycra

especially if they’re chubby

they sure as hell aren’t Geraint Thomas

(lanterne rouge)

just someone’s obese hubby!

 

© Graham Sherwood 08/2018

 

Spinnaker set to west

my paper galleon of a life

lurches towards the storm clouds

that must surely carry rain

 

Grumbling and groaning

the once carefully folded timbers

tossed over six decades and six

begin to let water.

 

I lie to myself for reassurance

but secretly wonder if the sheets

would make a serviceable lifeboat

or merely a half-decent shroud.

 

Time’s impatient waves slather at my keel

baying dogs licking and clawing

determined to drag down their prey

as ink bleeds freely off the figurehead.

 

In this tormented reverie

reminiscences of shipmates

safely coloured in the past

whistle through the rigging ropes.

 

Those proud shanty cameos

of yesteryear’s daring adventures

crystalize the salinity of the main

and wet my eyes.

 

I bid departing ships

fair weather.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood  08/2018

 

I had the “After the Goldrush” jeans”

patches on the arse, leather flared inserts

a railway coat over a Levi shirt,

your father, Polish, called me a tramp.

I can still feel the reassuring weight

of your finger hooked in a beltloop

warm arm around my waist,

God we were so young, so brave.

To my star-crossed eyes

you were Jean Shrimpton

a potato sack would have shone on you

legs that stretched to heaven

hair brushing your hips.

I took you home on a Sunday morning

wearing Saturday night’s decadence

now out of place

wrinkled and bed-worn,

your mother asking where you’d slept

me choking on my tea,

as you nodded in my direction

everything was cool,

and I knew there and then that it would work.

 

 

© Graham Sherwood 07/2018