In The Poetry

In My Two Small Fists

in that bright blue summer
I used to gather
daisies for my father
speedwell for my mother

with buttercups
and prickly heather
cowrie shells
and a seagull’s feather

treasures in each fist
all squashed together
daisies for my father
speedwell for my mother

(that’s how I see it
but I don’t know
if it really happened
[...]

Elephant Eternity

Elephants walking under juicy-leaf trees
Walking with their children under juicy-leaf trees
Elephants elephants walking like time

Elephants bathing in the foam-floody river
Fountaining their children in the mothery river
Elephants elephants bathing like happiness

Strong and gentle elephants
Standing on the earth
Strong and gentle elephants
Like peace

Time is walking under elephant trees
Happiness is bathing in the elephant river
Strong gentle peace is [...]

This poem was written durting the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Playground

dark brown eyes
scanning dusty tarmac
a boy on a swing

head down
mouth humming
a boy swinging intensely

before dusk he must go
to his grandmother’s house
on the edge of the city

alone on [...]

Life is a Walk Across a Field

This is the opposite of the Russian proverb, Life is not a walk across a field, which is the last line of Boris Pasternak’s poem Hamlet.

Life is a walk across a field
sometimes a golden dreamdrift of polished petals
and daisies bouncing among the hummocks of moss
which guide an infant river [...]

William Blake says: Everything that Lives is Holy

Long live the Child
Long live the Mother and Father
Long live the People

Long live this wounded Planet
Long live the good milk of the Air
Long live the spawning Rivers and the
mothering Oceans
Long live the juice of the Grass
and all the determined greenery of the Globe

Long live [...]