Your fallen boy

Seeing you in the library - 

Asking you out, not expecting you to say yes - 

The joyful surprise of those moments still with me -

Both of us laughing - 

Yes you said yes - 

I remember the dark weight of your hair -

How we held each other close -

You could have carried me in your arms -

Lifted me up as though I were made of air - 

On our first date, I took you to Winchester -

I wore my chalk stripe suit -

You wore a green dress and your silky skin - 

It was summer -

We walked down the long nave of the cathedral -

I showed you Jane Austen's tomb -

We drank Fleurie in a pub with latticed windows -

Driving back,  we stopped the car on the shore road -

There was a pale moon -

You unfastened your dress -

You held my head, sighing, stroking my hair -

You once sent me a postcard you'd bought in The Tate -

The Lament of Icarus -

Three nymphs lamenting over the beautiful dead boy -

I thought of you you wrote -

I would visit you in Brighton -

Come up and see me and make me smile playing on every jukebox -

Losing myself in your sighs -

Your fallen boy, carrying sorrow in his wings -

December 2025

Windfalls haiku

Windfalls on the grass - 

A memory of summer -

Sunlight on my tongue -

Glimpsed in a mirror

Names of places on an old map -

Glimpsing my younger self in a mirror - 

Gargrave, Coniston Cold -

Driving to Malham with Richard -

Shamefully, I wrote nothing -

Piecing this together from shards of memory -

The faded names - 

The half dreams - 

*

Crammed into Richard's Japanese car - 

Like innocent cosmonauts - 

Myself driving, always in the fast lane, crazy -

Not thinking for one moment about it -

*

The narrow road over the moor - 

The tall thistles in the field -

Rain falling on the roof -

Curling smoke from slim cigarettes -

The American girl from Tallahassee -

Meeting her after a shameful night -

She called me pilgrim -

Invited me after I retold a beautiful story -

Sitting cross legged on the warm grass -

A circle of boys and one girl - 

*

Now, near the high cliffs -

The lonely farms, the dark tarn 

Scrambling upwards - 

A cold wind under a northern sky - 

Ancient faces in the rocks -

Clouds - 

Far below, our cold beds -

Gareth's fiver crumpled up with a few coins -

*

Walking under the moon to The Buck Inn -

Theakstons with flint eyed farmers -

One night, fortunes told in a low ceilinged parlour -

A smoky fire, candlelight -

Geoff, refusing to open his palm -

Never saying why -

*

I thought they were young gods -

Far above me -

Nick, talking about taking rally corners in his Mini -

Gareth, with his louche drawl, his kerchief -

They knew the ways of girls -

They were cool -

Yet they were boys -

Just like me, pieces of a story -

Now gone entirely - 

Or glimpsed, sometimes, by chance, in a mirror -

Alexandra swimming in the midnight pool

I remember the road - 

The driveways to the houses with names -

Being so young and tipsy with words -

The music playing over the water -

The slender beauty of one of the girls -

Swimming with her in the midnight pool -

The garden filled with summer night -

The song always evoking the moment -

Her voice, the moonlight on her skin - 

November 2025