Sea blue eyes

John has the lean face of a mariner -

Closely clipped beard -

Sea blue eyes -

Swanage 

August 2026 

Her dangerous smile

Fiona wears a red dress -

Like a wild west saloon girl -

Smiling her dangerous smile -

Swanage 

July 2026 

Katie reads her poem

Katie reads her poem -

Smiling her shy half smile -

Her words like bright birds -

Swanage 

August 2026

Suddenly

Suddenly you ringing me -

The joy of you wanting to see me -

Sitting with you in Java -

Wanting to say what I cannot say -

Java

Swanage 

July 2026

In Gullivers Bookshop

The beautiful smell of new books -

The gentle women in their summer skin -

The promise of each page - 

Gullivers Bookshop 

Wimborne

July 2026 

I'm reading London Triptych -

Thinking of Geoff -

How I first saw him -

At some party with Rich, one young summer -

 Wearing a flying jacket - 

Not dancing - 

Even then, that air of louche melancholy  - 

*

Later, reading the diary he kept of his travels -

The words he scrawled -

Pages still scented by the bidis he smoked -

The rides hitched with the American girl -

The months in Tehran -

The stony fields - 

The tea house gardens in seared villages -

The kisses of the tribesman near Kandahar - 

*

I remember him casting coins -

A white moon above our house -

The night air scented by ripe apples - 

Candles lit in the low ceilinged room -

Someone had put on Ricky Lee Jones - 

Geoff saying he'd cast The Well -

Wind over water -

*

He knew the names of birds -

In Yorkshire, he skinned a rabbit, made rabbit stew -

An icy stream ran past a field of thistles - 

We drank red wine listening to the rain -

*

Geoff rolling his bravura joints in the Sunbeam Rapier -

Guiding me through the wicked streets -

Parking outside a discrete door -

I was a wide eyed boy, knowing nothing -

I remember the dinner -

The laughter and the stories -

The glistening bottles -

Hardly knowing how I drove back -

Dazed by it all - 

 

*

Ward B3

I saw Mel in Ward B3 -

 I knew those beds, those stairs -

I remembered the gentle surgeon -

The joy I'd felt when waking -

Poole Hospital 

July 2026