Sowing salt ...

I heard their voices -

Their wild wounded music -

The tall women with the heads of leopards -

The men on horseback -

They sang of their terrible histories -

The salt sown in their beautiful gardens -

The thieves who had chained them, weeping, naked, neck to neck - 

The heated iron marking their flawless skin -

September 2022

Tate Britain 

Each day I met her was a Day of The Dead ...

I'm reading Under The Volcano -

I remember the first time I walked hand in hand with a wicked angel -

Her small brown hand held mine -

She blew her smoke into my mouth -

We walked past the cathedral - 

She knew these pages - 

I met her brilliant boy - 

We drank from cracked glasses listening to blues - 

Stars fell from the sky - 

Each day I met her was a Day of The Dead -

9 September 2022

The Old School House

East Stoke

Dorset 

1915

A row of half empty deckchairs faces the tawdry stage - 

Two artistes are dancing a cake walk - 

The louche hotels are silent -

The pierrots wait for their curtain call - 

The young men in khaki are swallowed by the sky - 

6 September 2022

Sickert Exhibition 

Tate Britain 

He still cast his spell ...

I felt the artist's gaze touch my secret heart -

He knew the dark streets, the dawn light falling on a wicked bed -

He'd known the faces of men in the tawdry seats -

The women singing for the boy in the gallery -

His half smile hid his knowledge - 

Each self portrait was of a shape shifter -

A magician changing his skin, but not his eye - 

He still cast his spell - 

Here, in this pristine space, he saw us for what we were -

6 September 2022

Sickert Exhibition 

Tate Britain

Summer crowns ...

There was music by the sea -

Young dancers remembered golden boys - 

They had worn their summer crowns -

Kings for a year in the bright wood -

Their voices were heard in song - 

Their short beauty held in a breath of air - 

4 September 2022

Dorset

An early autumn ...

Ripe apples hang from the tree -

Drowsy tipsy wasps linger near windfalls -

Anne eats a madeleine -

I wear a dark blue shirt -

Our skin is still salty from the sea -

I can smell an early autumn -

I remember a girl with long black hair -

Her name floats above my tongue -

A shining leaf of memory -

Her green dress -

The leaves falling, one by one -

3 September 2022

The garden

The Old School House 

East Stoke 

Dorset

Red Arrows ...

We looked up at the September sky -

Tangled contrails marked the passage of the furious jets -

The clouds still held the memory of Lancasters -

The air was dark with the flight of ghosts -

1 September 2022  

South Beach 

Studland 

Dorset