27 January 2023

My Worst Nightmare


The python crawling by the car
a step away from me
has curled around my darkest fears
and crawled into my sleep

 it’s not alone

 there’s a taipan and an adder
and a brown snake with a glare
that froze me as it disappeared
up the stairs into my fears

 it’s there waiting

 to drop down from the ceiling
of my overactive brain
through the fissures of my dreams
to the nightmare of my days
living by cane-field streams
in among these slithery things.


 

Vincent's Pearls



This world
is full of mysteries
and puzzling things
but where to start
and where to end -
there’s the wonder
of this planet earth
and the universe
that houses it
and all that live
within and move
upon it -
and there’s
Stonehenge
on Salisbury Plains
5000 years old
and engineered
with primitive tools
and minds
whose resolve
conquered a task
we are still
trying to fathom -
and then there’s
Vincent’s Starry Night
conceived through
iron-barred windows
it’s haunting beauty
the gift of Vincent’s
searching eyes –
I wonder how he’d see
us all today
and what his paintings
would have to say
about the things
we see through
shielded eyes -
would they say
as he once did
that the heart of man
is like the sea
with storms and tides
but that somewhere
in its depths
there are pearls –
maybe now
we should harvest them.





Vincent Van Gogh's beautiful 1888 painting of a Seascape near Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Me from Pixabay





 


 

Haiku



footsteps
echoing in the rainforest -
the ones that came first

 

24 January 2023

The Guggenheim May 2013



Like some alien thing
the Solomom R. Guggenheim Museum
on New York's Fifth Avenue
spirals me round and round its heart.
Its domed skylight eye
ever watchful of its looping ramp
weighted with admirers of its organic form
bathes me in its light.
As I move through its space
my pulse races with its magic
but when I reach the third floor
sandwiched between Joan Miro's 
luminous, colourful imagination above
and Picasso below whose inner child
painted with him
to find the exquisitely energetic, playful
and spontaneous paintings of children
yet to be told how to paint their world
my heart sings.




 

By The Seashore


When I walk
upon the beach
I want to gather up
all the pebbles
and shells
and gaze upon
their timeless beauty
and I want to listen
to the timpani
of waves
breaking
on the shore
as a choir
of seagulls
sing high above
while they wait
for their supper
and I want to watch
the sun
paint the sky
vermillion
and tangerine gold
and I want to bathe
in twilight’s
lilac afterglow
as gentle
sea-breeze whispers
tingle my skin.