A Birthday - by
I never felt so much
/ Since I have felt at all
/ The tingling smell and touch
/ Of dogrose and sweet briar,
/ Nettles against the…
birthdays
Listening to Bach’s B Minor Mass in the kitchen - by
Finally, I’m done with the phone calls and everything else
/ and when I switch on the radio it feels like lying…
Poem for Myself on My Fiftieth Birthday - by
Never written a poem for yourself
/ have you, you daft old bugger? Well
/ here goes.
/
/ …
On a Birthday - by
Time, why are you going so fast?
/ I like not furious paces.
/ Milestones glimmer and then are past,
/ …
Sonnet On My Wife’s Birthday - by
All the love I have will not take her years away:
/ All the knowledge given not grant her time release,
/ Yet one…
On Being Eighty - by
Broad in the beam? More broad in sympathy.
/ Stiff in the joints? More flexible in mind.
/ Deaf on the right? New voices…
Upbeat @ Seventy - by
You have that blithe intake of breath, singularly
/ keen to startle a new day, release pure melody
/
/ that brightens everything; the…
For Katie On Her Eighteenth Birthday - by
O little daughter of delight / and grave and lovely growing girl / Years after year you see the white…
To Kate at Twenty-Five - by
or as if in one brief flash I’d seen
/ a single track – yours forward, mine back.
/ …
At Eighty - by
Push the boat out, compañeros,
push the boat out, whatever the sea.
Who says we cannot guide ourselves
through the boiling reefs, black as they are,
the enemy of us all makes sure of it!
Twenty-eight Weeks - by
We nearly missed her.
/ This little storm of life,
/ could have blown by
/ before we weathered her.
/ But here she is: sturdy,
/ definite, pointing her…
Gap Year - by
Gap Year
/ (for Mateo)
/
/ I
/ I remember your Moses basket before you were born.
/ I’d stare at the fleecy white sheet for days, weeks,
/ willing…