Indoors me
Outdoors Jack
His back
Is glossy black
He lives in golden halls
And clacks his name for all
To hear
Dancing in the air
Through bronze November trees
As with his friends he weaves

While I live beige
Colour of rage
Ground bound
My name no sound
No flight for me
No friends to see

Watching Jack
Life's gloss comes back
Let me be
Out daws with thee

Over us this heavy plastic envelope so

Very well resourced, its vicious weight

Erasing any sign of light ahead

Restricting our breath, restraining us with

Tonnes of platitudes and doubt

Only we outliers scrabbling our defiant fingers at this frame

Numbers against us, needing to shift this

Window, work it open to the world ahead

Intention insufficient, what we

Need is to to put our backs into it, lie

Down and heave it forward: too hard on our

Own, we push the envelope together.

We can shift this if we are all crew

Malvern – Parliament Square – Wembley Police Station, September 2020

For the people sitting in silence

With their love and their faith and their grief

We need you to listen

For the ones who are dancing and singing

Drumming their passion and rage on the streets

We need you to listen

For the hills and the meadows behind me

Threatened islands of life in my heart

For the trees and the woodlands you’ve bulldozed

For the destruction of life in your path

We need you to listen

For the wild things running and dying

As the buzz of their life force fades

For the lands degraded and burning

And the debt that will never be paid

We need you to listen

For the grandiose facades of your vanity

Speaking only to each other’s power

For the cruel web of lies that entangle us

From your faceless and heartless glass towers

For the elders, the youth and the children

Who are shouting that they want to live

For the deaf ear, the blind eyes, the beaten

Who feel they have nothing to give

We need you to listen

For the dirt on the street that I lie on

With the bones of our one earth beneath

For the blue sky above the pollution

And the hope of a life that can breathe

For the police who are carrying my pain away

It’s too much to carry alone

For the black skin of the officer bearing me

And the centuries of harm I have done

We need you to listen

For the statues of freedom and slavery

Voices silenced in marble and bronze

For the love and the strength of my people

Which cushions the slam of the doors

For the hollow grand houses we pass

As they hide in their luxury and fear

For the grey streets of ordinary millions

Where life is just something to bear

For the white tower, green heart of Grenfell

Where the souls of the dead cry our shame

For the refugees denied our asylum

For the voiceless who shoulder our blame

We need you to listen

For the vast and glorious planet

That vibrates outside of my cell

For the words I don’t have and the stories

That I am unable to tell

For the people who sit with my silence

With my hope and my love and my grief

We need you to listen

We lean out into the insubstantial

Fingertips brushing the drifting souls

That float beyond our reach.

Reach out further into the busy void

Where everything’s falling away

A light is shining beneath our feet

A loving warning runs through roots

We try to channel up and out

But sometimes our beams are weak

And only catch shadows. We’re rooted in love

But impoverished soil falls away into dust

Dry and thin and parched, our feet

Slip. Then catch and ground and push us up

To reach further, reach further, keep snatching at any

Single dear falling leaf

Hold my ankles, Friend

Hold on to the Earth

Hold on as we dangle out over the void

We Outreach

 

 

The fly with the beautiful eyes

Bit me

It’s the only physical contact I’ve had for months

Real pain

My hand swells held in a warm embrace

A lingering squeeze

Even when she’s left fulfilled

The deer fly touches me

As no-one else may do

I have been enraged

By nests of drink cans

Alcopops and crisp packets

Disgracing my hills

With unsightly merriment

But today I looked at one lone can

And thought how sad

Now no-one’s having fun

Up on these hills

You stand and watch the rain approach

Closing curtains

The falcon cries

The raven croaks and dives

Lyre-shaped

But you don’t believe that you’ll get wet

And just keep going

Up the hill

The fields were muddy

and heavy on my boots.

Clouds scudded, fitful sun and

unpredictable icy breeze.

Grass marred by goose shit and tatty feathers.

Gulls lined up

waiting for the lapwing chicks of May.

Remaining pools still gleaming now and then

but surrounded by a stinking mat of rotting weed

– marsh gas less innocent

when you know what it can do.

And on I trudged through heavy mud.

Catching on barbed wire

and reaching bramble. Kneeling on nettles

not to disturb the flighty teal.

Gnats dancing, yes, and yellow dung flies catch my eye

to disappoint.

Until – there on the bank,

beyond the nettles and barbed wire – there she is!

Bombus pratorum, Early Bumblebee

Gold rump busy as she seeks her nest

and now, the day is March again:

Light breeze in willow;

Bursts of sun on blue pools;

The duck returning glorious

As skylarks tune the air

Box ticked, I skim the short mile home –

One swallow does not summer make,

But one Queen bee makes spring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Piercing cry, stark cliff, empty sky

Grey rock, white heart, yellow thorn

Black mask, driving sleet, sharp wind

Dead-end path, shattered hill, harsh world

Even here

There is a god

Content to be

The pipits are social distancing

With trill and twit

They hang in hilly air

Stippling my breathing space

Strung from descant string

Uplift pips push ground away

Then landed, flick and flitter

Seeing off intruders

With furious fizz of speed

Then back to claim their bit of sky

With music

Magic in suspension