Massing humanity
Pockmarks the beach,
A warm wind strafes
The arc-shaped bay,
Linear stories being told
In the reviving water, on towels
As bodies are being burned,
A friendship being dissolved,
					Lovers learning to lie,

A child, a dog, a grandparent
Go for a swim, nobody sees
How close they are, the
Immensity of their sustaining love,
The triangulation of their bond
Placed perfectly, geometrically,
Unbridle the joy and let it sweep around them,
How can this go unnoticed alongside
The tension on the road raging by,
What a beautiful event on a
Summer Sunday
			Unlike any other.

The words sound awkward,
The jagged unfamiliarity of them,
							lake, rainfall, waterfall
They’ve slipped out of use,
Archaic, irrelevant, uncomfortable memories
From when there was the illusion of plenty.

Dry in the season of rain
Wealthy women and men moisturise,
A prince drowns in gold,
An old blind woman predicts
The rain will never come again,
Those who laugh at her are left behind
To shrink into their parched skin,
The wise rise at dawn, pack silently,
Don’t look back.

Sweeping beaches
Swept out to sea,
Heroic beachhead
Pounded like a boxer down and out,
Crinkle cut cliff falling in strips as if soldiers dying in battle,
Fence posts topple like a dominoes run,
The front line moves inland,
The war being lost tide by tide.

An amphitheatre of 
                                        High-rise 
                                        Snow-tinged hills smeared
                                        With scraped-bare cliffs,
Hikers in shambolic clumps, or singles striding with purpose 
Slide along the valley floor,
Way back behind me a rumbling motorway tosses 
A bracing hint of reality into the air,
The wind has window-wiped away untidy clouds,

I’m leaving behind
                                     Carrying on without,
I’m walking fast, thinking slow,
In time, 
Walking slow, thinking fast,
Approaching the amphitheatre
Easing into an even stride
I cross a knee-high river running away,
A climb is coming,
At first 
                 It will seem
                                         Almost impossible. 

It’s a pleasing room with
something of a view,
There’s someone else
in the house,
We have engaged
in instances centring on
need,
I’ve closed my door,
Out in the house
a creak shadows a step,
A cluster of creaks implies intent,
As is usual at this time of night
the steps and their
Shadowy creaks come to a halt
outside my door,
I delicately unlock the door,
Hesitate before opening it,
Listen for the breathing,
‘Yes?’ I always say,
and open the door
wide enough,
Only wide enough

Desert coloured motes
 Floating in my gazpacho,
  Across my eyes,
   Through cadenced vents in the sky,
    On the backs of wild horses,
     Digressing in swooning swarms,
      Stairways to the jet-stream,
       Under the wings of feathered theropod dinosaurs,
      Collect in the thoughts of irradiating children,
     Linger on the lilting voices of the ecstatic,
   Drift in on the intent of the westerly
  Sweep away silently in the folds of a chimaera

The quiet third
Person makes the conversation go round,
The man in the middle
Being talked across
As the three promenade
Along St Heliers Beach,
As if he isn’t there, and
When he’s not
The conversation dries up and
The tide ebbs away,
Anxiety swirls around the pair in a faintly fishy breeze,
The search for a quiet third
Becomes the talk
Of the walk back,
Holding the gap between

Memorial domain
A slab of marble memories rises
Patiently, heavily from a
Quaking emerald hill,

Paths like rope curl around A basket of mysteries
Laid evenly for the shoe, the boot,

When the clouds dilute and disperse and
Our big star has clear sight of us
People in pairs, people with their picnics
Linger

Watching the middle distance where
Sails skim over the
Shards-of-glass glistening sea,

A young man re-reads his great-grandfather’s name,
Runs a finger over the engraved print,
Steps back,
Throws a frisbee for his dog

She’s a student
Of the ticking watch that has lost all sense of time
The singular pulse that’s mass-produced
The kettle as a drum
The coupling click-clack of a train making connections

She hears shadows stretching through the day
The sun flaming, the dawn fanning out

She can hear you whisper to whispers
The creasing of a face
Stars roaring to a conclusion

She can hear a bird latch onto the wind
hears it land