Poems of late November

There’s something about this time of year that makes us very aware of our mortality.

As we see the final leaves clinging to trees, we can’t help relate that to our own lives, to what we are holding on to that has to go, those things we must say goodbye to.

And then, what is left?

I suppose that’s the frame of mind I’ve been in this week when I’ve been writing poems. That bitter sweet reminder late Autumn delivers for us.

But you know the up side?

How much brighter do we then see the sun once all those leaves have shed! They obscured so much for us!

Do not be afraid to shake off what is weighing you down. And to those of you frightened of what you have to lose, remember, if all trees were evergreen, we’d never get to experience the most vivid colours of all, hey?

Exposed

I am the house upon bleak hill

With windows smashed and stone a miss

The slateless roof that whistles chill

My rafters, host to moss and hiss

This sturdy door has given way.

Names bored and gored into the rot

Red roses dead, but thistles stay

An empty dwelling, time forgot

Imperfect Lipstick

I ended the evening with imperfect lipstick.

Jam daub faded, its dark wine siphoned.

Not destroyed by devil-may-care passion.

But rather, because you get to an age

When all you put down, rejects the stain and shine you try to give it.

It frays and bleeds, seeking escape via any tiny thread of exit it can fumble.

Meandering tributaries spreading from source to deface your once crisp map.

And maybe it was always so.

But when I was younger, I never noticed.

Before it had chance to be scrutinised,

The mere thought was deliciously decimated in the freak wave of a waiting pirate kiss.

Daisy Chains

There is nothing keeping me

Apart from sense of duty

Sleeping rough on devil’s broth

Until I dare uproot me

Like a tree I’m anchored deep

Encouraged by the view

Branches swaying, children playing

Sky, a cornflower blue

.

Life will never go to plan

Time honours no designer

Surfacing a diamond day

Still happens for few miners

Making beds and lying on them

Rafts of rusty nails

Scratching heads and sighing

Shafts of light reveal our jail

.

Dreaming futures like a cat

Twitching in her slumber

World implodes, fog smears the road

Our bridges burn or crumble

All we have is now

Don’t go for walks down memory lane

And so I practise how

To see my ties as daisy chains

After School

He chatters as a hedgerow bird

Of all the bright day brought him

Things he saw and said and heard

All that the teachers taught him

Sometimes I’m tired but he’s so fired

I try not to let it show

For chicks are born to fly the nest

One day

His song

Will go