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Words . . .
"Once every word
was a poem."

Ralph Waldo Emerson



Dawntreading


4.30am Monday 3 July 2006

Light enough already to walk through the woods and out onto the top field.
Insects buzzing past my ears and butterflies, as well as moths, flitting about.
So warm I'm in a shirt not even tucked in at the waist.
Just the suggestion of a breeze and equally slight dew between sandaled toes.
Mystical, majical dawn. Pink in the south east with delicate patterns of grey cloud etched on a hazy sky.
A large stand of wild angelica lends its pungent scent to the brightening air.
A pheasant panics nearby, crests the hedge behind me and descends heavily into the ripening barley just yards from where I stand awaiting the returning sun.

An inch above the horizon an airliner slices a tiny angry cut like a livid wound through the hanging haze.

5am and a cherry-coloured sun heaves itself over the horizon through ragged, damp shreds of limp losing clouds.
A heron wings languidly over my head, crying like a buzzard with a sore throat and a hangover.
A crow sits on the telegraph wire - swinging his legs, as my mother would say - turning his head to watch me pass by, dawntreading.

I am reminded powerfully of a similar dawn I once trod, during my student days in Bristol, nearly thirty years ago. (I studied at art college for two and a half years, followed by twenty-two gap years.)



Winter Solstice 2005

The voice of the owl intoning footnotes to the year
here at Solstice and embers bright at my feet

I open my coat to the fire in the wood at midnight
Ash trees charcoaled against the sepia sky
some moonlight seeping through thin cloud
no stars tonight but sparks ascending starward

crisp quick footfall of fox in dry leaves
just beyond sight amongst the Hollies
and Ivy twigs pop and sizzle the song of sap
in timeless Yule-time logs so close
at the chiming of the year

once more I witness this World's moment
with a seasoned smile and thanks
as Oaks conspire in the timely dark.

Rev. Spooner


Dr Spooner was seldom flustered
But his words couldn't always be trusted
And, though his demeanour
Was that of a dreamer,
They say he was meener than kustard.
Not The Ritz


I haven't sailed a yacht to the Mediterranean or Dulwich
I haven't driven a Lamborghini to the Riviera or Norwich
I haven't dined with royalty or anyone at the Ritz
But I've sat outdoors on a warm summer night with the woman I love to bitz.


Moth and Flame


The moth
Fans the flame.

'Skin'


I like my skin it keeps me in
It fits me fat it fits me thin
Without it I would need a tin
Or box or bag or empty bin
To keep the rest of Alan in
And when I think it underpins
So much my ears (those flaps of skin
Around the holes the sound goes in)
Oppress my brain and I begin
To think I'll need another skin
-full
Mine's a pint,
Thanks.
'Headlands'

Exploring the landscape of your face
Traversing ridges near the bluff blush
Over the brow, shouldering the eye sky
And handsome foothills smiling
Skirting the lip of the gorge
And only a mile away
An arm of the river where tears still
Sometimes flow around the headlands.

'Chance'd Be A Fine Thing'


Chancing on your hair in sunbeams
 On my pillow and a smile with
Love in its wake,

Whisking your risky curves
 Into a snug where dreams
 Are always a good thing,
Sharing a stroll through green
And moonbeams and dew between toes
 Letting all the world slide by our gaze,
Dancing a step only we know
And drinking each other's dreams
 Between stars and stones
 And willow leaves,

Picking fortune's pocket
 For the small change of ecstasy
As the world forgets and we discover
 What matters beyond if and why
 And even yes,

Chance'd be a fine thing.


'All Right Now'


Earlier this evening I had an
Incredible upsurge of an
Overwhelmingly powerful sensation of
What it actually means to be a poet

But I'm all right now.


'Hands'


Look at a person's hands
Not the love-line, lifeline, instead
Look at the head of the arm
 Of the body that understands
Hands have no tears to flow.

See the sun hanging over my life
 See my life lying beneath the sun
 See my truth told truer than before
In smiles and frowns that cannot lie
Though hands have no tears to flow.

Look at my hands, though not old in years,
 They show a life no other feature told
 Of love to heartbreak, joy to tears
 And fears that still refuse to go
 Though hands have no tears to flow.

(written at the age of sixteen.)


'Bargain Hunting'


Priceless morning sun shooting through the leaves.
November leftover bargains in the Autumn Sale
Pinned on velvet shafts of sun lightly climbing the still pinioned air
Delicate frosted precious sun.
Dawdle while stocks last.

The small bird on the reduced branch
Shivers.


'Antidote'

They tuck you up, your mum and dad,
They're meant to and they do,
Forgiving all your faults so bad,
In cozy beds made just for you.

For they were tucked up in their turn
In old-style beds with brass rails
By full-time parents who had learned
To tell magical fairy-tales.

Man hands on love to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Join in fairly if you can
And pass some on yourself.


'A Death in Orkney'

Magnificent Brodgar stones
striding round their circle astonishingly luminous
in bright indigo night.
I climb one gaunt cracked slab
better to view the surrounding mounds
of ancient tombs still sinking slow
with their aching cargo in a cold sea of
dark rolling heather - last year's
dead grasses still foaming frozen
in the breathless dark - spindrift fixed
on pale faded waves beneath this startled sky,
Sagittarius slinking home in the west.

So still under starlight the
stones standing floodlit by moonbeams
a chorus of clamouring curlews eerily
gregarious in the dark with geese and gulls
by the immobile mirroring lochs.

Stiller now my mother
than I have ever known her.
Happier now in memory than
she would ever guess.



'Trees'

I never did see
An ugly tree.



'CROOKED AND SACRED'  (written for May Day celebration 2003)


the flames rise
hot air rises
sap rises
spirit rises

we are in the cycle of the year
rising with the Spring of the year

flashes to ashes
flames to purify
they divide and they unite
crooked and sacred
they destroy and they create
crooked and sacred

we are in the cycle of the year
rising with the Spring of the year

each of us has given a ribbon
each of us has taken a ribbon
and we have woven them together
crooked and sacred
interweaving and uniting our energies and identities
crooked and sacred
the interweaving ribbons have joined their energies
honour their union and individuality
crooked and sacred
each of us has let go and has come away renewed
honour our union and individuality
crooked and sacred

honour each other
honour yourselves
you are part of the cycle
now you are full of the power of your potential
in this moment you are potent
crooked and sacred