Spilt milk

We are where we are:
However we arrived here,
We are where we are

Landscape and language in the Arctic

They say Eskimos
Have two hundred words for snow*
And one word for love

Imagine a world
With one word for snow and two
Hundred words for love


*It isn't true that they have 200 words for snow.

Maturity

The old chef says that
It is the stalest bread that
Makes the best breadcrumbs

Marathon men

The slap of trainers on tarmac
Echoes down the still-dark street

Youths are happily a-bed,
Snugly dreaming - it's the
Middle-aged who feel the need
To run, their faces red,
Mouth open, gasping, as they try
To beat their personal best,
To improve, transcend

They never can outpace
The thing from which they run:
It's perched on their shoulder
A shade, whispering doom.

Birthday poem (for Gwenllian)

In the blank darkness
Of the icy winter world
Gleams a new pale bud

Airport

Welcome to Heathrow
The world's biggest bus station
Queue here for tickets

Arrivals emerge
Tired, battered, blinking: they can't
Match their meeters' joy

Knots of travellers
Confer about the delays,
faces lined in doubt

One by one the planes
Drop down from the holding loop
Buzzing the M4

The remote chance of
Terrible violence seems to
Worry people more

Than the certainty
Of boredom, chaos, expense:
The glamour of flight

The importance of clear thinking

What happens in vagueness
Stays in vagueness

Intoxicated

Translation of Meddwi by Meurig Walters

I supped from the cup of your lips
I drank in the wine of your cheek
No moment was as sweet
As this lip-to-lip

My soul soared to the horizon
Sated by the charm of our love
At golden dusk
I was drunk from a girl's lips

Give to no other that cup
Offer no taste of that wine
I'll return in the night
With a burning kiss

A contract with the new day

I'll do honour to
The thing inside myself that's
Greater than my self

Carefully Chosen Words: the book

Carefully Chosen Words, A selection of my best and most popular poems, including Belonging and Mary's lament, has been published by Carreg Ffylfan Press.



98pp, paperback, with colour covers., and only £7.99 + P

Poets don't jog

Poets don't jog
You don't hear their footsteps coming from out of the morning fog
Not for them the red-faced gasping staggering slog

Poets don't jog
They'll still be in bed at midday sleeping like a log
Or face down on the sofa among the empties snoring like a hog

Poets don't jog
They're blearily looking through the kitchen for breakfast stuff to make their arteries clog
Or holding wine bottles up to the light in search of dregs so they can have the hair of the dog

Poets don't jog

End of the pier show

Wigan owes George Orwell no thanks:
He made the dismal pier a by-word
For squalor and industrial decay

But in the exuberant 1980s,
As the town faced its post-industrial future,
Heritage seemed a tangible asset

The 'Wigan Pier Experience' was born
From canals, bridges and warehouses;
The tourists failed to appear
The experience unwanted:

The heritage centre's now closed down.

A new deal

The beggars
plead for change
But nothing does.

The best policy

Sometimes the truth hurts:
But then, on the other hand,
Lies hurt all the time

Fledgeling

There came a time
In the swimming pool
When I took off the floats
And he swam from my arms
Frantically paddling to the side
Go on, I said, you're safe

I ran along behind the bike
My hand steadying the saddle
I gave a push and stopped
As he pedalled on down the path
Go on, I said, that's right

The documentation has been checked;
He heads for the departure lounge,
Walking tall;
He lifts his arm to wave
Go on, I think, fly away