Habit

Every morning, regular as clockwork.
He marches past my sash window.
Determination in every step.
Full head of grey hair, eyes fixed four paces in front.
Every morning, whatever the weather.
Today it just sits there,
waiting for the conductor to wave her baton,
drumming up wind, sun, rain
or whatever else is written
on the meteorological score.
For now the iron black branches
just beyond St Andrews house are still.
And here he is. Marching back again.
The Guardian tucked hard under his right arm.
The same paper each day.
The same navy blue jumper.
Eyes front.
Four paces.
Regular as clockwork.
I watch him.

Silence

Tonight at dVerse we are looking at love poetry without using ‘that’ word! Sometimes love needs no words at all ~ just being together is enough.

Snow suffocates the shuffling of nature.
No longer can wind worry at autumn’s leafy remnants.
All loose ends are tied up,
neatly buried in a new world that’s stealthed
in under cover of darkness.
In this wire taut quiet
my hearing is keening at the silence.
Just your steady breathing
breaching my ears.

These storms don’t bother Harrison

Tonight we are gathering at dVerse  pub for poets and having fun writing poems. Here is one written after the recent birth of my first grandchild 🙂

Gulls bent like bars
fight into the storm-wind.
Its music is harsh;
thrashing through the birch trees,
whip-cracking across roof tops.
Even the Exe struggles to make progress,
white-capping towards the weir.
Iron hard rain beats down Angel Hill.
There’s not many out in this.
Just a few hurriedly slanting up the street.
These storms.
Rolling in day after day from the Atlantic.
There are big things going on.
The weakened Polar Vortex.
The misplaced Jet Stream.
Its even freezing in Hawaii.
But all this does not bother Harrison.
He just needs to eat and sleep.
That’s it.
His point of focus.
What’s going on out there
is of no consequence to him just now.