Harcamlow Way - a Partial Etching

Harcamlow Way – a partial etching

Time has etched out a much loved route, my feet

echoing themselves on old roads,

across the farm, beside the stream,

shaping the carved field lines,

curves and contours of the land

and then a sharp and sudden

angle onto the rising track

sloping slowly upwards into a wide

open Cambridge sky.

I walk down evolving seasons,

when the east harried winds shriek

their abrasive chill along the path,

when yellow beds of daffodils spread

in sudden preparation for the flush and roll of spring

and when three months later wild dog roses

nose the track with wedding arches, petalled pink,

nature sensing better the order of life

than recent man shaped gods.

                             J.S.Watts

"Harcamlow Way - A Partial Etching" is published in the poetry Collection "Years Ago You Coloured Me"

by J.S.Watts

Lapwing Publications (2016) ISBN 9781910855157

©J.S.Watts

Years Ago You Coloured Me

Years Ago You Coloured Me

Another clean, clear-sighted day. 

In the ivy sparrows are chatting,

though to look at it you wouldn’t know.

Many things are like that;

keeping their secret light under a bushel,

their confidentialities camouflaged 

under green and yellow leaves.

Years ago you took your crayon set and coloured me,

but on the inside where it doesn’t show.

Mostly I forget now, except at dusk

when the evening’s striped with blue

and I find myself stained the same colour.

Then when I try to get some sleep 

the cloud drowned moon pulls at my gut,

drawing memories in her wake.

                                               Your long abandoned absence hugs my side

and the empty place beside me

has space enough to snuff

any candle I could light

against the coming of the dark.

Then comes missing you in the morning.

Waking up with the knowledge you are long gone,

leaving my world cold and strangely orange.

I keep my daytime thoughts to black and white.

Straight jacketed and numb

they run ahead on preset lines

                       avoiding unnecessary colour.

By afternoon my world is safely monochrome

until I notice the ivy, yellow and green,

in which brown sparrows play and chatter,

but not loud enough to drown your shrieking absence

heard by my ears alone,

In much the same way that only I

can see your fading colours,

 feel their echoes tattooed inside of me.

J.S.Watts

"Years Ago You Coloured Me" is the title poem

from the poetry collection of the same name

by J.S.Watts

Lapwing Publications (2016) ISBN 9781910855157

©J.S.Watts

Spring Songs

 "Living proof the world continues"
extract from "Lamb of The World" (Years Ago You Coloured Me by J.S.Watts)

 "the sweet ease of living

That half the Earth flaunts around me
Without conscious exertion."
extract from "Losing The Easy" (Cats and Other Myths by J.S.Watts)

"stories we told ourselves then left behind,

even as we'll leave the imprint of our roots

when we move on - this garden makes good roots."

extract from "This Garden" (Years Ago You Coloured Me by J.S.Watts)

"the flush and roll of spring"
extract from "Harcamlow Way - a partial etching" (Years Ago You Coloured Me by J.S.Watts)

Years Ago You Coloured Me

My new poetry collection, Years Ago You Coloured Me, is due out from Lapwing Publications next month (March 2016). By way of advance celebration, I thought I'd share a copy of the artwork that adorns the front cover.

The photograph and art work shown here is by me. I'm afraid the name of the photographer who took the photo within the photograph is lost to the mists of time.

For those interested in the writerly side of things, full details of the book are as follows: Years Ago You Coloured Me by J.S.Watts (ISBN 9781910855157), published by Lapwing Publications, rrp £10.00. The cover looks like this