Landscapes

Landscapes

 

This is the landscape of others' daydreams

dinner plate flat and domesticated like a tablecloth.

 It’s too predictable to be perfectly safe.

 Small ducks paddle in its bilges

                                                      and moorhens waddle pond-toed

                 over the flat green baize of the water weed.

                Landside and the green is pruned and manicured

                to tidy perfection.

                Even its countryside is disciplined.

                an ordered game of chess played out

                on clearly delineated fields

                with rolled hay-bales for pawns.

                Let your imagination stroll off

                and it will return

                appropriately and impeccably chaperoned.

                                                     There is no chance of inadvertently

                                                      stumbling on where the wild things are.

God forbid there should be wild things.

 

This was your land

though I never saw it.

I thought you were with me

chasing the swallow's tail to the next new horizon

when all you wanted was to play hide-and-seek

                                                        in the not so long grass;

                                                      the extent of the wilderness you hankered for.

While you came and went

my eyes hungrily followed     not you

but the buzzard on its way to the high places.

My ears dreamt of the wind's drum beat

and the sea moaning for the rock heavy coast.

I climbed moorland and mountains in my sleep

but when I came down again

                                                       you were not there.

I had lost you to the hay stack fields,

playing hide-and-seek with reality:

our landscapes sundered without us noticing.

Go feed the ducks

they will need looking after.

"Landscapes" is published in the poetry pamphlet "The Submerged Sea"

by J.S.Watts

Dempsey & Windle (2018) ISBN 9781907435591

©J.S.Watts

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