Sample Sunday: poetry

Some poetry from Kaleidoscope and some new haiku I'm writing for a book

The sparkling sea

The sea came and sat with me
Laughs in sighing ripples cast away
Lies with me as I sink into its depths

Icy fingers caress my hair, softest flow
Down into the deep where darkness plays
And shadows dance in eerie cacophony
Where silent tears are as silent cries beneath

The loudest crack that rips the heart in two
Is but nothing, only dreamt awhile

My footsteps carry me in their deepest prints
Chasing me down the length of the beach
Softest wet sand tingling between my toes
Dancing momentarily beneath my feet

Never-ending waves stretch before me
Tearing their way into the darkest night
The moon echoes its solitary dance, hovering
As though about to plunge and scoop me up
But the beach lays bare, no shadows stray

No lines mark its purity but my own steps
Straying thoughtlessly away from me
Tracing their own path away into the night
Where the bats chase and dive and flutter free
Into the tops of trees so spectre thin and bare

I’m reminded of the shuddering chill of cold
That wraps me up in its lifeless limbs so old

And in the silence I can trace a solitary song
That passing faint and wild it cries and falls
Out towards the sea’s outstretched blue hands
And cuts down, slices through, down into the deep
Where silence lives and nothing stirs or creates flight

No echoes chide the place in time so bereft
Faint nothingness, its heart stripped cold of sound
Laid bleak and bare in the darkness lit by moonlight
So cursed, so bold, it carries me so far beyond
Everything that stands before me and the deepest sea

And so it comes to sit beside me ebbing forth
To carry me away into its darkest secretive heart

I don’t mind

I don’t mind
If you stare
Or paint the room in blue
While I sleep

I don’t mind
If you walk a while
Or smile in your style
And mimic your expression

I don’t mind
If the urge to be is too much
Or the strength to see is gone
While I dream

Three haiku for St Paddy’s Day

Stick a shamrock in
Your Guinness this Paddy’s Day –
On the piss we go!

Devout Patron Saint
Of Ireland, how did you come
To be beer toasted?

From slave to bishop
We now toast Saint Patrick with
The toucan’s dark pint