A brush drags a vertical sheet of rain
over Isfield [it’s coming]/ Lost planets
are conflating & I’ll not witness those
distant marriages [only point-of-view
coincidences – here eyed by northern
hemisphere residents]/ Threats of rain
dull my sight of planetary alignments
Tag: dog walk poem
Kids
Glyndebourne’s turbine
is that active youth high
on my quick horizon/ In
my foreground a spire’s
weathercock [in uniform
gusts] is less/ God’s bird
pivots indifferently/ Spin
is left to that upstart – it
bleeds sparks/ I’m ribbed
by honest blows as nails
are hammered close by –
perhaps a fence? Here a
kid kicks a ball & another
in a skip [perhaps reclaim
of streets is underway &
they will rewind my view]
Habit Forming
A pint of Harvey’s
& my whining dog
[polish off my day]
Savings supped at
my local pub – not
working – if anyone
asks – still – beer &
sport remove all of
my quieter doubts
Other hobbies arise
in these lonely days
of mild coronavirus
A pint of Harvey’s
A pint of Harvey’s
& my whining dog
[polish off my day]
Savings supped at
my local pub – not
working – if anyone
asks – still – beer &
sport remove all of
my quieter doubts
Other hobbies arise
in these lonely days
of mild coronavirus
Himalayan
We cut under that first mist
[above her swimming ditch]
as other walkers walked [as
if blind]/ That laundry-stink
from Himalayan balsam is an
alien scent alongside her – I
let her loose again – to swim
Gloss Black
They repainted tall railings
set around a granite tomb
[but left metal on gates to
to curdle to flakes of rust
in old layers]/ Here Lies A
Father & Husband/ Loved
By His Family [lies – damn
lies]/Born & Died & other
worn words read less well
what with rain & pollution
ingresses ‘tween palisades
retouched by a servant of
our parish – paid well by a
priest who cannot lift any
tool or know how to begin
[except in Genesis & other
fairy stories]/Give it winter
& a cruel spring & we will
see those gates limp as if
St Peter was superfluous/
As our dog digs
As our dog digs
I am returned to
cold earth – mud
turning [fifty-odd
years earlier] – to
small diggings &
huge schemes to
burrow – deep to
Australia/ All was
possible by hand
as I dug – aged 8
not knowing nots
A Fox Replaced
A fox replaced my dog
[momentarily] below a
hood of low brambles/
I took that uneven path
around my youngest’s
school to avoid fools &
cars – a quiet dog walk
but underlined – now –
by that beaked snout –
slouch of red pelt near
to Scout’s colour – spit
of white tips too/ Low &
mean in her halt as she
looked me up & down –
a bitch – I know vixens
A Nice Spot
Some’ll bait [little empathy –
spit indifferently & she did]/
I want to bed down [now] in
these woods & never get up
[but I fear my dog would not
sit still for long enough] – no
outdoor decomposition – rot
not yet – no decay in peace?
No choice? Please – a minute
spent between bared roots –
let me lie wet & cold – shake
to exposure’s severe hold [&
then dream of dew & no lies
to face] Her kiss dries on her
mother’s forked tongue – old
tarts pet under full moons &
blow sour breath – both ends
stink of decaying meat/ We’ll
return to addled quiet spots –
once affiances are corrupted
& there unearth a low place –
this hollow is ample for me –
don’t put down my loud dog
Late Walk Home
My final walk is chalk-marked
[primary colours & a bruise of
pinks] & above here rainbows
[bled in felt tips] are tacked to
innards of smudged glazing &
then rattles on pans & healing
of stale unneighbourly tiffs – a
gift on Acacia Drive/ I listen to
hisses as a small kid cries out
[overtired] disagreeable wails –
ask her for cuddles & whines’ll
fade & a conversation at 10pm
will drain into sleep’s quietuide
[I should know – being trained –
a father never dies – he wanes]
Here – not alleys – but twittens/
Old sodium lamps [spilling out
light pollution] guide me up my
hill – on a path between hedges
.& into two ghosts – of glow & a
shadow-friend – rust on a slope
home – always slow-ascending
as if embrace of sleep will cure
us virus-luggers/ I’ll recuperate
once I return from my saunter?
COVID-19
I sit at an unstopped bus stop
sheltering from Jorge’s
spit as my takeaway reflection
stares back at me / It
is shut – Mr Joe Woo’s Canton
Chinese – Late Hours
Woo has posted a handwritten
note – No trips to China
have been taken by any of our
staff in recent months
[above SORRY WE ARE CLOSED]
Also on Medium
Love Song of
I grow old – I grow old
& fear eating peaches?
[without knowing how
poetry works] – Mr T S
is read out by Mr Irons
whilst my feet splinter
into thousands of thin
reminders / Pain is my
diary / My dog cannot
know that our days of
walks are numbered /
Swallowing is a luxury
on lead-strolled days /
I yank her past shards
& keep her lead tight /
My hands still work at
my doggerel healings /
There are evenings of
such lonely aches that
I rest on hard benches
to calm late walk pain
before being led again
in an orbit of suffering
by age & malfunctions
& adulation of another
I’ll lie [but without her]
Also on Medium
Walk Under
I do not think enough
[but what do I know?]
Do not urge to things
Time is an urn set to
boil / I have elevated
my unaware body up
& down to my stomp
[I do not know much]
in wood lands – but a
month of rainfall has
ruined paths [here I’ll
rest & rewrite lines to
coppice my hobbling
thoughts] My writing
[I do not know much]
diminishes [by rained
engineering] washed
by a bowing stream’s
volume / My throat is
of that choir – its hold
turns down my levels
[I don’t know enough]
But what I still know –
when breaths expires
we’ll be glad for more
until it sucks from us
tight Parkinson’s calls
Dog Walking
To get her to release
push your finger into
her mouth & she’ll let
go – it’s easy – I agree
We followed our path
of likely slips in mud –
negotiating slopes &
wind-lowered boughs
as our foolish puppies
spun around at blind
games of crashing &
jaws – snapping wild –
their paths expanded
to take them through
places suited to their
unknown hiding prey
But not us – we hiked
on that marked route
without a way around
storm-dropped pools
& then talked about it
Me: Your thoughts plot
your happiness – easy
for you to say – unsaid
by her – So I have to let
them loose – unhooked
& not attend to what is
carried in their mouths
But she’ll always worry
too much about riddles
& puzzles set by doubt
Dog walks taken by us
are a way to talk freely –
without tied constraints
of cups of tea or facing
each other – we walk on
There is … nothing now
There is … nothing now
No weather to speak of
No kicked-up teasing of
litter to torment my dog
No layering lakes of hail
and no struggles of heat
No stern frosty response
across this opened field –
no boot-cracked ditches
No complaints & nothing
re-touched or tipped into
a bending under old rules
There is no compulsion …
Two Treehouses
On my circular dog walk
there is a tidy treehouse
with no way to climb up
It is likely to be reached
by a foot-propped ladder
lent by someone’s parent
It has been made to last
by some eye-aligned tools
It is not my younger prop
of wood hefts – sly thefts
off a builder’s dry bonfire
by our ever-hapless gang
to make our cobbled den
of swiped timbers – to lift
us – half a century earlier
above wired private land
in our splintered cockpit
of near-balanced planks
But this one has fat bolts
to hold – and a guarantee
of an adult’s supervision
On my circular dog walk
there is a tidy treehouse
with no way to climb up
You can walk with me
You can walk with me
along another path
It’s not too far
but be aware of fallen trees
Watch for twisted boughs –
turned like a lover’s thighs
crossed – coyly – enough
to keep to wedding vows
An overnight layering of leaves
masks raised roots
A wild rose curls – armed
with thorns bared like teeth
Without broken clouds
there is less to see –
no backlit leaves
to play out a sideshow
It is this gate now
A Field Near Ripe
Two crows in black robes
ghost into my untrusting
edge of sight –
that miscalculated corner
of slights – of misinformation
A pair of hooded monks
float across this field
angled south
of Golden Cross –
a hectare of grass pasture
We take a triangulation
of boot-dashed footpaths
Here
a temporary centre
of a loosened ruin of bales
We follow b2 from a2
towards millennial years
of old adding ups
before
Pythagoras came to c2
Just south of Nash Street
Just south of Nash Street
lies an eye-straight road –
not laid by bent-to Romans
or rutted under lost pilgrims’ carts
but a later by-way pegged
between tool-twisted turns
of fleece-carding pricking wires
nailed to long-paced posts
Untouched oaks claim sunlight
in their overhead boundary
Their bare roots act as hazards
for my blind spot boots
which then slip on acorn grit –
that loosely rolled resurfacing
of brittle spawned shells
under emptied boughs
All found-hushes are lost
to door slams of a far off shotgun
At a saturated junction
unknown mushrooms stand
as if randomly placed bollards –
circles of tipped fragile caps
standing more connected
to this land than ourselves
We take a hard turn
to find – again – our east
to leave that subsoil route –
to tread on returning home tarmac
Birch Polypore
Scores of lady’s gloves reach
out on this chain sawn patch
whilst less urgent saplings
have slower ambitions
There a sometimes-killing –
but also useful – fungi
sprouts from a rot-set
silver bough
You see it too –
but as a foreign shell
washed up far from tides
without a limpet’s blind tenacity
I tell you – it is also known as
razor strop fungus –
due to its rough edges –
many lost uses – like fire carrying
We crush this season’s litter
stopping at bright busting
sweet chestnuts –
buffed peel-able virgins
to be split by my heeled
crush – to an extraction
Along our crackling path
of bitter acorns – those
discarded ancient fruits
of last week’s storm –
we see where swung blades of gusts
broke a woodsman’s coppice
A Golden Cross
There is a medium wave
interference around me
off roost-massing rooks
This county hums and emits
Even our sunsets hiss –
dipped slow into copper pots
My westerly siphon of hedges
should be muttering
but it has been a while –
our native small birds
have been lost for good
Their calls have no place
Below Snatts Lane
Our spun dogs leapt
into a hidden swank*
only reappearing – only –
when cooled
by that glum – that cold –
woodland pond
Their wet coats stunk
Quick on spindle legs
they fast-darted in
and faster beneath
another clump of
undergrowth
Not late enough – not then –
for mist-above-dusk
over heat-sucked ditches
and almost rivers
Not late enough to rise
from dew weighted grass
We followed those routes –
those laid before
by others and left those
laid behind by us
We were those last two
travellers on earth
*swank – Sussex term for wetlands
No Eyes
It was not a pup seal
rolling at slow play
but a shingle-ripped
medium-sized dog
without legs or face –
its muzzle stripped
to uncooked meat –
a loose hanging jaw
Each short wave
was enough to turn
its sodden carcass
for further observation
by my macabre eye
to guessed-at details
and a whole back story –
lost at sea – a drowning
Our Nation’s Favourite
Under vintage leafless beeches
you gauged your variations of steps –
it was too easy to tread unevenly
on a path of cross-hatchings
and line workings against sunlight –
there you dipped into a greyed intensity
of illustrative shadowing – losing our dog –
briefly – in a denser pencilled place
Then sweet eyewashes of flowerings
lifted your head – a sugared inhalation –
a thickened spoor of air-blue scents
poured from that ancient under-storey
You stood above ten thousand bright dabs
bent to old arts across a green daub
of workings among greys and silvers –
your count of a whole year gone
was marked by a favoured calendar shot –
another easy colour-by-numbers to fill
once you made your way back to our car
to tell of your walked losses and findings
Lined
The parallel profiles
of the fifty to sixty linden trees
are bitten-thin by the wind
at this time of year
but their ever-tall alignment
of bared trunks
is still my local fixture
There – spaced by landed
strides off an owner’s count –
along this now hemmed-in route –
once a sublime wide avenue
to a grand house –
ridden up forty-ish years earlier
by a princess –
Sporting Life by her side
Now it is the route to a
sprawled estate
of modern servants
who push their buggies
and pull their dogs
along the uneven surface –
a shaded path
for the good half of the year –
for the other bared months
it is fifty to sixty sundial
shadows – if there is sun –
I haven’t counted the trees –
each a timer set by a lime
in the low winter light
Inside My Lover
I am entertained inside her lento lungs –
travelling alone and partly dusk-blind –
within her low suck of cooling breath –
I inhale her exhale of purest oxygen
and with it comes an unwinding –
an expansion of my otiose senses –
an awareness of this as existing –
of living things set around – but
obscured by the falling of the hour –
Now the manic chp-chp-chp-chp-chp
of panicked blackbirds to one side –
joined by the rude crows overhead –
that tuneless duet of birdsong is overlaid
on itself by others’ alarms and queries
which set off – concentric – around me –
As I tread – as I compact the leafy mucus –
which she absorbs into her membrane –
the fallen are re-sown by the plough
of my steps on this weaved footpath –
Her cold stew of re-use – of rotting down –
is nature’s re-design – it is not random –
be it the branched capillary urge
of saplings – or the fork of tipped boughs –
or the patterning of her cast off leaves –
already thick enough to hide the paths –
Now on cinders I miss the give of the mulch –
the weighted compress and its last sound
This Parish
We stick to the leaf-kicked route –
a parting of the dry sea of leaves
cleared by dog-following boots –
We tack down its meandered drop
to the time-softened abyss –
plugged not by God – but drains –
where a watercourse once hollowed
the hillside into this shallow dean –
before the slugs of tarmac upstream –
Here the irregular plots of silver birches
ignore the fallen old lady in lime green –
this is the parish of ineffectual giants –
these natives – a copse within the woods –
are a finger-daubed fearful tribe in white –
chary – waiting – as if standing ready –
listening for the infected invaders
from other places – for intruders
who will bring other such followers
to spread the canker and pestilence –
which was not the way things changed –
not until we changed the weather
The Impatient Plant
The Himalayan Balsam’s scent
clogs – a laundry swill of smells –
lingering – invasive – out-of-place –
underlining the call to action –
Since its foolish introduction
it’s no longer welcome here
Almost sticky – swollen with pollen –
it waits with near-primed seeds
until it fires ripe-wide explosions
finding further incursions
Balsam Bashing – its removal –
is now a nationwide fixation –
The bent stem-cutters – the pullers –
are impatient traditionalists
who tug – with gardening gloves –
working hard at their final solution
Late Out
This dessicated path
is an off-white scar
under the moon’s phase
of waxing gibbous
Boots and tamed dogs
have worn this route
into a grass-bare map
which I read by that light
The holding flightpaths
of man-made meteors –
of ephemeral accords –
circle among the clouds
The transmitter mast blinks
with a beast’s red eye
shaming Arcturus and Mars
so even those stars fade
This as the bypass hums
a song of our war won –
our tilt against creation
by over engineering
Dew
There has been no rain overnight
but the underfoot dew is enough
to darken both my boot toecaps
and to soak the dog’s knotted hair
as she bounds into blind prospects
of hedges and low distractions
And I look up at the underbelly
of another aircraft on another path
and do not envy their chosen route –
I then shout out for the dog’s return.
The Dog Walk
I mistook a dropped box of Durex
and the discarded instructions
as a rarely spotted fag packet
My two dogs poked their snouts
around this additional litter
and moved on without direction
This – our diverted morning walk
of squats and leg lifts en route
with me tugging on their long leads
I was a stalled stunt kite flyer –
crossing and uncrossing the strings
as they knotted ahead of me
The weekend gardeners buzzed
and clipped around my obligation
of giving these two their flight
7:01
You are waking
10,000 feet
above me,
a fact I haven’t
googled,
more an ill-educated
guess –
that precursor
of the internet,
when my intelligence
was never doubted
by you, or by me.
The sky will be
different
over Alpendorf
when you wake
in a rented bed.
MIKE BELL | 10,000 Poems 