Ferdy

Ferdy is so wild — a Victorian fox,

We've had him quite some years;

Every bit as ferocious as he looks,

He's still of boundless cheer. 

Christmas Comes But Once A Year

Christmas Eve

The Eve of Christmas Eve

On the eve of Christmas Eve

Twenty-one years today;

In dense fog we did leave
And set off for the bay.

Farewell toxic town
Now turned brown;
Goodbye half my life.
I take with me a wife.

But leave all else behind.

Heavy mist still kept us blind

When we reached the place

Where beach and sea laced

Our view until the next day

When all things special we did find.

  

The Pianoforte

The Pianoforte

What can I say

About A A

Other than he

Could play

Easily

Every day!

The pianoforte

Was his way

To be 

Happy.

He'd have been

Ninety-seven

Had I seen

Him play

Today

On the pianoforte.

Exorcismus

Exorcismus

That long ago Friday of Easter 1973,

We ascended the summit in white;

Reaching out, to purify and be free

Of all malice, and of all spite.

Yet our adversary came not

At the agreed and allotted hour.

Had the boastful one forgot?

— Or had he begun to cower?

They say he feared the song

And dance the assembled throng

Might make should they see

Our demon-possessed adversary.

But he came nowhere near;

Preferring to freeze;

Whilst candles and incense

Wafted in the breeze.

In his absence our words

Of ancient exorcism filled

The moonlit air like swords,

— Until the gloom was stilled.

One Shade The More

One shade the more,

One companion the less;

A multitudinous mirror

Of reflected memory.

In perpetuity to store

One more face;

To recognise, to refer

In the album chronology.

A silent flitting shadow

Finds the darkened crack

In the mirror of the mind;

Stirring nostalgically.

Leaves disturbed anew

Fail to bring back

The light and sound

Atmospherically.

People once bound.

No longer found;

No longer around;

Confound.

A glance of shades;

Fading friends;

Greying grades

Of ignorance.

Ivy clinging stone

Informs the shade

The more alone

That there be laid:

In innocence;

In transience;

In abeyance;

In absence.

Wooden Memorials

Now wooden seat replaces stone,

And brass plaque replaces bone,
While somewhere smoke billows
From a chapel amid the willows.

Folk go up in smoke instead
Of being gently put to bed
In kindly earth where trees
Once surrounded to please

In seas of stone tombstones
Amid quiet where 'phone
Is neither seen nor heard -
Just the trill of a trim bird.

Ah, but that is yesterday
When memories grey
Were stone and bone
And death was not alone

But comfortably asleep
With others to keep
Away the outside world
While memories unfurl.

Made of wood and brass,
The new graves, alas,
Contain not bones of yore,
But someone's posterior.

What strange sort of folk
Prefer to go up in smoke
And replace cemeteries
With wooden benches?

Not me, that's for sure;
Where I'm heading for
Is made of solid stone,
And I shall not be alone!