Calm swan of Flatford
Beneath my window,
Feathers stirred softly
In the upstream breeze,
With us who journey
On life’s white rapids,
Share your detachment,
Your serenity.
Flatford Mill, Suffolk
30 July 1989
Monthly Archives: August 2015
Photographs at seventy
In an old Photograph
Looking out at me
From the stiff line of children
I see the boy I was.
He plays in the streets
Of my childhood
And sits at my desk
Swinging my boots
And carving my name,
With a precious penknife.
Down the years
He runs freely
In the alleys of my mind
As though he lived there.
If I bumped into him
In the corridor
Of some demolished house
Would he recognise me
And reach up to kiss me?
Somewhere in France
After the picnic
By a cherry tree,
We climbed to the top
Of a chalky hill
And over the brow
To cornfields beyond.
There, in sun and wind
We walked and unwound,
Rarest of moments
Completely alone,
Save for a skylark
Ascending above.
I longed to bed you
In ripening corn
But held back, restrained
By foolish taboos
And by our children
Waiting back there
Under the tree.
The thought of it
Fed my mind and body
For hours afterwards.
26 July 1986
I have a homing instinct for the stars 
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