Saffron headlands, sweet
Almond smelling, alive with
Bees pollinating;
Blue glass water on shingle
Lapping, time lapping on me.
Oh that you could feel
This sun, breathe in this heavy
Air and see with me
The gorse afire on Beauport,
Golden in silence.
Jersey 1966/67
The ghost of a marmalade cat
Crosses my path from time to time,
Materialising from nowhere
And vanishing into nothing,
Gracefully and nonchalantly
Parading each of his nine lives
As yet unlived before the car
Caught him, helpless, in its headlights.
He is but a pale memory
Of a prince of cats, barred with light
And bursting with life beneath a
Calm and gentle disposition.
In living room and children’s beds,
His favourite spots are vacant.
Fastidious still, he now frequents
The fireside corners of my mind.
Muffin was killed on 28th November 1988.
Poem finished on 10.1.89
Behind the house on a bright spring day
When the sun at last had come to stay,
A woodpecker tapped on a hollow tree
And sent secret messages down to me.
He tapped all the morning and then flew away,
What did he tell me? What did he say?
“The summer is coming, it won’t be too long!”
That was the gist of the woodpecker’s song.
19.2.77
I have a homing instinct for the stars 
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