Here are five short, old love poems to kick off the New Year. This first poem, Love In A Pebble, was written when I was 14 back in 1967 or 1968. I include it here because this is where I began.
LOVE IN A PEBBLE
I found love in a pebble today
A red pebble so shiny and smooth
Like it was on heat, subtly
Not hiding a line of live
But then I dropped it
And God was inside.
In 1971 I started typesetting a volume of poems and this is the title poem, ‘Foot on The Beach.’ I eventually published the volume in 1973. ‘Foot on The Beach’ appeared in a magazine from Norwich called Doris, issue 9 in 1975. Here’s the poem.
FOOT ON THE BEACH
Laughing like a twisted plimsoll
You ran soft-skinned through the sand
To a bundle of gently blown clothes,
You crossed a barrier of pebbles
As if on hot coals.
Picked up a few pebbles for your pocket.
Felt their wholeness, round and firm.
Your expressions faded as you dressed
And as you tied the laces tighter round your tongue
Solemn evening killed the sun.
The next poem ‘Girl at a Gate’ was published in Ludd’s Mill magazine, issue 11, 1974.
GIRL AT A GATE
Girl at a cross-hinged gate
Picks at a rusting nail
With a bone-handled knife
As a wind licks between her shoulder blades.
A mature man in a butcher’s van
Zips across the dreaming flesh.
Her eyes flinch
At a smile pile of rust on her palm.
This next poem was a departure for me in that I began playing with structure and form. I wanted to create a sense of space. It was published in Stable magazine, issue 3, in 1977. As Closely Warm As.
AS CLOSELY WARM AS
as
closely warm as
Sirius
as
far as
Arcturus
you are, sus
pended in space
almost vacuous
this distance between us
as
impelling to move through as
tearfall, as
tenuous
as
I touch you face, dark side of the room, with
intensity. I rarely glimpse your ges
tures in the umbra I guard from the sun.
I turn your face, the night hang
ing from your brow, a precipice on which to
cling. The hem of your dress is moving.
I meet your face in half light, half
eyes, full breath, each moving over the
other. We unclip our minds from the edge
drowning
mouth to mouth
in and out
of the waves
This next poem was written before I was 30 but not published until 1993 in Scratch magazine, issue 9, 1993.
TELL ME THE TRUTH ABOUT LOVE
O tell me the truth about love?
High summer and sex bores in the brain like a clown.
O tell me the truth about love?
Sorrel in hand, sorrow taken to drown.
O tell me the truth about love?
The God of a pebble in palm, a song for a crown.
O tell me the truth about love?
Best dress, shoeless child, love in pennies and pounds.
O tell me the truth about love?
Something old, something blue,
something buried and underground.
O tell me the truth about love?
A boy and a girl and a purse in a crowd.
O tell me the truth about love?
Traffic jam in her eyes, her face is the town.
O tell me the truth about love?
Meadow and river, willow and heather and shroud.
O tell me the truth about love?
Turning heads, turning cheeks: is love quiet or loud?
O tell me the truth about love?
A multitude of kisses but just this kiss under cloud.
O tell me, tell me the truth about love?