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Wednesday 25 January 2017

SpAndrés


Twin brown hands cupped together
Lattice fingers underpinning,
Digits of fair Spanish weather
Have known loving and sister sinning.
Offered me a stone, a twig, a cone of pine
Abandoned by a woodland creature
The offering of friendship, simple sign,
The simple gift itself; a gift from nature.
Navacerrada; once home to Indian braves
The Navajo of the Arizona plains
Once proudest of red people, turned to slaves
Now shovelling dirt and clearing city drains.
Reservoir; no reservation here!
Guadarrama peaks, a lofty sentry
At Plaza de Los Angeles; sipping beer,
Smiling at the leaving and the entry.
He gave us home, free gratis with goodwill
No timetable, at liberty to leave or still to stay
A chalet at the summit of his hill
No yesterday, tomorrow, just today.
True lover of his legacy of Spain
Paradise of pismires, crawling free,
Not anxious for the mists or promised rain
No yearning here to visit salty sea.
We walked with him, this boy of innovation
For miles along the path; Camino Way,
With chat and song and simple recreation
“Enjoy the moment friend; live for today”.
To Spain’s Madrid we travel soon again
To meet this man and those who own his heart
Bianca, Hermann, the little Princess Sarah
And Jack, of course, who plays a special part.
 

Wednesday 11 January 2017

Conspiracy.


A path forms, when ground is deemed as granted,
Ground not yet conceded by the stranger
Who scans horizon, land-lie, smells the danger,
Has seen it twice before and has lamented.

The thin-edged wedges of suspicion lofted, start
To raise high ground and vale against me
Already consigned to the paths of purgatory,
Sign says ‘all for hell’ must now depart.

Streams of mirth and death flow side by side
In twin currents of certainty and doubt
Tiring and retiring, tossed about
The man made paddles searching for the tide.

Ground like time is snatched but never mine
But held in memory’s prison for a while
A plastic inch; a rictus, killing smile.
The crime of waste lies waiting down the line.

Can human pupils weep for welcome loss?
Reality caught, can never be outrun,
The minute hand can never be undone
Just heads and tails in every pitch and toss.

Where would years be but for faithful mirror
Narcissus pool fashioned from the sand
Giving, taking, soul mates of the hand
That knows not what is stroke or what is terror.

Still more steal over what belongs to others
Like sun-bred freckles of a tinker’s wife
The promise in the handle of a knife
Conspiracy has no fathers, only mothers.