Poems From the Notes on My Phone

Written while walking along the river

Where do you find inspiration? When I walk along the river into the city, my footsteps seem to pull words through my fingertips and into the notes section on my phone. I hardly think as they come, flowing as the river does until they’re done.

Here are a good few of them.

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When I move between constants 

The reedy river’s course

All about with proud-trunk trees 

And the gold-glinting water of morning sunlight in the sky 

I become a part of the stop and the start

Of greater, wider everything   

And I whisper ‘Please, just look’ 

A prayer to reach stone ears 

While the world blisters and seethes

As it yet shimmers with heaven 

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Celia took on a new meaning this morning. I was thinking about the worst thing I have ever done. Why did I do it? How could I ever have done that? My thumb trailing over the little emerald ring on my left hand that I inherited after she died. A glint of it caught in the morning light and drew my face to a river full of green jewels, dancing light and shadows, as if it were Grandma right there, as if to tell me that the tears glimmering on my cheeks were also diamonds.

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Boy by the river tracing twigs on the waters edge floating your predicament in frills and ripples that shift-shape your reflection. Who do they want you to be when you already know who you really are? 

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Don’t you think you’re being dramatic, Mr Cormorant? Dashing away like that every time we meet? The river your runaway, beating your wings so low they thrash the water. You never take off, crash-splash landing only so far away that we begin the ordeal again as the river and I follow your trail in one long line, all the way to Canterbury. 

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Blackbird in the magnolia 

Black-flower with yellow buds 

Ink-eye eyes your eyes 

And you are lost to this small black hole

That tilts its throat 

Expanding, shattering your world

The sweet shards of its glass flute  

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Walking, you wonder what you truly know. Do we know anything at all? Black and white and technicolour in-between. Infinite colour, context, conscious and unconscious. Opening the front door, you are greeted with the scent of warmth, incense and celery, and this you know. This is yours. 

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Come May, leaves so new they’re acid green thrust forth from willows ribcage. 

Come September, marbled drapes flutter softly in swathes of low light. 

Come November, damp, tangled braids of bronze hang limply over the river, announcing their lamplight in the morning grey. 

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Steam rises from the buildings like dust from the ashes of the night before. Suspended in the light exhaling a careful breath that traces the tiles, billows with the mist, and carries itself away. 

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Blackberry’s outstretched fingers balance hard greens crowned with mallow soft blossom. Butterflies beat among thistles purple puffs and cygnet fluff. A cormorant dries itself on top of a tall, dying branch, wings opened up like a bat. 

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It was so dry that summer

That the trees dropped their limbs

To lighten the knowing  

That all the water was drying up 

And the world world burn 

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Scarce raindrops clung to the honeysuckle the morning the third willow split and wept. Her outstretched limbs thrown down, her chandelier caressing scorched grasses, her scant, slow tears falling to the ground. 

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Nature tells me who I am 

The hypnotising reeds

Remind me of my power 

As they trace the river’s flow 

In long emerald silks

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That night I made a cobbler with strawberries and the marjoram you’d caught me stealing in the market garden that morning. Roughly chopping the leaves I recalled how when I lifted my hands to your face for you to inhale the scent you gave me the smallest, sweetest kiss on the palm hoping that nobody would see and know that you’re in love with me. But I know. Every mouthful of cobbler tastes of you, strawberry lips and coarse crumb chin, and deep, savoury warm herbs.

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This morning I watched the smallest white feather float down from the sky and imagined it was your way of telling me that that’s how you fell when you jumped from the cliffs - light, soft, white - meeting the rocks with the gentlest touch, foam waves reaching around you with a caress, whispering hush, hush, hush.

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Standing beneath the ginkgo tree

The sound of its plummy fruits thud to the ground in a stirring wind

Leaves fluttering their fans as they swoon thereafter

November’s carpet of soured squelch and acid yellow against hard grey

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The fig looks like it’s had a fright

In the middle of a rich glory

Frost came and gripped it tight

Fruit now hard it will never ripen

Leaves complexion paled to yellow

Fall like dying hope

These leaves of paper

A pile of love letters

That will never be sent

And fade to brown under winter’s foot

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