Goodwill

As you bathe in this infectious faux adulation,
the city streets awash with cheering faces,
remember mother.
Sold into the royalty trade, like some gentry slave,
a frightened rabbit set with the hounds,
always destined to be quarry.
But you have snared a fox, a wily spirit too,
whose diamond eyes are chiselled stones
that yearn for what?
And do you truly love her?

© Graham Sherwood 4/2011

Friendsbook

What strangely distant friends we are?
having never seen each others face,
heard a voice, touched the hand, shared a kiss.
Is your name real?
or just a clever camouflage, to hide your sex,
your home, your spouse, your life.
What is it that you wish to hide?
Then little pieces of your self slip through
in comments, questions, quips and thoughts
that slowly pull away the painted veil
to let me see the friend unmasked
by clever words, those very clever words

© Graham Sherwood 4/2011

Face to Face

My cheeks hang uncomfortably, side by side,
the uninvited guests who didn’t ring ahead
and now stand on the doorstep
with teetering embarrassment.
Under his impassive, gentle patient stare.
I gently grate my teeth,
the bottom lip pushed right up tight,
to a winsome grimace, my father’s face
with crooked lines of cobblers’ tacks, dangling there.
Am I unwittingly becoming him?
In sorrow, with a tear about to seep,
a buried sob-sigh draws it back
to the safety of the duct unseen.
His unsatisfactory, saddened, helpless gape.
And with the helpless concentration of next doors’ cat
himself transfixed by the staccato baton
of a squirrel’s tail,
I find myself remembering him,
Amongst the pink white gauze of hawthorn bloom

© Graham Sherwood 3/2011

Harbour Wave

You birthed me, fed me, warmed me.
For years I held your hand and you guided me.
As I grew you let me go, to walk alone,
to forget your voice, to change my clothes,
become a man.
I began to gouge, to rape and burn,
in avaricious oblivion, shrugging
at the weary grimace on your face,
passive, pained and desolate.
So back you turned,
without warning and in magnificent retaliation
to chide me, as an irritating flea,
shaken from the wet dog’s tail
to teach me once again, humility
respect and sense of place.

© Graham Sherwood 3/2011

Mood

(Just an observation of dreary days).

Within twenty minutes the sky had thickened
from piercing blue to murderous slate,
the night cloth over a parrot’s cage.
Clouds, dense and blurred, draped and folded
as silk sliding down the bars.
We both look up as birds might do.
Apprehensive,
before settling down to the resignation
of another uninspiring day.
On terra firma we aimlessly prowl,
no contact but aware,
and having circled like frightened pugilists
both take a place.
Me to read,
you to scowl.

© Graham Sherwood 1/11

Pals

(Sad images brought to mind during the two minutes silence on Armistice Day).

Those muddy boys,
pressed as moulds
into the grey-blue stench,
lie quietly now,
the terrifying cacophony
still rages through their skies,
though silently
before their chilling lifeless eyes,
that stare a fruitless search,
for England, mother, home.

© Graham Sherwood 11/2010

Loss

(How easy it is for inanimate objects to become part of one's family).

We have modernised.
Gone, dining table and faded velour chairs.
We turn away hesitantly, guiltily from the porch
so as not to watch
the battered rusty recycling van,
eagerly carry away our beloved.
The bearer of our family’s growth
our happiness, our joy and tears,
those thirty-five Christmas meals
two special weddings
one hideous wake.
Untouched, the gouged evidence of Rosie’s claws,
sweet pup,
and time arrested when John slumped forward
slipping underneath, mouth still full of food
a seizure said Dr McBride.
A thousand happy winey nights
each anniversary chalked up,
and her,
each time rewarded with a brand new coat
of beeswax polish and elbow grease,
like this one last time
face aglow, and sent out
into drizzle like our children were
on their first days at school.
Peering around the door
and there, the modern oak imposter
yet, with no stories to tell
and eight conspiratorial leather accomplices.
What have we done?

© Graham Sherwood 10/2010