Our proverbial sins

Your stitch is late
and I am lost,
the seam of my avarice
spills to the floor
with my heart.

And from my lifeless palm
the dove of wrath,
set free for further mayhem,
plots from the box
unblinking callously.

You, your milky tears
and useless pride,
are left behind to weep and sweep
the litter of my errors
like life’s janitor.

So where are those riches
that were promised you?
Sowed in the earth
with undue lusty haste,
and no sign of dividend.

Now richly sated, you
once the glutton for my love,
come timely late
to light my pyre aflame
with your licking tongue.

Blind foolish envy
is new currency for your loss,
I wait, to calculate my debt
to eternity’s account
abacus in hand.

My demonic choir is laughter,
performed with barren sloth,
cynical, thin, enduring,
to hex my empty torso
on each step to paradise.

© Graham Sherwood 11/2012

Tontine

Show me your ticket for the tontine of life,
where entry is free, the closing date long,
the winner takes a lonely prize.

Show me your ticket for the tontine of love,
where entry is hurt, desire and despair,
the prize thin as breath, a vapour.

Show me your ticket for the tontine of hate,
where entry is wrath, hostile and dark,
the winner can never be safe.

Here is my ticket for the tontine of death,
where entry is free, a brief rubicon,
the prize lies unknown, uncertain.

© Graham Sherwood 11/2012

Scandi-Verse

I gently squeezed my heggedal,
it felt firm within my grasp,
the benzy smelled of lemon zest
the afjarden fresh mown grass.
Standing on the toftbo
I rummaged in my skubb,
my besta had been scratched somehow
and needed a light rub.
I dusted down my ribba
and my stornas too,
you handed me your barbar
my arv I gave to you.
Feel these dittes you asked me,
do they feel alvros to you,
perhaps a little werna
but they do look good on you.
We both lay on the skarum,
my knodd lay on the floor,
you showed me where your pluggis was,
I fumbled with your klor.
At last we both were ekne
and blessed our gosa how,
with pressa and some mulig
We all love Ikea now.

© Graham Sherwood 11/2012

St Mawes

Five tethered gigs nod and bow,
carousel horses, tugging at their salty ropes
that rise, then dip into the flotsam,
like skipping ropes twirled by lazy children.
Scornful, gulls balance on these bucking prows,
and from time to time take irritated flight
only to return to station
each bringing a grumbling squeal.
The fret flicks across the harbour
with an unheralded slap,
the sharp edge of its tongue
catching us unawares.
A windswept busker, back to harbour wall
sends flamenco notes into the maelstrom,
a box of urchin shells
like shiny painted fruits
for sale offered near his feet.

© Graham Sherwood 10/2012

A Vendre

We pause to watch the supping fingerlings
break the glass of the bottle green water,
perfect circles, brief, before fading.
A family of swallows are also feeding on the dapping fly
and make their own dinner plate ripples
as they wheel and dive between us.
Then there it is, canalside.
A Vendre, almost a ruin,
a peeling painted sign for wine
half on the ancient splintered shutter
and half the crumbling rendered wall.
We both look, our thoughts colliding silently,
the steps from the panelled verandah,
a perfect jetty, the porch,
the curve of the canal and willows on the bend.
We could sell beer and wines
and wave to bargees with a knowing smile.
How much I wonder, you say?
And much, more to put it right.
Eventually we idle away,
our fleeting new life dream
fades around the bend
leaving swallows to their chaotic repas.

© Graham Sherwood 09/2012

Hameau

From our lofty position above the plough
the Hameau forms a Y-shape,
a rough grass lane bends taught
like a thick tensile blade from left to right,
an ancient cart track cuts an axis against the mow.

Seven cottages lie cradled here,
each roof taking on a different aspect,
like sentries on guard, waiting
to repel the wolves that will surely come
bounding from the newly churned furrows.

But for now, no noise
save the twilight crackle from the fields,
where other bovine guards diligently stare
but offer no alarm in their ambivalent armour.
We wait.

Corn blond, then gold submit to russet
then sentries set their light
and from the futile ramparts
peer into the dusk
that hides the dangers of the night.

© Graham Sherwood 9/2012

Papadigm

It begins today,
the anniversary,
if that is the right word for it.
Today, I officially become older than my father,
twenty-five years in the making.
What did I think would happen?
A message from the hereafter or something,
congratulations,
of course not,
none of us ever believed in paradise.
But nonetheless today my face will supplant his,
my mirror to his photographs.
He will never look like this,
and from here on in
I am his senior in my reveries.
I will teach him things now,
finally my student after sixty-one years,
our roles reversed and he,
with the same inquisitive expression
that often sat upon my brow, will be my pupil.
He will ask me new questions.
Where shall I begin?

© Graham Sherwood 09/2012