Sunday Haiku

Dream Shower Toast Tea
Newspaper Leaf-Mould Hail Storm
Walk Five Fish Dinner

© Graham Sherwood 10/2013

Awaiting Erato

(Study of a blank page).

Alone again, what is Muse?
What kind of entity
as light as breath, heavy as guilt, capricious as faith
that holds me in such crushing torpor
of impatient anticipation.
Be she young, or she at all?
who points my gaze, loosens my tongue
and sets ablaze my thoughts,
before, with scant indication
gone.
If a he, Muse is brutal
a fierce prodigal who bears no kindred spirit
no brotherly bond
and will not fight my corner,
who lashes cruelly with barbed whips
that rip the sleeves of my recoiling aspirations.
No, Muse is she
who, tosses tendrilled locks
with a curious, unsure countenance,
the promise of a smile, the treason of a frown,
the blink of embrace, the furnaces of loss,
why else would I wait here?

© Graham Sherwood 10/2013

Going Back

(A reflective thought on a planned reunion).

Later over dinner we re-assemble
like old knights with their ladies,
to study surreptitiously one another’s lifelines
and to hear what japes have come and gone
throughout these last fifty years or so.
The weight of our armour is now replaced
by the fat of too few battles fought.
Of course what we really want to know
we are all too afraid to ask,
of how a lifetime drifted by unseen

© Graham Sherwood 10/2013

There and back again

(On the subject of travel)

On any journey worth its salt
take an invisible knapsack
fill it with the weight of places,
peoples and other nouns
This burden tugs your progress
packed in different pockets
folded emotions, pristine like maps
faces moulded like sculptures
and essences are bottled fast
West to east become east to west
as it surely will
and irksome baggage becomes chafed and worn
and tears beneath the rent of homesickness
spilling the journey stones
to leave a boy scout’s coded secret trail
to mark your pathway home


© Graham Sherwood 09/2013

Ebb and Flow

What do you intend to do?
The enquiry delivered like a helpful slap
is designed to bring me to my senses,
your hand left hanging there
in case more medicine is required.
The bow wave of your breath
like a crashing surf, roars
and then is numbed silence,
I count to seven awaiting the next explosion.
Will you be alright?
More gentler, calmer water now, damaged,
your voice a useless bloodstained sling
offering support but delivering none,
my purposeful stride self-moderates
into a funereal step, pause, step.
Do I go or do I stay?


© Graham Sherwood 09/2013

Redux 2

Twenty years ago we lay on camp beds here,
at midnight on the bumpy grass,
supine, our saucered eyes scanning a star map sky,
fleeting Perseids teased our stare
our friends proclaiming, keeping score
“there’s one”.

Now everyone has gone
and we are back to heal the past,
with apologetic sticking plaster vows,
but they are gone
and will not return to hear confession.

So here we are, an age past,
to offer ourselves up, naked once again,
holding hands, awaiting
cosmic teleportation or redemption,
both afraid neither will come, or worse
only one of us will ascend to the stars.

A bristle of a breeze feathers our bodies
and makes us more afraid
until the balm of mild darkness returns
and we set off to cross the rubicon.


© Graham Sherwood 8/2013

Maison Mere

This house has many visitors who come to pretend,
to stumble through a new tongue
and try to feel comfortable about doing very little.
Undoubtedly there have been liaisons here,
spurious affairs and perhaps conception
and an end to matters too I think.
The landscape is wiry stubble,
the serene corduroy of vines
and the beautiful adolescence of sunflowers.
All watch the goings-on
with idle disdain in their broken tranquillity.
For her part, for the maison is definitely female
she holds all her visitors safely within sturdy walls
in non-judgemental sanctity,
a young capable chatelaine who has aged gracefully
to become a respected and much loved matriarch,
who still keeps secrets, mops tears and feeds her charges
Themselves still believing another life is possible.



© Graham Sherwood 8/2013