Daydreaming under a city pergola Daydreaming under a city pergola, There was a time we knew each other, When days were blissfully round And words had a clearer sound; When frost coated leaves seemed Ornate and cherished, Falling in Cavatina tones From sycamores overhead; But now, the season’s have changed And the World is less familiar, And though I resist each turn of the page, The reader no longer shares my vision

Yesterday’s prayer flags

Prayer wheels stop spinning

Of character,

I can’t transport you next to me

It was go mad, or write poetry. I chose the pen. For a while I busked with my brothers guitar. But, I didn’t get far. So I wrote some sonnets and sold them to an agent in Mayfair. I was mentioned in Time Out and published in Melody Maker. Still, that shadow, hiding behind the sofa, conversing with God on the way home from worship across Hackney Marshes, he’s still inside me. He is the non-poet, taunting me like scrapyard gates rattling through the night.

Mountains are faithful. They are old Gods, unchangeable. Stubborn. My 20 yr. old dad stares at me from the Italian Alps in 1945. “I was the only one in my company who didn’t get a Dear John letter,” he once confided in me in a rare opening up moment as…

Your hand in my hand

I was uncertain,