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Index of poems:
- As this blue November
- Boxing Day, 2004
- Holding
- Not Thinking of You
- Seven Reflections from a Window
- The Heart
- Two Mile Beach
- Vigil at Worth Abbey
As this blue November bleached sky radiates Into white into grey into dark dramas of space Above my head, and the seagulls cry on the wind; As morning slips into noon and I notice the beech tree, Radiant with copper buds necklaced on the sky’s throat And sunlight burnishing the twigs with an endless fading; As I look out into the day and see my life without you Wear away into winter and my not knowing at all You in your morning and the lights in your eyes today; Then deep, the drowned river draws tears Clear down the cliff-fall of my aching heart, To crash upon the rock of today, empty of you.
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Boxing Day, 2004
© Patrick Bond, January 2005
Under the shadow of tsunami I write nothing. A shrug of disbelief As the globe hesitates. A Son is born. What star to follow? The sinews of thought Unnerved. Word is made flesh. Bodies bloat, clog and corrupt. Vanished children, pure voids. Death, on a scale so casual.Back to top
Holding
© Patrick Bond, July 2004
I let you go. The wind is in your sails. My holding you steady is not helping. Sudden and sure is the moment. Calm is the sea in your eyes. White cliffs climb the green headland Lean into morning, light up your looking back.Back to top
Not Thinking of You
© Patrick Bond, July 2005
Sunlight and sea breeze lie light on leaves, And I do not think of you; Seagulls, swifts and starlings bless the blue sky, And I do not look for you; Purple nicotiana, pink and blue cornflower, I do not name them for you; Evening glow ebbs out of everything, But I am not thinking of you.
Seven Reflections from a Window
© Patrick Bond, January 2004
I Early year sparrows, quick scatterings Clipped brown memories on the winter hedgerow. I place myself, implicit in this observation Above the ground – one storey up – within a frame Light face in a dark window, reflecting the day And sparrows, and lingering, as the sun lengthens. II The window appears again. I return. You move in the room behind my chair, as if enchanted I smell the hot sweet folds of ironed clothes, hear The sure sway of you, leaning into each stroke Into the pen-strokes of my mind on paper, turning back The windows to this one, this February fog, this once. III The window fills with summer heat, we tend Huge-petalled pansies, their luscious curves loll In velvet shades of indigo, custard yellow, almost-black On the flat ledge above the landlady’s front room window. I see our feet on the low sill, feel the softness of your thigh Touch mine, the evening heat fall through us. IV The window draws me to its light. A revenant Its image opens upon my mind, dreaming its own time. Adept of vacancy, I invoke this frame of thought Become the fall of shadow-light on an empty page. – “Clare”. I call your name, knowing your light Fell through me, on to this page, thirty years ago. V Somewhere, marooned in my own future I reach out to you, here in the now of my past Hobbled in the hesitations of this half-lit January day I sing, wondering, the song I made for you then. Sense makes no sense of this, a moral quandary Or cul-de-sac. – I loved you once. I still do. VI Morality? I hardly know. Case study of abject need More like. An ontology of desire, self-annihilating. Seventeen before I met you, again seventeen Till you left me, and now the same further on I still can’t frame those words for anyone else. I still can’t see any other face at the window. VII Light recedes from the window: I tug the curtains back. The luminance of grey becomes steadily reversed. Beech tree twigs, veined upon a marble sky Suck down the light of day, make it fast in myriad roots. A short day draws to its natural close. Your face peers in Your lips half-longing, half-pouting. The sparrows have all gone.
The Heart
© Patrick Bond, May 2005
Every morning, I go hunting for my heart. It is straying, never in bed with me, Often pressed flat against a wall, Shivering in the warmest of days. I can find it out on the street, kitted up for a mountain hike, Trembling, as a seagull’s wing balances on sunlight. Once, I found it in a filthy cellar, curled among bricks Under splintered wood, bright eyes focused on the dark. Not much I can say, scooping it up, Crying its familiar, thin scream, Rigid in my clumsy hands: Not much I can do, but put it back inside, Listen out for signs of distress, as I go about my day, Settle for the night, knowing I will lose it again.
Two Mile Beach
© Patrick Bond, March 2005
Pacing due south on Dooey beach, sea at ebb; To my left, sand dunes eroded and tottering. I am walking on the sky, sheet-metal-grey silk, Stretched flat, water-smooth, mirror-solid. I am setting course by a fixed point, a straight course, Showing two curlews how it is done. Low mountains link across my line of sight The strokes and flows of a script I can almost read. Looking back, I see my bootmarks are blurred Already, and have wandered. The curlews gone, The sun gleams up at me from an empty sky; Green as marble, Atlantic rollers line out a new page.
Vigil at Worth Abbey
© Patrick Bond, April 2004
Echoes erupt in the emptied space, scatter and settle;
The Abbey Church a henge, hollow in the vaulted night.
Candles keep your presence, we pray at the rim of dark,
Remembering that you washed our feet, reminded us of love,
Broke the bread, shared the cup, promised to come back.
Now silence is pure, your sweat like drops of blood.
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