James Smith

Light shines on roofs made silver by the rain
Turned dazzling golden mirrors by the sun
As tiles some ancient armourer had begun
To fashion from a hard metallic plate,
...

When your energy goes
Your lights go dim
It happens to her
It happens to him
...

What could have been
Should have been
Might have been
Just wasn't,
...

Dizzy with the prelunch wine
I try to connect a scattered brain
So as to invent, think up, create if you like
A thing worth painting, writing, making.
...

The old men dance in the spring or would like to
And some believe it makes spring happen.
Others alas can no longer dance
And believe that spring dances around them.
...

In this wet autumn, leaves slither in dark clumps under foot,
The late hangers on glow golden brown against black trunks,
All will be gone at the first wind but while they remain
Winter still seems far away, as yet an afterthought.
...

Now a late tyrant of winter's days
Presents an icy greeting of pale green skys
And fogging breath
The black crow filled trees ever far away
...

There's a door that appears with age
Because it wasn't there before
And when by some chance or design
You pass through to a place beyond
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When idleness becomes a necessity and sloth a way of moving,
Then the heatwave has crashed unwanted on our fragile shore.
To remind us of our humble position
Just the right miles from the sun
...

With shortened days a darker dawn
Has made our early mornings night
We wait to see a sky turn bright.
Shadows conceal us from the morn
...

You're looking great
At seventy eight
And the cooking is lovely too.
...

Neither sea nor land
A temporary resting place
A sort of nomadic graveyard
And mill rolled into one.
...

They nervously prepare their questions
Rehearsed the night before
The unspoken looming large at first
For the one beside the door.
...

Before this wind our senses lay
Flat and vunerable, forgetfull,
Our memories clean and tidy, thoughts marshalled
Lives mostly spruced up.
...

Now it's autumn some of our trees
As celebration of the summer's ending
Pour golden rain across the ground.
Amid that noisy colour the quiet ones
...

Shall we describe the falling leaves
As feathers floating in the autumn sun?
Or golden tissue that a craftsman weaves
Cut into snippets when the cloth is done?
...

The thing that I admiro
Is your skiful use of the biro
Though confined to a home
You can still write a pome
...

There's a little time but not much
There's this and that to do and
Such, a lot to scan in little time
And if you can spare a second
...

Winter comes in grey in our broad valley
Blinded in fogs we sense a colder air,
From distant icey harsher places,
Come uninvited for a longer stay.
...

In endless days where grey clouds hang down
To a landscape of mud and flooded ruts
As if earth and sky were joined at the waist
Minutes tick by, grey and brown, grey and brown.
...