john appleby Poems

Rain drums on the roof all night,
the gutters choke on viscous leaves,
coughs the icy flem down stone cold walls.
Lying awake listening to the rhythmic tide
...

We gather in the tangled wood with our buckets and bowls,
rise the grassy slopes, our hopes locked in the sweet promise of the knotted hedgerows, harbour of the autumn tides.

The young ones scramble through twisted wires of briar that tears
...

Folded in stone, the dark island whispers across the sound.
A velvet cipher captured between a quiet sea and a red washed sky.
In my dreams I land on Jura's clouded shores and carry the ashes
of my haunted past to scatter amongst the lilting paps
...

Working the green seam under a louring sky.
Cobs of earth and shards of stone tossed into the steel void
echoes through skylark spaces. Eagle Crag; its peeling face a drum
played by tired fingers.
...

Out there...strung out on a wire, a dead bee floats in a stagnant
pool. A lizard creeps into shadows...a crow falls.
Witness, the silent angel praying for direction, spiraling across
the blank page of stone, followed by a silent sun which crawls
...

White page written in red ink, a trembling hand misspelling stone.
A climbing wordsmith struggles here to articulate the lines.
Vague sentences hang from every page.
The previous author fought to handle the grainy texture,
...

Jawbone of ewe placed on the stone alter.
A fractured token singing of wind through a
quilted sky.
Dyniewyd's red rocks spread their fire through
...

A shabby lustre torn from gloom dragged her bones into view,
rose from stone the white harp plucked by wind and crows,
its delicate air tangles and suffocates in bog cotton whispers
and the aqueous babble released from the mountain's bow.
...

A bee's wing over Abyssinia;
a poison clock.
A whale beached and lifeless on a Scottish shore,
five pigs-old spots-wandering through empty rooms.
...

Vagrant amongst the peregrine nation.
He is out there...somewhere....betrayed by the
mumbling rituals carried on a blind wind.
Swallowed amongst the fragile towers and peeling walls,
...