Poems
Broomfield Park, March
A moorhen busies herself, rocks
this way and that on a wave-washed nest.
Swans float in late afternoon chill
as spring fires the chestnut buds swelling.
Forsythia trembles in the breeze –
pastel-greened willows hang still,
dipping down into the lake.
Every year I wait for this –
the sculpted branches,
trees leafing,
reflecting in the water
their steadfast
cascades of green.
Chartres Cathedral
I have come here tourist-eyed many times,
through yellowed wheat, along straight roads
sparse with trees, sunflowers –
summer’s haze shearing the air.
Suddenly the unmatched spires
rise above the plain.
Before I arrive, the Cathedral will seem to
disappear among factories, tower-blocks,
streets zigzagged around mediaeval hills.
This is my pilgrimage.
I am learning to take my cue
from the heart of it – to never
take my eyes from the spires,
the bowl, the ark lifting
burning into a teal sky.
The Brief of Travelling
(after Jen Hadfield)
I pitch my tent on the edge of the desert
to script me the journey’s spell.
It has blind trails like a bushwalker’s maze,
the weather white-wearing hot.
It has its compasses,
found gold and shiny mica.
It has its Terrors of Forgetting,
its monuments and forbidden marsh.
It has its long-sighted crafty Crusoe,
it has its footloose wily Gulliver.