Ghosts

The poem in the post below this one, "October," is decades old and was published by the magazine, "Poetry Review," back then. Now, I'd rewrite bits of it, tighten it up and get rid of that toe-curlingly awful inversion at the start of it. The poetic past comes back to haunt, eh!

October

 

Crisp gold are the leaves in the garden,
brittle for burning.
I choke on the musky smoke of the bonfire
and my eye sting
as warm ashes are raked over scorched ground.
Now I cannot tell
which are autumn’s leavings,

which your ambivalent letters.

Digging Deep

 

It's clay and clings, this earth,
chopped, shaped. It lies
in lumps where weeds decay
and garden debris burns.
New soil fills the hollow
now, strong for flower
after leaf down where roots
keep, distant from air,
where future shoots probe safe.

Race over the lawn, scrap
game away, stopped by
a bite of balled geranium,
your daughters argue above
tough docks growing, son’s
eyes aslant of grasslings
shivering resilient
on that clot of clumps
long in our sight.

Bellevue

 

 
On the edge of the New Town,
pilasters piled in view,
terrace grimed behind,
me in months down to an island:
you deck-hopping, a-chatter to all;
those boats bobbing showy

out at the slopping marina.

New Blogger Format

 I am less than happy. The new format introduced in September will only allow double spacing, on 'Normal' as well as 'Paragraph,' not the single spacing I need. I'm a poet and write in discrete lines, not continuous lines as for prose. I've tried everything: altering the line height in the HTML source; posting to the Google/Blogger community; informing techies via Blogger feedback; going online to see if anyone has come up with a solution or workaround; asking friends who are tech savvy. Result? Nothing.

View the problem in the poem below this post - now solved.

Some doofus of a Google techie needs to take note and act. Meanwhile, I can only apologise to people who read my blog. I don't want to start a new one elsewhere as it would mean transposing all my previous posts here - an enormous task - but I will if the problem isn't solved. Google, you are on warning! 

Problem solved. It seems you have to press SHIFT/ENTER for every single line - annoying if you have a long poem. Of course, Blogger techies told nobody about the workaround; users found out by experimenting. Anyway, I hope the information above is useful to people.

Source

 

 
I’ve had seventy seven years enough
to reach for e-books, i-pads, dongles
diddling in ports, piddling magic
muddling away this middling while,
when what I want is to float, ashes
from Etna, on a flit wind over
the hills and far blown to atoms
above maps mindless of Eden’s roots
and this glum of mud on the stream’s leach,
downstream broad in a grey stink
by London’s industrial, sewage churning
in water-sog upstream of ruling stone.
Why would I want to turn and go back,
a salt wife for Lot’s leavings?
No. I’ll slip from the wind where a clearing’s
untilled, fall in a whichway ending.