Pebbles

In The Pond

- anthology

Sailing

Semi-finalist - August 2000 - "Saling" - Anthology inclusion 2000 (Flowering Splendor)

Sitting on the beach

we confess only half our selves.

Instead we watch the boats riding on the dusk in limbo:

Twenty bobbing yachts that seek a harbour inside time.

Your seas are still seduced by moons

and all the grains of sand sift through your solitude.

Unchained chains that touch us both

give way to wave on wave through endless tides

of lapping tales on muted tongues.

 

You will not drop anchor nor I cast off.

We sail the wind of circumstance, uncertain, insecure

on this fleeting voyage.

Today we'll burn the boats

and cast our nets in other waters.

Shakespeare In Love

Semi-finalist - September 2000 - adapted as "Shakespeare In Lust" - Anthology inclusion 2001 - Publication (Love and Luminaries) Selected as one of thirty-three poets internationally for CD/Cassette anthology 'The Sound of Poetry' by The International Library of Poetry (USA) - 2002. A 3-CD/Cassette set which " ... features thirty-three poems that best exemplify the art of poetry through the spoken word."

Fair met are we, my love, by deep design and happy be; for though I have foresworn thy bed in likeness of thy father's wish, I have not forsaken thee. Ah, how fair the dewdrops on the bough swell out the belly of the moon; and yet, betimes, we have so little now where our moments must be stol'n. Thus, fair love, be not as the maidens who mingle fingers, paddle palms and profess to love in high degree nor be as the brides on Avon's bank who cry out, "fie!" and thereupon their cares deny as firmly as their wanton thoughts lest they try to trick them into fancy's fickle frolic. Instead make haste to gather up thy damask and thy lace; shake free the bonnet from thy head and become the strumpet from the stews who lights the fire and calls her cattle home then yolks them to the byre. Sweet love, speed us now in our delights - for though I could tell thee such honeysuckle things that would deck the ground with softest down and whisper music to the wind in keeping with the gifts Diana now bestows upon thy brow - one great thing doth urgently prevail. Methinks it meet for me to say, and for thee to hear, that I have pressing business here 'twixt the snow goose and the nightingale. What? Ho, my love! What? Art thou sleeping now? Awake! Awake and study me in my mistake!

Reconciliation

Featured Poem

International Convention and Symposium

International Library of Poetry (USA)

March 2002.

The distant vision of a Northern Dreaming,

grandly scheming, as heroes of their time,

they came, they saw, they came again and stayed.

They stayed to claim your earth, your skies,

your fire, your moons, your meadows

and your mountains.

They sent their outcasts,

their offcuts and their dispossessed

to tame your country and claim your souls.

They stole your desert flowers;

they burnt your bridges;

they broke your mould.

They mocked your elders in their wisdom

and gave back nothing save disease, death

and a new found dispossession.

In ownership they took your sacred places,

scorned your faces, marked and measured out

your bleached bones in the sand

then stripped your trees, your grasses and your lands

to make a little England.

They sought to make you like themselves;

change your ways, turn your wine to water

and your water into woe.

They stole and forced your sons and daughters

to make their world your own.

There is a need to reconcile two worlds conjoined,

two histories collided, two cultures clashed

which stand divided.

There is greed to be atoned for;

there are guilts to expiate.

There can be no victors

while victims stand and wait

for an apology that comes too late.