Poem 1

Written when I was seventeen in one of our chocolate brown vinyl lounge chairs, all in one go, me steadfastly then grimly refusing to leave the lounge until it was done, wrestling with the rhymes and the rhythm, feeling I was onto some internal music and trying to ride it past the point of inspiration and through the zone of hard yacker, banging my brain against the wall … I always think (remembering writing this) about the description by James Joyce in Portrait of the Artist of the process of composing a poem, getting onto the metre, losing it, drying out, then it beating somewhere in the back of your brain again …

… this was my first real adult poem, so it’s appropriate that it starts things off here …

… it still has a poignancy for me, evoking a melancholy sinking of the spirit at the end of the day and in the deep heart of winter … plenty of time in the valley to contemplate the road not taken …

( I like the rhymes, especially the double-rhyme in each third line – and the alliteration followed by assonance of branch began or antler ended has always particularly pleased me … 

… at that age (and still?) I was living through my imagination and influences – I had never experienced snow falling for instance, and I can tell the situation in the poem owes more than a little to Elton John/Bernie Taupin’s Love Lies Bleeding … )

Winter Valley

The day is wandering south again
drawing mist from out of the hills
the fire dies and winter lies
so heavy on my sill

deer have come two mornings since
and looked and lingered here
they coldly stood as still as wood
I couldn't tell you where
branch began or antler ended
or why they turned to go
but as they left the yard was swept
by the first fine touch of snow

the fence is dropped and tilting 
has it been all that long?
you're not here another year
has turned its back and gone

winters are so dark in here
I often heard you say
and in the night I turn my sight
away from another day