Anthem for Essex
Tilty, Wimbish, Stebbing, Shopland
Chipping Ongar, Ingatestone
All the market towns and hamlets
On the rivers Crouch or Colne
West of Walton, east of Easton
Shellow Bowells to Hanningfield
London's bread-bin, lungs and love-nest
Beaches, birdland, wood and weald
Essex - seaxes, sheaves and shield
...
Where the weather-boarded cottage
Waits in moddy monochrome
Nestling with new commuters
And the future coming home
Envious London, stuck in traffic
Simmering its quiet desires
Senses Essex spanning endless
Hazier than orchard fires
Leave your words about Essex
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THE PIRATE'S GRAVE
(In Alresford churchyard)
Written after Spoke'n'word
cycle ride
__________________________
You entered coffined through
Yonder nave,
A buccaneer for a landlubber's
grave.
No crew drank like dredgers to
Your health...
Or argued sharing your pirate
wealth.
No sinking into the caverned deep,
And with your rusting cutlass
sleep.
You're hard anchored here above
The creeks,
Where priest-like herons stab their
beaks.
Becalmed amid the dry summer ground
No moon will turn your tides around.
I hope you're bad company for the
Alresford departed,
boring them with tales of treasures
uncharted;
And in the calm of each Essex night,
With the squire and the vicar you
curse and fight.
That buxom maid, the blacksmith's
daughter,
When you pour out her rum, go easy
with the water...
THE WIVENHOE OWL
________________
Unruffled like a high God
Amid the softly ebbing air...
Cool optics,
Focus and quarter
The moon blessed landscape.
The sabbath bell is hushed,
And the fields...incense misted;
Fragrant with husks and berries
crushed.
Again
Cool optics,
Focus and quarter
The moon blessed landscape.
Pale-creamed wings in darkness
Softly interlace and spread
Skyward
Into the tracery of night vapours..
Prey is tracked and timed
Under an over-spangled sky...
A heart too small to hold its
Fearful blood
Is clenched beneath a feathered
Shroud.
A cry turns the key in its hollow
chamber,
And seals the hushed stables of
our sleep.
p.s Martin I also wrote
The Pirate's Grave...under the accidental pseudonym of twiz !
Walk Poem: Hadleigh Castle by Philip Terry
Castle ruins Misty horizon High tower
Circular kiln
Burnt log Fissured keep Spotted dog
Leaning tower
White stone Scorched grass Black stone
High chamber
A sparrowhawk
hovers at
eye level
face into
the wind
then
drops
Scorched stone Fissured tower Circular kiln
Ancient ruin
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