Here’s today’s New & selected poem – Words and lichen, a herald of the Halloween season.
From tomorrow, I’ll be posting a poem every day till Halloween. The poems are from a sequence entitled Aldilà, an Italian word meaning the hereafter, the beyond or the other side.
I’ll tell you more about the sequence as it unfolds over the next couple of weeks. It was written initially as part of an eco-poetry workshop project in 2018.
I hope you enjoy your Halloween reading and listening.
Happy hauntings!
Words and lichen
I can’t explain how much I love you,
can’t find the words for how I feel.
Words disappear beneath golden lichen
- what’s said eroded by what’s real.
Too late I know how much you loved me,
can’t find the words for how I feel.
Love disappears when you scam for riches,
dishonesty destroys what’s real.
Where the Meon flows to Fareham
through valleys of green and gold,
I dream of you through summer sunsets
even though our love’s been sold.
Sold my love to the highest bidder,
sold my love on a market stall.
Can’t buy back the dreams of summer,
the money men have changed them all.
I broke your heart that cold December
moving money like children’s toys.
I broke your trust, your self-possession
my greedy heart stole all your joys.
I watch the river unforgiven
by my wife and unborn child.
Cruelly lost in the dead of winter,
cruelly lost in the river wild.
Where the Meon flows to Fareham
through valleys of green and gold,
I dream of you through summer sunsets
even though our love’s been sold.
I still go to that country churchyard,
still put flowers on your grave
and read those words in the stained glass
chiding me ‘he cannot save…’
I can’t explain how much I love you
can’t find the words for how I feel.
Words disappear beneath golden lichen
- what’s said eroded by what’s real
Where the Meon flows to Fareham
through valleys of green and gold,
I dream of you through summer sunsets
I’ll love you though the world’s been sold
Where the Meon flows to Fareham
through valleys of green and gold,
I dream of you through summer sunsets,
never forget the love I sold.
