WRITING INSPIRED BY LANDSCAPE

  Two siblings race in monsoon rain up the path in a Singapore yard; No likelihood I’d lose, the eldest by two years.     Sticklebacks dart, tiny missiles secreted in Hampshire’s chalk streams; My chilled hands drip platinum drops. A vixen pounces into feathery pristine snow. Her flicker of flame Doused through thin ice in a sluggish flow.   On an Exmouth rock pool, my shadow obscures the surface glitter; Tiny crabs dance a fox-trot into seaweed cover. Just the rain, in all its moods, on a roof or window, is a fall into joy; Many hours can pass in a blissful trance. On the Ouse Washes, a hundred swans feed in their own reflections, Fragmentary glimpses of perfection. Blossom from cherry and crab-apple powder the pools at Giverny; Bound buds of narcissi sway in papery wraps. Heard only by fish, waterlilies break open with muffled detonations; Above heart shaped platters stand their transient jewels. On a Minoan vase, 1500 B.C., dolphi...

  A bright, clear night; the moon rides high. Thin clouds racing past the shining disk which scans the landscape with pale intensity. Passing over limestone country, the Hanglands are below. Part of John Clare’s lost Heath; now an oasis in an arable land. Clare, versing in his head, walked from Helpston to be alone in this green space. Escaping from villagers who thought him strange - a lunatic!? Tonight, the moon tracks a car following the road Clare took one hundred and fifty years before. Head lights challenging the moon’s gaze; it stops by the path to the Heath, No longer a green lane; one hedge grubbed out to extend the crop. The moon lights on two people emerging from the car, escaping from a noisy party. Like Clare - they too want to be alone. Nearby, a little owl picks up beetles fallen from an overhanging oak, a badger scratches and a deer barks. The two young people thrill at the night sounds. Then, still listening, hand in hand, they quietly tak...