Tricolore

Blue are the days you might suffer and dwell.

but remember, as well, that red I've seen 

in the burning embers that

have relit the darkest nights for me.

The white is the shining knight you've been for me.

There's no flag emblazoned on your armour, no border.

just an express order of l'amour special.

It's ever so especially important, this:

over seas and cross country,

beyond lands, districts and territory,

your story is now sewn into

the blue, white and red of my own.

Blue are the waves we must learn to tread and red is the blood-rush to the head when the word "dead" doesn't

cover it, quite.

But the white is the light of your

remarkable soul, one wiser than your thirty years. 

Promise not to apologise for tears.

It's true that fears, like dreams, will come true or unstuck.

But with a little bit of luck and

a new suit of armour

we might send our flag up a mast.

The past we can navigate together;

like English weather, it can be dealt with.

We'll mop it up, the two of us, and mount a steely defence against 

the next downpour.

We've got this, my Tricolore. 

The Day of You and Me/I

We can take this little day and call it “You and Me”.

I’ll look at the London sky and you’ll look at the sea.

You can be a shingle beach beneath my barefoot feet

and I will be a parasol to shield you from the heat.

You could launch a firework across the granite sky

and I could build a bonfire to make the embers fly.

You might plant a silver fern and sprinkle it with water;

I might pick a Yorkshire rose to feel myself a daughter.

You have held fast to the string and tried to calm a kite,

while I was whipping in the wind and feigned the taking flight.

You were there, your flag full-mast, and coaxed me to the shore

but I was far too anchored fast down to the murky floor.

Yet you are still a beacon of back where we lived a life

and I will doggy-paddle back to where you’re more than wife.

Know I will never throw away this friend that is my “other”:

you are the jewel inside a cave I plundered to find “mother".

I love you and I love you and I love you till I die.

You are the one, my inner soul, my me, myself and I.

Happy You and I Day. 
Sometime in March. 
2017.

The Trilogy

1. The Bird and the Sea

Like a migrating bird she flew to the city one winter

One more adventure, she thought,

One more flight path to valiantly venture.
There was cooking and cleaning with meaning, not much money
Isn’t it funny?
A jarful of ordinary days and fleeting nights have somehow patch-worked themselves into a precious memory.

In time, she settled.

Made a nest.
Embellished it with trinkets and the rest.
Red walls and chipped laminate floors.
Revelries, near-misses and flags on the doors.
Shiny pint glasses lifted from pubs; we were light-fingered and light-souled.
And we joked of growing old together.

And then the coastline came inland for a visit.

Almost like a tidal swell:

I liked him as well.

He was good enough;
not just for anyone but
for her. Which is no mean feat.
After all, he had me to defeat.

Then I saw the bird and the sea become one.

Happiness seemed like just something to be done; the in-thing.
You’d think it would bother me: losing my sidekick, my love, my partner in crime.
But in time the coastline also became mine.
A familiar friend within the space of a mere weekend.
And so a funny kind of existence began to become.
My friend found a sea view without realising she’d needed one.

Then looking out of the window became a journey.

Venturing further, the coast and the sea and me
went our separate ways but kept hold of the twine that had sewn our time so defiantly together.

Until another winter years later, on a river,

the dirty, snaking path back to our beginning;

he said he’d always be with her.

2. The Pearl Makes Three

They journeyed, my friends.

Their love grew tall like the high tide

marked by green on a pier wall.

They sailed onwards, married over mileage,

threw their net wide and
then dropped anchor in a place they
decided to be.
Then suddenly (it seemed) The Bird and the Sea
were nearly a three.

Here they are, gazing out from
the bank of a highland loch
and taking stock before the real adventure begins.
They could speak grandfather’s chins, choose brown or blue eyes,
debate silly names and remember their childhood times.
Nursery rhymes were sung to them only yesterday.
All the time, taking shape and listening is their little stowaway.

Under the waves of her heartbeat, still

resting in its  bay and connected by a glittering sliver of a strand
Perfectly formed but not quite ready to unfurl
is an ocean pearl.

A tiny carbonite thing, strengthened already

by concentric layers: round like her
belly that burgeons against her clothes.
Tough, like your father and
harboured by the day-to-day swell.

Just one hop away in time
from iridescence: she has that as well.
This friend of mine, the magnificent girl:
the Mother of Pearl.

3. Treasure

Born into water: that was the plan.

Magically you’d twirl out of her and spore into the world.

You’d head in, head-first and unfurl from an oyster;

not a pearl but some perfect little thing we’d cried about 

even thinking about.

But you were a stubborn sort of little thing 

and in the end like an oyster unwilling to be shucked

we had to pluck you out. 

You didn’t fancy a swim; you didn’t want out of your air pocket just yet. 

Like I was

in our scarlet-walled home, 

you were comfy and warm and membraned.

To remain was to be like a limpet, a squatter in a chill-out womb. 

For you, now was a bit too soon.

But with ebbs and pangs, held hands and grit

they managed to unclamp you from inside.

Wide-eyed, you

were hauled ashore with the tide.

The catch of the day, fished out

and blinking into glare.

Hook, line and sinker,

you were there. 

You’d already a flair for the dramatic

in birth, a head full of hair. 

The glorious girth and 

substantial weight was worth the

substantial wait. 

The little stowaway is no more: he’s above board now,

he’s a flag at full-mast and now

somehow he’s even there in the past. 

Which has been rewritten now. 

Something that’s always been here:

the sound of familiar waves in a conch shell

held to your ear.

Now echoes tell the future and the horizon roves close to the shore,
you're the smooth jewelled edges of once-sharp glass.

You’re home now and like the untamed
sea grass, you’ll spread out and grow.

Row row row your little boat all over, Syd.

Sail far, go off-grid and look up at the 

birds and the moon and the stars.

You’re the best thing they did, 

in truth and by far. 

You can swim but you can fly as well. 

The bird gave you feathery wings so you can soar

and your dad is the level ocean floor.

So dive down to the seabed, drop an 

anchor for later

and then you can fly across the equator

until you reach something interstellar.

Go on adventures, but go home and tell her. 

Tell him and tell us everything and 

we’ll laugh and we'll tell you what we did in our day. 

And your whatever is their whatever. 

Because for as far as forever can be measured,

you’ll be their little bit of dug-up gold: 

a thing more precious than any treasure

and worth more than any lottery

that has ever been won. By anyone. 

Their little pearl, their sea-bird, their Syd, their son.

(This is not the end)

The Buoy

He cropped up through the chops of the sea,
preserved in a buried trove
in an underneath goldmine grove
under a mackerel's skeleton key
and he's somehow always
been a part of her meaning of "we".

Along came a little red pin on a grid,
a marker of time on a map
that's always been rolled up,
wanting to be read and
wrapped in red ribbon,
and a tape-measure yarn of years and
the coordinates of their stopping to shift.
Driftwood was pulled ashore
by a bright orange ball,
he was tied to the bedrock,
the cockles and mussels
of a rock and roll romance.
A little upshot of an ocean-dance
who rolled in to town
And while he cleverly waited
and hid.
He was best thing in the treasure chest:
Our little bouy,
Syd.

Treasure

Born into water: that was the plan.

Magically you’d twirl out of her and spore into the world.

You’d head in, head-first and unfurl from an oyster;

not a pearl but some perfect little thing we’d cried about 

even thinking about.

But you were a stubborn sort of little thing 

and in the end like an oyster unwilling to be shucked

we had to pluck you out. 

You didn’t fancy a swim; you didn’t want out of your air pocket just yet. 

Like I was

in our scarlet-walled home, 

you were comfy and warm and membraned.

To remain was to be like a limpet, a squatter in a chill-out womb. 

For you, now was a bit too soon.

But with ebbs and pangs, held hands and grit

they managed to unclamp you from inside.

Wide-eyed, you

were hauled ashore with the tide.

The catch of the day, fished out

and blinking into glare.

Hook, line and sinker,

you were there. 

You’d already a flair for the dramatic

in birth, a head full of hair. 

The glorious girth and 

substantial weight was worth the

substantial wait. 

The little stowaway is no more: he’s above board now,

he’s a flag at full-mast and now

somehow he’s even there in the past. 

Which has been rewritten now. 

Something that’s always been here:

the sound of familiar waves in a conch shell

held to your ear.

Now echoes tell the future and the horizon roves close to the shore,
you're the smooth jewelled edges of once-sharp glass.

You’re home now and like the untamed
sea grass, you’ll spread out and grow.

Row row row your little boat all over, Syd.

Sail far, go off-grid and look up at the 

birds and the moon and the stars.

You’re the best thing they did, 

in truth and by far. 

You can swim but you can fly as well. 

The bird gave you feathery wings so you can soar

and your dad is the level ocean floor.

So dive down to the seabed, drop an 

anchor for later

and then you can fly across the equator

until you reach something interstellar.

Go on adventures, but go home and tell her. 

Tell him and tell us everything and 

we’ll laugh and we'll tell you what we did in our day. 

And your whatever is their whatever. 

Because for as far as forever can be measured,

you’ll be their little bit of dug-up gold: 

a thing more precious than any treasure

and worth more than any lottery

that has ever been won. By anyone. 

Their little pearl, their sea-bird, their Syd, their son.

The Blue or the Red

The red or the blue?

Those others or you?

You’re told what’s true.

The country or a queue?

You’re in a mosque or on a pew.

You’re letting in all if you let in a few.

You want our country back, don’t you?

No it’s not the same as turning away a Jew.

It was different back then, we had a world view.

You don’t realise what some poor people are going through.

And so we’ll debate the reason for and the number of the dead.

We’ll see women told what to wear on their head.

Spite sent across bandwidth; an internet spread.

A child in Aleppo was just killed in his bed.

Let’s Make America Great Again instead.

Bank on hope or side with dread.

Easily bought or easily led?

Shiny gold or heavy lead,

Rage by fear is overfed.

Is it blue or is it red?

The Sea

A detour, I stopped and sat on

the shingle shore. Grey, save for

some glints shining through and wide

at low tide. I watched and smelled the churn of the sea.

My fingers found a smooth cold stone, 

I lanced it into the unknown,

and I imagined it was me.

I've coasted through the air and

I’ve been to the seabed, skimmed the superficial and

dropped, left only

mini-ripples on top of the blue.

Like the pebble I threw, I've been trimmed by the

eroding; turned nearly to sand

by the thrashing of the current. 

Currently, the pebble that is me is underneath

still. But it will - eventually - be delivered 

back to the beach by the ebb and the flow.

This I know.

As I left, the sun overcame the overcast

and made glimmering shimmies like

a last foray of desperate disco balls.

Before the next cloud falls over the sun, I thought,

One last glance. I thought:

I could be really living, instead of surviving.

I could dance home instead of driving,

and rather than stumbling, I could be diving.