Doing it all
you are like a meteor
and you’re young.
I am a metaphor for middle-age
I watch you smoke,
I can’t tell you
how it makes me feel
one hand wants to snatch
while the other loves
patting your head
so why do I smirk
at your facebook smile? – oh
this envy takes many forms
though the worst is knowing
you’re doing it all, and that I,
for all my whittling
have nothing to show
poem and image © copyright dfbarker 2012
Dark
Rook on the road verge ahead
how casually you’ll step aside,
only just avoid my wheels.
Is that why I smile at the mirror
where you promptly step back
to continue to pick and prod,
pulling at the roadkill entrails
some straitjacket driver provides?
Like the crow, the raven— few
are as bright as you, so dark
in colour and reputation
poem and image © copyright dfbarker 2012
A Time of Dreams
I found myself in a country
of huge living skies,
speaking your dreams
of earth, the great teacher.
I was standing by a mesa,
felt its warmth against my skin,
fingers spanning epochs
flattened into inches,
whispering mantras
and prayers in your name,
not in memory
but for your continuing
presence of love.
I spoke to you,
my spine square to red earth;
you were there in each rock,
the cactus, every molecule of air,
in the eagle’s eye lasering my soul.
When finally I awoke
it was another age, as if seconds
had stretched into centuries.
But you were there
and took my hand.
It was the most natural thing
poem © copyright dfbarker 2012
Weapon Take
No rusty blade
ever turns up here,
no shadow of a ship
or bejewelled belt;
no iconic helm
to add credence
to our wounded identity.
Not even signs
of a mystery hillock
rising in hugging mists
to excite or intrigue
those metal detector men.
Merely one vast industrial
scar, scoured of feature,
almost of life, tamed,
or destroyed,
depending on your view,
turned inside out
by Angevin priors
and inscrutable Dutchmen.
I come from a long
line of diggers
and dark-eyed women,
grown out of this morass,
hardened to sweat
and pitiless Ural winds.
People who made-do,
though never in
any doubt they
were the subjected
men of their Hundred,
the brave new Wapentake,
where the councillors
still speak in a
double-Dutch behind
tall, timbered walls.
poem and image © copyright dfbarker 2012
*poem first published in collection ‘Anonymous Lines’, available at amazon.
** Wapentake was the Danish word for the English Hundred (a small, political unit, originally meaning a hundred homes). This word is still used in the ‘Danelaw’ counties of eastern England.
Brief
Of the class of ’77
to my mind you were the best
Diamond moments
in empty halls,
instruments lying at your mercy,
each note, every chord
an affable smile
pavilioned in memory
How could you
be so brief,
this grief be so long?
image and poem © copyright dfbarker 2012
Ciscography 