There is no love on those horizon lines,
nor in the sight of ships
tacking their finite courses to
oblivion, spilling me
outside.
So who is it waiting
in the rain, feels its spots
cool on their skin, can smell
its sweet aroma
off the hard hot road, stretching away
around the lonely coast?
poem and picture © copyright David F. Barker 2012
A new book by Crime Fiction writer, Milly Reynolds, is due out imminently on Kindle.
It is the second book in the Jack Sallt series, a detective based in Norfolk, England, who has a lot of rough edges, getting him into serious scrapes with enemies, colleagues and loved-ones alike:
Two men are found in a beached boat, one dead, one seriously injured, stretching the resources of an already underfunded police force.
Suspended detective inspector, Jack Sallt, is reluctantly rushed back on duty to face his most perplexing and dangerous case yet, where old foes move in the shadows, threatening violence, controlling him with sensual taunts.
In the tense climax, Jack has to face his relentless enemies head on, risking not only his own life but also those of his colleagues and loved ones.
© copyright Milly Reynolds 2012
Bede
It wasn’t at Jarrow where I sensed you
but on Bamburgh’s raging shore,
among the seaweed and razor shells
on gull peppered sands,
its castle brooding behind me
like a huge chiseled tomb.
North waves were scrambling,
spilling memories of guttural voices
disguised in flushing sound;
cries of songs, harps and old tales lost,
fragments I could almost hear
when I turned my head into the wind.
And who was the black figure
bent against the breeze,
absorbing sharp light
on that blinding beach?
I struggled through the dunes,
the little islands of sparse grass
and pygmy flowers —
but you were gone,
extant only in memory,
my boundless imagination,
and in your books
which carry me through centuries
on a primal wave,
each time I read your words
Poem and image © copyright df barker 2012
Sea Wall
Stand and look from here,
you can see the earth’s curve,
a sea-levelled land
bereft of its mother.
Shells we have found
while the silt blew away,
powdered by droughts
and the pitiless wind.
Stand here with me
at the high spring tide—
you know the stark sea
will swell all over this again
poem © copyright df barker 2012
Beachcombing
We set out one morning
after the rain had cleared.
Not a breath of wind,
loose clothes sticking to my skin.
Our intention was to search
the shallow beach,
stretching so far ahead of us
towards lights on low, murky cliffs—
baleful beacons through the mist.
“Stop there!” you said
and took that picture of me,
my trousers rolled up;
never the most fetching sight.
“Walking on water,” that’s
what you called it right away:
Maybe this was the closest
we ever got to heaven
poem and image © copyright df barker 2012
Ciscography 