Pebbles on a beach
Stars high in the firmament
Relax in this realm
Copyright Francis 2020
Haiku: ‘Realm’
Tag: beach
Runaway (Poem)
Footprints along the strand
stretching off to nowhere
A beach all my own
save for curious gulls
eyeing from Hesperides’ skies.
Kernow was never so lush
or windswept; are they bells
pealing on the breeze, like
lost Lyonesse beckoning
to this broken soul?
Maybe heartless time is melting,
melding; I run and run
into the gelid ocean, the two
once twain — now consumed
Copyright Francis Barker 2020
Haiku: Looking South
Ripples like wet skin
Midday spangles looking south
Waders distant calls
Haiku and copyright Francis Barker 2020
Haiku: ‘Elements’
Poem: Pivoting
We ran and ran
laughing headlong into the wind
which swept along the shore,
our arms held out like useless wings,
cheeks flushing with life and youth.
When we stopped
we could see where we’d been,
catching our breath
as the waves washed over our feet.
You held me and squeezed, your eyes
the colour of oceans
cool amid those blushing cheeks.
If moments are captured
and etched upon memory,
this was one such point in time
pivoting on eternity
Haiku: Holidays!
Poem ‘Between Lives’
Between Lives
“We are the sun,” you said,
that his light arose with us
playing on rainbows,
his myriad smiles the spangled waves.
In those days thoughts were endless,
vibrant pages which turned by themselves.
There were no limits to how far we’d run
or dream out onto the sea,
our hearts living free in a peerless sky.
But thoughts like books do have an end
and I have died a billion times,
holding on to every word you said,
like a child might ask a question
between the pages of his lives
poem and image © copyright Francis Barker 2012 & 2020
Haiku: Spangle
Somebody stop me
I don’t need any green light
Spangles in the sea
copyright Francis Barker 2020
Haiku: Beach
Life could be a beach
It’s an easy game to play
made hard by others
copyright Francis Barker 2020
Days of Innocence and Eternity
Summer is not far away, fickle though it may be in England’s northerly reaches.
To us as children the good days were glorious; down at the beach the sun was our friend, the sea and sand our playmates through the days which would last forever. Eternity was within our reach – then.
In reality nothing much has changed, only our perception of reality.
paintings by Francis Barker
Poem ‘Bede’
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
