Poem ‘I could live with it’

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I could live with it,

I mean an endless sun,
sipping cool pina coladas
in bottlegreen shade,
watching boats and glimmers
on the steady seas,
smiling abroad in January
like it was wilting June

Yes, right now I could go for that,
especially in this reluctant spring,
where complaints about drought
are already here.
Hosepipe bans hit headlines
while I watch daffodils being battered
and bowed by sheets of savage rain.
And I’m pestered
by cats attacking bare feet;
like me, they’re already tired
of watching drops clatter on sills.
Unlike me, they resort
to playing hide and seek,
upstairs and then down—
flying all around.
I’m sure they think it’s me
with the weather remote
and today I wish it was

poem © copyright df barker 2012

Poem ‘What Goes Around’

What Goes Around

At last I can leave
the window ajar
to sense those languid
sounds of the street

like life itself returning
from some distant place
a world woken up
by a warm gentle kiss

Promise too in the bee’s
tender tap on my window
busy on beatnik rounds –
I am wishing him luck

on a maverick wind
in the cool melodious rain

poem and image © copyright David Francis Barker 2011
*First published in Shot Glass Journal in 2011

Poem ‘Your House’

Your House

I’d arrived there at noon
stunned by the view
from your window,
that vast sweep of shoreline.
I had earl grey tea, some carrot cake;
you made do with strong coffee.
You said we should talk, walk,
try to mimic the clockwork sanderlings,
laugh at comic turnstones,
all busy birds of the beach

I hadn’t realised
how far we’d walked.
The polar wind which swept us along
brought stinging tears to my eyes,
though little could detract
from the sight of your house
standing steadfast against the shore;
nothing except for the florid face
all cheeky smiles and winks,
that prodding finger in my side

image and poem © copyright dfbarker 2012