Robert Creffield

Maybe there's an intelligence that guides the smile
serving the brain to think it's all worthwhile.
Maybe the smile seeks a mate not to love but to fascinate.
Maybe the smile opens a path where your natural self is camouflaged.
...

The leaves are limp and dry
no laughter in them anymore
watch them fall disappointed
to the woodland floor, brittle and torn
...

After the black coats have been buttoned
And tears have channelled the cheeks
After sympathy cards have been read and forgotten
And flower bouquets left by the feet
...

Not much hope was there before you
Just a boy in a bedroom vacant place
Unsettled by wet-the-bed blanket trace
The dread of Sunday lamppost flare of
...

In those distant days of precious youth
When I roamed the woodlands and valleys
And trod the soft grasslands light of foot over
The cowslip verges my heart singing with the
...

These ancient paths wedded to the earth
still lead across the rocky crags and wooded slopes
to reveal the sea timeless in its shape and form and
effect on me; the cottage too stands the same and
...

Many times the dust fell into my eyes
and the sand gave way to the tide for I
was familiar back then with the vagaries
of fortune as I sat breath-bated at the
...

Downtown moody boulevard chaos with geometric grid shaped layout and contrasting zones some fashionable clapperboard happy comfy with creepin Bougainvillea outer walls and others dark and lonely dog dirt proud - San Francisco with its great fishing net big catch clam mix of Chinese, Mexican, Red Indian stock, the down and dowdy, the rich and radiant the haves and want to haves and the opium red eyed living dead - they've been heading out this way for years seeking their fortune from the early gold rush days and Barbary coast dwellers, the out of town chancers, all looking for a free piece of pie, everyone wants the deal, everyone wants to win on the dollar wheel - walking downtown along Fisherman's Wharf with its crab steam pots and chowder sit easy squats and the huge swaying mass of touristy camera clicking lot, walking down Obese Pacific Highway thinking about America land of buy it, use it, chuck it, heaps of expendable disposable commodities - visited City Lights bookstore shrine where Ferlinghetti printed Ginsberg's Howl and the whole Beat Generation kicked off with the free flow thinkers so new and daring think Pollack in words so brave and loose now faded with ghosts of Kerouac and Burroughs in every shadowy bar - big visit to Frisco Museum of Modern Art and introduction to Sam Taylor Wood and Ralston Crawford keeping the flame alive. Yosemite was a silent mountain contrast hiking 3000ft to elevated waterfalls on the trail of the lonesome pine - then along the coast of grow anything Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, Santa Monica and sacks of Santa Claus goodies. Looking forward to Big Sur and more Kerouac dream connections. Not looking forward to flying home, could stay her, would stay here, if I was carefree rich or daring and loose.
...

Along those wooded valley slopes so high
The air winged by kingfisher and damselfly
Wisps of apple green and iridescent blue
Dazzled our love with wings that flew.
...

I never understood much that went before, could never sing hymns at the gate of youth with confidence nor carry myself through uncertain adolescence with conviction; I was always puzzled by geometry and the comatose of algebra drawing a sort of wonder only in the divine mystery of the solemn earth and the sound of ice cream vans down backstreets and the jazzy hum from playgrounds and swimming pools and the quiet cathedral peace of bluebell woods where curiosity blinked at every turn of the knotted path and ivy hung trunks stood defiant along the dipping brook with its mystery of where it had been and where it went - I never understood much about my coming of age where manhood was an advertising falsehood and adulthood was a wound of conformity with its dreaded spectre of responsibility; I always dreamt of someone nobler to be there when I awoke, a confidante to walk the timeless trails, a twinned mind to share the small miracles when light gets through the blinded eye - and then, how sweet, how sweet it was, you appeared from behind the curtain of fate, a gift from divine providence, an answer to a gambler's prayer, how sweet that miracle was, to find you amongst the chimneys and railings of the bleak landscape that went before, a steady hand against the wicked winds of chance, a fellow explorer, my blessed companion, precious as the boundless sky, you turned the heads of lambs as you passed by and the truth of you was the God in everything I adore.
...

In the toffee-brown shade of candle wax light
The stone cloistered walls moist and dark
Silent whispers from the past
Sealed beneath Villiers Street
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Through short reluctant days of winterlude
When grey cinder skies imprison the sun
And storms and gales embitter their feud
Reeking havoc on what the other has done
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Into your dark eyes I fell that night
along Beckenham's High Street in the cold wet
mists of March when the day was as long as the
night and the night vanished quick as a star.
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Was it really us that slept that day in early summer ‘67
on the banks of the Gannel at Crantock Bay tired
from our trip on the midnight train from London
Paddington, and first dreamed of living in
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All blond curls and blur of blue velvet shorts
tilting arms splayed and plasticine legs bent
balancing along the bombsite wall, intrepid.
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There you were always racing against time,
a willing mother, a conscientious worker, a wife sublime.

There you were with your wondrous wrinkles, your drooping eyelids and your starched crisp cuffs to waitress pinafore uniform you ironed so much.
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I love being with you now that we have time
Free from the distractions of work pandemonium
Time to stroll the wooded path in spring sunshine
Exuberant in the calming hillside arboretum.
...