Neil Young

How well the old sits with the new,
Giving what is minimal
An interest and theme;
A neutral canvas
...

Curving now
And moving fast,
The wave rolls higher than the dead of war.
...

Lorimer's monument
Punctuates ‘The Lines'.His
Upturned exclamation

...

The earth, played out, seems forged with fear,
It bristles, stiffens, slowly fades
With introspection. Through the blear,
In our unease we move, bowed heads;
...

Shades are deeper here, less
Subtle than Aldeburgh;
This murky northern coast.
...

Here in Lake Havasu, it seemed strange,
The two of us strolling over London Bridge;
That Mary Poppins skyline long erased.
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Thunder!
Purring like a thirty-two;
Storm-clouds,
Sagging, humourless and bleak;
...

Silent until opened,
Perhaps more softly spoken than we thought,
Or loud, somewhat aggressive,
Uncompromised and unapologetic.
...

little light… shining… her soft voice pleads… each piano shard cold and biting

dark October races by… out there a distant light ignites her words
this school exchange… we take the night train… Moscow to St. Petersburg
...

Our brooding, blue-grey visage slowly moves.
Below us, telegraphs, whose bronze wires thread
Their pensive silence, stitched from pole to pole,
Await the tickle conversation makes;
...

The language that he reads is esoteric;
Not hieroglyphs, yet symbols of high art;
Pages of black code that proffer colour,
Transcending each mathematical part.
...

Gnarled trunks rise up in lines like Gothic shafts of stone,
While underneath the weight of sky their branches groan.
Faint psalmody, those soughing leaves are clearer seen
Than understood; they quiver in a vault of green,
...

Slowly stretching my unexplored arm
On the land, I feel nature reclaim
It. I weave across all I have known,
Whose past settles in bright afternoon.
...

While rain on old Saint Mary’s church poured down,
Those opened doors invited us inside.
Creatively designed, the flowers grown
Filled all the dusty corners. Just beside
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i. Rosace

Some forgotten grace
Lights the window's leaded face
...

dim light forages on dull rails… train slows to a pause...

head down… a fox slinks over empty tracks
the embers of his coat subdued
...

darkness comes… but drags its heels… a street light flickers into life

the parlour dresses in dark clothes… and slowly sucking out the light
turns pages grey… half-digested words fade to meet it
...

tonight… unrelenting wind and hail is jostling us

our shoppers' hands are scales that balance weight
with bags for ballast… we act in defiance of his bullied howl
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mother's curtains drawn against the night... frigid air anticipates the siren song

by lamplight she writes to him... dearest… her muddled days and rationed love pour out
small talk calms the nerves... she thinks... now their punctured lives have grown less ordinary
...

owl hoots into the small hours of your nightshift

his mate replies... a faint sound far beyond the mainline
your porta-cabin flickers in the dark... a wall of tv screens
...