OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

What is fear but the opportunity to show courage?
What is waiting but the opportunity to show patience?
What is following but the opportunity to lead?
What is fire-fighting but the opportunity to flameproof?
What is meanness but the opportunity for compassion?
What is abandonment but the opportunity for support?
What is selfishness but the opportunity for generosity?
What is pride but the opportunity to show humility?
What are all these things but the opportunity for growth?

ZOOM MADONNA

As my amused muse poses for the artist
Her face is a picture of serenity
Against a rich screen of lapiz lazuli
How I love to watch the trace of a smile
Flicker elegantly across her features
A classical beauty framed in mundane black plastic
How much more she merits
A sumptuous surround of gold leaf would not befit her
A widescreen replaced with a golden mean
How the cobblestones must miss her fleeting footsteps
The cold columns her gentle caress
How lonely the boys
Draped over their mopeds in hollowed out streets
Dreaming of a time when their catcalls pinged around the piazzas
How the pews of the basilica
Long to welcome her in silent prayer
How downcast are the alabaster pilasters and fabulous frescoes
Melancholy in their baroque majesty
But the zoom Madonna returns my gaze
Renaissance woman
The face that launched a thousand conference calls

FULL MOON

Minutes from the mundanity of the rush-hour crush
Just within range of the giddy chocolate aromas
We stumble upon a land of fabulous mansions
The lanes unravel to reveal guilty facades
All terracotta tiles and patterned brickwork
Beds of fragrant roses and fiery red rhododendrons
Manicured gardens and pedicured lawns
Gilded drives are the resting place
For well-fed BMWs and Mercedes
On window sills sit sculptures of Apollo, Venus and Shiva
They say King Midas once stayed here
Behind the houses wild and beautiful gardens extend their tendrils
Spacious pools fed by waterfalls and populated by nymphs
Surreptitiously I clamber on top of a mossy boulder
To watch the naughty nymphs splashing around in the evening twilight
Their giggles swallowed up by the gathering gloom
A fox saunters by
Somewhere in the woods
A stag bays and a wolf howls
The night is very soft as we travel home
Beneath a beard of stars and planets

PANDEMISPHERES

Disconnection or relationship?
Authority or leadership?
Restriction or constraint?
No because, or yes if?
Selfishness or generosity?
Fear of failure, or courage in adversity?
Shutting down the space, or opening it up?
A power grab, or a just cause?
Holding an opinion, or noodling on a thought?
Napping or thrashing?
Boxing it up, or unpacking it?
Being authentic or showing integrity?
Helping onerself, or serving others?
Machine education, or human learning?
Being world-class, or acting as if?
What you do, or who you are?
Filling jugs, or lighting candles?
Staying in bed, or showing up at the desk?
Knowing the answers, or asking the right questions?
Clutching to the illusion of control, or relinquishing it?
Winning the finite contest, or playing the infinite game?

THE STREET IS ALL MINE

The street is all mine
So I follow the waxing moon
A glowing egg in its darkening firmament
Bowling downhill
Passing the neat and tidy suburban lawns
The screens flickering in bedrooms and living rooms
Dodging the cars that mount the pavements

The street is still mine
So I turn the corner
The moon on the outside lane
The lilac here so fragrant
The tiny cherries so filled with promise
Strangers in my house
The gradient beckoning me on

The park is all mine
Though the odour of marijuana lingers
The moon now in pursuit
The geese retired for the evening
The joggers soaking in their bathtubs
The dog-walkers safely back in their kennels
The grass gently yielding beneath my feet

The street is again mine
So I follow the bend
The moon hard on my shoulder
Past the new houses with their straight lines
Cutting the twilight with a sharp blade
Along the sleepy leasow
Homeward bound

WRONG AND RIGHT

Something about this is wrong
This car-peopled asphalt desert
This severe architecture
All edges and angles
Not a crack in the pavement
Not a weed in the flower bed
Trimmed bushes with no flowers
Deathly silence
A discarded dust mask
A dirty wet wipe on a lawn
Five minutes later in the wood
Everything feels right
The soaring limes rise like massive pillars
Worshipping the dawn
The fluty calls of a song thrush
Answered by the insistent alarm of a great tit
Treebark weaves sinuous patterns
Pools of light illuminate small clearings
In shadier glades
Bluebells stand to attention
Soldiers in massed ranks
Saluting the day

HAUNTED BY YOU

I roam uneasy pavements
Blossom on the wet grass
Something stirs inside me
A memory from the past

I turn to you
Then feel your loss
I'm standing there alone
No traffic here
The streets are ours
In this strange town of ghosts
Haunted by you

I sense a sudden presence
A shiver runs down my spine
Standing there beside me
As the season rolls back time

I turn to you
Then feel your loss
I'm standing there alone
No traffic here
The streets are ours
In this strange town of ghosts
Haunted by you

HUMAN MAGPIE

Early morning walk
Seeing with new eyes
A human magpie
Stealing experience
Every new discovery a small miracle
A maple trunk decorated with psychedelic lichen
Dayglo azaleas in pink and purple
A tiny snail crossing the wet pavement to safety
A massive Ionic capital
Transported from ancient Greece
Festooned with deep green moss
A song thrush alarmed in the bluebell wood
An erratic milky white pebble lying in the gutter
Just waiting to be picked up and taken home
A useful addition to a garden border
Then turning a corner
A supermarket delivery driver
Engine on
Head down
Scrolling through the content overload
He doesn't look up
He doesn't notice
The curious magpie in the empty street