Bethlehem

We went to Bethlehem for the first time this year just after Easter. Nothing had really prepared us for the shocking reality of the Wall. 20 foot high uglines and symbolic of so much more.
We had to go through a number of road blocks to get into the little town and then we found it deserted.
The Church of the Holy Nativity was beautiful but division echoed around the whole visit. Coming away I wrote the following haiku with the only difference being in the last word. Then I wrote: Shame.

Oh striken town of Bethlehem
How divided we see thee lie:
Pray.

Books

Old friends and new charmers
in glossy hues,
lure and shackle the book worm.

Stained glass haiku

A purple angel
comes to stay;
she smiles,
I smile,
The sun stirs.... and grins.

1913

What were they thinking?
Those Loved faces in youth's dress;
The truth is time's trick.

Guantanamo cup poetry

The struggle to write
make nails into pens;
plastic cups, the paper
of creation.

Frostscape

Each twig frost defined;
A cold transcient beauty
Awesome while it lasts.

Haiku

Rosebuds in December;
Brave hope in winter winds -
A symbol perhaps!

Brave Living

Life confined,
Moves painful,
Muddled sometimes
But wondrous smiles of welcome.

Roofscape: The Galleria London Bridge

St Pancras reborn

Trumped by Betjeman

St Pancras Station: a tribute to Betjeman

Haiku

Geese cross the sky
with arrowhead symmetry;
Awe halts the ordinary.

Haiku

Frost glistening in early sunshine
Sparkles and melts the cold,
Like kind words.

Student colour

Movement with strings

Dad - the 59 year gap

Fingers which worked
Oxford's first computer
Fumble to learn lap-top codes.

A roof in the Victoria and Albert museum

Remembrance day

Standing at the village cross
Yokes old and new battlefields:
If only........

paper fashion

Time passes - a week later

Wind took the gold

diminishing the glory,

Revealing lines, like ageing.

Leaves

Rounds of glory!

Everyone in the Church wore halos,
Of tinsel;
Oh that that they were for real!

Autumn in the Churchyard

Memory

Who?
The memory shuffles its files,
Shadows in a fog stay blurred.
Sorry!

Photographs at the Tate

Duty

Duty is a test word
Of 'ought' not 'want'.
Selfish or sense to say 'No'?

The beckoning

Brancaster beach

Rejection

Rejection hurts;
It gnaws and destroys.
Our task ...
Turn it round and find light.

Mestrovic sculpture

haiku

Secret codes in Fair Isle wool,
Identity and island
through pattern.

Wedding

Tender blazing love

Trumpets the sharing of joy

Trumping darker strains.

haiku

Beached: the whale,
Like his hopes, surf dumped;
Dying through wrong turns.

Observation

The acne of pavements
Out chewed,spat out,scraped off:
Gum...
Spots of our time.

Treescape

Theatre history

The shocking becomes commonplace
becomes classic,
The joy of history.

View from a window in the National Theatre

Skylight from Sir John Soane's Museum

Words

Words are our currency
To connect, but they
Sip and skid and sometimes
....fail.