PARLIAMO ITALIANO?

One of the many talents I've not been gifted with in this life is an aptitude for languages other than English. 
My wife Jane, however, has a natural fluency in those she's chosen to learn. 

It's fair to say that, where learning a foreign tongue is concerned, she applies herself with a single-minded passion which makes my own desultory efforts appear half hearted to say the least. 

ITALIAN LESSONS

She learns her Italian online,
with earphones in.
Benvenuti
a tutti ... the rich sounds combine
like musical notes, their beauty
enthralls her, transports her gently
elsewhere.
She listens intently
and murmurs soft responses, then,
encouraged, concentrates some more,
replays a phrase,
listens again.
As chiaroscuro words outpour
her face brightens;
perhaps she feels
hot foreign soil beneath her heels.

DEFYING GRAVITY

Childhood reminiscences provide ample material for verse because, it seems to me, there's something about the haziness and unreliability of memory that seems more compatible with poetry than with prose.

THE KITE   

That truant day, I slipped away
to the Cave Hill with makeshift kite.
Fourteen years old, escaped from school,
my uniform in disarray,
absconded, not at all contrite,
I fled with mooring-string and spool,
a headstrong, heedless, wayward boy,
to fly my home-made pride and joy.
Beneath me, grey, the city spread
like scattered jigsaw pieces spilled.
Above me, hot, July sun burned
down on my bare, uncovered head.
The kite rose up with warm air filled.
I steadied it as I had learned.
It sailed, breathtakingly, above,
free, yet restrained: somehow like love.

BACK TO BLACK

Despite the media rhetoric and the predictable virtue signalling of minor celebs, it isn't only plastic waste that blights our oceans.

OIL

The tide-line, like a black-edged card,
records another oil spill. 
Tarred birds, helplessly, 
their plumage black,
lie stunned,
blind eyes clogged up with glar,
as we, the volunteers,
who gather in
these sorry, broken things
and weep,
will fall, exhausted, into bed 
at close of day
but will not sleep.

DARKNESS AT NOON

Those who have had to bid a gentle farewell to a loved one when Time has finally claimed them will recognise that moment shortly before the end when surrender occurs and the claims of the world are set aside. 

CONVERSATION WITHOUT WORDS

The digits on the clock face blink.
I count each minute as I sit
beside your starched hospital bed.
Your fragile fingers interlink
with my strong digits. Words unsaid
travel between us. You emit
no sounds apart from rasping breath 
in this room, unembellished, stark,  
and yet there is disclosure here.
I sense that you now welcome death,
that somehow you have ceased to fear
that endless falling through the dark.
   

A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME

Such heedless creatures we were as children: animalistic in our approach to life, each day a new beginning and Time a matter of no concern.
How different it seems now.

DANDELION CLOCKS

As children, we scattered them
not caring where they flew or fell
and thought we measured Time itself.

I count them now, this season’s crop,
each puff-ball head, each milky stem.

Uncut, run wild, they flourish well
that white-haired mob, unlike myself,
who dreads the moment time will stop.