The Ghost Ship of Porthcurno

The Ghost Ship of Porthcurno

Along the lines of antiquated communication
Within a stones throw of the
Ancient Logan Rock
Traditional place of initiations of
The ancient folk of fey
Pristine golden sand, glows in the sunlight
Illuminating the cove,
Softly sharing the space with
The sparkling crystalline granitic cliffs
Worn smooth by the insatiable tides and
Swelling waters of the alluring
Mesmerising Atlantic!
This soft contagious place!
Backdrop scenery of a million pictures
Of family holidays and
Romantic canoodling couples
Honeymooning together in the warm
Cornish sun!
The bay of white sand caressing the toes of
Pilgrims and travellers and seekers of history
And mystery of the old
Hermitage and secret spring
Issuing from the clifftops from the secret abode
Of sages, priests and shamans of a golden past?

But as sunset approaches
A different mystery unfolds!
On certain nights, when the white shining moon
Peeks through scudding black billowing clouds
Sailing across the menacing
Dismal starry sky with
The feeling of a thousand
Demons watching from above
This cove is transformed,
The stage is set for another tall tale
That will terrify and astonish one and all...
For darkness has fallen, and the grey bell is tolling
The bell of the Goblin is ringing at sea
The Goblin is coming, from the deepest dark ocean
As we observe from the shadowy tortuous
Covert corners of the
Moon-bathed village streets, with
Terrifying anticipation.
Ding, ding, ding
Tolls the bell,
Reverberating, advancing across the bay
The moon shining full lighting her way
Creaking and a groaning,
She sails closer for inspection
By the invisible deck-hands and the
Demonic admiralty!
The dismal smell of decay rises above the sand.

Then at once,
She mysteriously appears
A fine ancient ghost-ship,
Close to the beach
Billowing ghostly fog abounds
Swirling and dancing
With dark ragged flags fluttering
On the deathly night air
Torn sails flapping with the
Creak and groan of deaths inevitable grasp
The Dark Ship is with us
As she sails above the sand
Towards the village,
Crashing through unseen waters,
Seeking all who wish to hide
From this deliciously devilish scene!
Searching, hunting those souls
Whom she has left behind.

Solstice


Solstice

Dancing entwined across the summer sky
Dragons dart flying, flying by!
Undine serpent unfurls and awaits
In the Herby undergrowth lays the energy bait.

Rearing monsters from a slumbering sleep
Rise up and shine from the darkening deep
Solstice sun through the dappled leaves
Serpent pulses, glistens then takes his leave.

Dragons fused in the summer sky
Above the ancient oak, we hear their ancient cry
Mid-summer passions waft and wend
Through the rippling shade to the shining end!

Secretive journeys through the slumbering hills
Entwining colliding taking their fill
Summer energy pulses, pulses round
To where it is needed and there can be found.

Sen Kleder


Sen Kleder

Down along the vale of yonder Inney
A holy enclosure lies hidden
Lan Sen Kleder
Where Brychan's son constructed
His sanctuary amid
The wild rocky outcrops
And glistening rivulets
Trickling down into the
Shining Inney.
The water chapel of the valley
Exudes it's dark-age secrets
From the flowing waters
Beneath the sacred altar fine!
Reliquaries awash
Add potency for pilgrims
As they drink in the divine
Across centuries
Living history,
A thin place
This sacred divine space
Peaceful and serene
Inspiring the traveller
Creating original blessing
Broadcasting across time
Like a holy benediction
Emblazoned in our hearts.

Crepuscular

Crepuscular

Crepuscular
Light fades
Through the russet boughs and
Deep green leaves
Of the ancient
Proudly smooth and strong
Gateway Beech trees.
Diminishing light
Pastures sigh, relaxing
Welcoming the song of night
Dusken delight.
The hidden realm
Glimpses I have known
Gleaned through
Past enchantments.
Time and space
Back and forth,
Forth and backwards,
Moving at the perimeter of all
Known and unknown things.
The owlet screeches
Her dinner-bell deathly cry -
Sacred time collapsing into
The past and the future
Of eternal now.
Ancestors
Descendants
Forever engaged by an
Eternal crepuscular hour
Song of songs
Heart of hearts in a
Melding twisted forest shore
A swirling mere of time
In this intangible arena
Among the trees.
Softly-slowly-deeply-darkening
Crepuscular-creeping
Sweet time twixt worlds colliding.
Covert moving shadows
Offer glimpses through the
Deepening darkening dell;
Bridging the bridge of
Flowing rivers across the void
Of bubbling
visionary lava
Tumultuous, ever-changing
Time merging oneness from
The flowing inspiration,
Transpiring from occluded canyons
Within collective thoughts,
Like mountain ranges, vast and lofty
Echoing the consciousness of humanity.

Helland Bridge May 2009

Sea Girl!


Sea Girl!

Circling, circling
Over loud!
The Sea Girl
Singing, singing proud
On the old sea-front
With salt-spray crowning

The sirens calling
The dead men drowning!

With outstretched wings
The girl flies near

Hunting dinner
She instills loathing fear!
Art Deco splendour
All around
Fading into oblivion
Without a sound...


Sea Girl rises
Arise with thee
From the watery depths
She follows me
Around the dockland

With a deathly cry
I take my leave
From the home of thy!


Hidden Nature
Within all of me
My heart-song quickens
With intensity
Insanity creeping,

Creeping round
Whilst the Sea Girl
Feeds on insanity found!

With your stretched out wings
And your fish-like tail
Beautiful Sea Girl
Morphs on the wind and waves
Mythological creature
From the deep
By the Celtic Sea,
She seems never
to sleep.

Penzance, January 2009

The Mirror Pool


The Mirror Pool

Stealthily he drops to the ground
Hardly making any sound
By the Scrying Pool round
Whence magical energy abounds.

A still sheet of water from on high
Reflecting sun and stars and sky
The dragonflies dart, dancing by
Guarding the waters of prophecy.

The babbling of the woodland stream
Ushers us into a trance-like dream
Standing beneath the dappled Beech tree
Staring into the mirror pool, we see.

Crystalline waters soft and still
Perfected vision is such a thrill!
The softly spoken spirits came
They talked and inspired us once again.

The running water gently sang
Of other existences from whence we sprang
Tell me now, Oh Sacred Stream
Where exactly have you been?

For I care more now about the earth
Since long before my time of birth
Sacred Nature to whom I pray
I shall return to again some day.

Idless Woods, 1st August, 1999.

White Water Dash

White Water Dash

Within these dark dread hills I fear
Are shadows lying deep and drear
Yet by the beck is green and bold
White Water Da
sh to me behold!

Cascading down the mountainside
Towards the mere where secrets hide
This hidden place of mystery
Dark shadows cast by the wind-blown tree.

The light is failing below Dead Mans Fell
And the river flows down into the darkened dell
The desolate valley stretches wide
In the mist and rain by the riverside.

So within these dark dread hills I fear
Where shadows lie, foreboding near
But by the beck 'tis green and bold
White Water Dash take me, take hold!

Written at the Back O' Skiddaw November 1997

In the Fen Country


Ely Cathedral


In the Fen Country

White Owl hovers over the plain
Darkening skies above
Cool crisp snow, carpeting the evening landscape
As Fenland closes in around
With a wild surety
That only a hunting bird of
Nocturnal skies can only really know.
Dusken spirit of this land within
A land, shimmering ghost
Gliding softly till his quarry sought
With life defying talons clenched
Then away and all is quiet and still
Once more within this
Vast languishing ocean
Reclaimed prairie region.
I monitor a treeless skyline
Which lures me towards a mire of reeds
And rushes; glowering, towering
High above this lowland clearing.
Loamy shifting earthen sanctuary
Lead me to your mysterious majestic isle
Where Gothic splendour soars
And sacred music wafts on
Soft night air.
Tiny entrancing city of revelation
Sited between a darkened dome of
Jewelled and sparkling
Constellations -
Far, far older than time itself;
I listen to my dreams
In the Fen country
Where ancient Mercian and
Anglian romantic borders meet.
Silver dart-like rivers
Cris-cross divide and cut
Through this intriguing
Fen scape dream time zone,
Surreal with its gentle
Subtle beauty which creeps and sidles
Up to me alarming yet soothing
In its brooding magnificence:
A different land for me
To grit my teeth and
Stride out, exploring,
Expanding across the
Agricultural pastoral growing
Lands for larders bulging protrusions
Rustic among farm hands
Roughly hewn with work
Toiling and tilling
Their sweet surroundings
Their soft dark and peaty earth
Featureless and mountain less
It may be; but cloud-streaked blue
Wide open skies
Stretch out far and away
Resplendent with a difference
Only truly found
In this flat-land place.

River Great Ouse, Isle of Ely

This poem was inspired partly by a Christmas day afternoon visit to Ely Cathedral in 1993, where the choir sung Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on Christmas Carols; and the same composers sublime symphonic impression In the Fen Country.

Lor hag Mor Porthcurno



Lor hag Mor Porthcurno


On the beach at night
Under a starry sky adorned
With a thousand shining jewels

Amid mackerel skies.
Scudding clouds

Billowing, scurrying, hurrying
Across the round white disc of the moon
The crisp white surf glowing,
Reflecting the pale moonlight
The shining sand mirrors
Luna luminescence

Illuminating the pulsing tides and

The rhythm of the round
Silver moon and
the swirling
Whirling eddies
Of the momentous sea.

Soft grey shadows entice us to stay a while
In this shallow bay of
Crashing singing surf echoing
Reverberating and encircling
Enchanting us with the ancient

Song of the swollen moon and sea.

Hunter's Moon, Porthcurno 2008

Ascending Orb of Bloody Night



Ascending Orb of Bloody Night

The Ascending Orb
Of Bloody Night

Transfixes me with
Dark delight.

And Black Tiamat
Is drawing near

In her monstrous cave
We cower in fear!

And the bloodied moon
Lights our way

Into the amethyst womb
Of dark dismay

Equinox mother
Looming bright

Night-mare comforter
Of eternal night.

The crimson moon
Sails the bitter sea

With viscous veins
Slowly dr
owning me.

The pivotal point
Of balance nears

Magnifying all of
Our dreams and fears,

Terrifying creatures
Of the dreadful deep

Lure me into a
Fitful sleep

And the moon still
Shines on the salty sea

Beneath tentacled monsters
Unnerving me.

The nautical
Undines sw
imming near
The sullen song
Of the siren instilling fear,

Whilst white Gulls flap by the
Breaking surf

Their screeching cries
Abounding mirth?

The receding moon illuminates
The indigo night

Equinoctial tides rise
with magnetic might.

Invoking primordial Nammu
From the chaotic realm

From deep watery beginnings
Standing by the helm

Of the blood stained moon

Which perpetually shines

Upon the deep sinister waters
Primeval, divine!

Octave of the Autumnal Equinox 2008