Sometimes I look for you – new poem.

SOMETIMES I LOOK FOR YOU.

© David Milligan-Croft.

 

It’s been almost twenty years now.

 

Even still, I look for you,

Every time I visit our capital.

 

I look for you ascending great escalators,

As I descend into the labyrinth.

 

I scan the faces in crowded carriages

Looking for your headachey eyes.

 

I look for the scar

On hands that grip the rail.

 

Although you are not the purpose

Of my visit, I hope to catch a glimpse of you,

 

Among the other eight million inhabitants.

And, why on earth not?

 

It’s still better odds

Than winning the lottery.

 

And that’s what being with you

was like – winning the lottery.

August Snow – new poem.

AUGUST SNOW.

© David Milligan-Croft

 

I’d been told the climate was similar to ours,

But that was a lie.

 

Here, there was guaranteed sunshine in December

And no snow in July.

 

They had great bubbling mud pools,

Which we didn’t have in Batley.

 

And jets of hot, steaming water

That would shoot up out of the ground.

 

They even had a desert,

(albeit a small one),

Near Lake Taupo.

 

I never knew how much I’d miss snow

Until we moved to New Zealand.

 

The only snow I ever saw

Was on Mount Wanganui.

 

But that was too high

For a boy of eight.

 

One winter though – about August -

I found a small pile of snow on our back porch.

 

I was so delirious with excitement

That I ran inside to tell mam.

 

She didn’t have the heart to tell me

It was scraped from the freezer.

Wuthering haiku

Wild marsh grass of the

Wuthering Moors, bind my legs,

So, I, am no more.

A Christmas Haiku

A brand-spanking new notebook from my beautiful girls for Christmas. With a little drawing and a message by each of them on the first two pages. Lucky Daddy.

 

Pine needles falling,

Children’s fingers rummaging,

Finding only spells.

 

‘Spell’ is also a Yorkshire colloquialism for a splinter.

Christmas in Connemara

A little yuletide poem to get you in the mood for the festivities. And to say a big thank you to the 60,000+ people who stopped by to read There is no Cavalry.

If I don’t see you before, I’ll see you on the other side.

Have a very merry Christmas. And if Christmas isn’t your thing, have a very merry 25th of December.

 

Christmas in Connemara.

© David Milligan-Croft

 

Have you ever heard the Atlantic Ocean

Lapping upon the shores of Connemara?

With the Twelve Bens at your back

Under a vermillion sky that hangs

Beneath a stark, white daytime moon.

 

Seeing through the sea,

Onto an aquamarine bed speckled with rocks,

As the ocean galoshes in and out

Of the nooks and crannies

Of an obdurate landscape.

 

A flock of Little Terns skims the placid surface,

Heading home, over Doon Hill,

To the white sands of Ballinaleama bay.

Tiny islands sink, then resurface,

As a coruscating December sun

Slips deeper and deeper,

Into America.

New poem – The Galaxy of You.

THE GALAXY OF YOU

© David Milligan-Croft

I wish
To map
The freckles
Upon your
Venerated skin.

To chart
The galaxy
Of beauty
That you contain
Within.

New poem – Wuthering Heights – A 21st century perspective.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

A 21st century perspective of a town on the Yorkshire Moors.

 

© David Milligan-Croft

 

This old mill town

With its rickety fences

And drystone walls;

Neon facades

Sparkling off wet cobbles.

 

Everything’s broken and wet,

Held together by chicken wire

And nylon string.

 

Plastic shopping bags

Teased on barbed wire,

Raped by the wind.

 

Pylons and turbines bolted on

To an unwilling landscape,

Like sentinels over the vanquished.

 

 

Today’s Haiku

Early one morning, it struck me, as I was sitting in the dark with a cup of fresh coffee, how the world unfolds before us.

I was sitting in the dark not because; a) I can’t afford electricity, b) I’m an insomniac, or c) I’m insane.

There’s something very calming about the silence before my girls wake up. I drew the curtains and sat with my coffee peering out of the kitchen window. As dawn broke, the leafless branches of trees began to emerge from the blue darkness.

A labyrinth of

Autumn branches emerge from

Darkness as dawn breaks.

Today’s Haiku

Well, we haven’t had one of these for a while…

 

A chagrin of souls

Floating like ghostly leaves – in

An autumn forest.

 

The Volunteer – new poem

THE VOLUNTEER

© David Milligan-Croft.

 

The old man,

Shouts at cars

Hissing past,

In the warm

September rain.

 

He pivots ’round,

On his one good leg,

Outside the Volunteer Bar.

 

The stench of fags

And stale piss

Cling to his shabby

Tweed suit.

 

Discovering a pocket

Full of puke

He karate chops

Thin air.

 

 

N.B. For the benefit of my American readers, ‘fags’, in this context, is a colloquialism for cigarettes.