A tree grows
It’s branches entwining
With another tree,
Forming a canopy
Under which pass
A lad and his lass.
Seasons pass
And sapplings grow to maturity,
While the lad and lass
We did see
Forever lie
Under sky and tree.
For now, I hear
Vehicles passing near
This place of bone
And stone,
And will spend a little time
In rhyme
Larkin said we think
On death when drink
And friends are not around,
As there is nothing To distract
Us from the profound
Truth that you and I
Will die.
As I sit in this pub, alone
Drinking coffee
I reach for my phone
But Larkin stops me
Dead, and, with a clear head
I see
The truth the poet did see.
I smell new-mown grass
As I pass
By the field
Where school children play,
Then pass
Through the Churchyard, where all must,
One day,
Yield to dust.
We start our play
At break of day
In joy or sorrow,
And when sleep does us take
We pray
That we shall wake
To play
Another day.
I flick through
Contacts on my mobile phone.
True they
Make it easy to
Keep in touch by phone
Or text,
Although it does vex
Me that technology
Renders memory
Unnecessary, for why keep
In your head
Numbers stored on the cold phone?
And you sleep
Forever in a house of stone,
Your number, dead,
On my useless phone.
I shall sit under this graveyard tree
And think on Gray’s Elegy.
The ploughman is as a sod
As are the great.
Oft of an evening late
I ponder on Gray
Who, one day
Wrote an Elegy
Which resonates now with me.
His verse will live on
Long after I am gone
And I doubt not
That this tree
Which overlooks this graveyard plot
Will outlast me.
The picture stands out against the white
Of my living room wall.
A few birds still call.
A fascination with sunlight
Which, as I watch, slowly dies away.
The night
Takes the day
And the picture we see
Is lost in obscurity
Although we hope that this light
We borrow
Will be seen on the morrow,
But this we can not know.
I am skin,
Sin,
Lust
And dust.
And one day I shall be thrust
Into a place
Where no trace
Of who I am now will be found
For underground
There is no sin or lust,
Only dust
Which once was thee or me
The wind
Did sing
To me
Of eternity,
And bring
My consciousness round
To the profound sound
Of it’s song
In the graveyard tree
Making me,
For a moment, free
K Morris - Poet 