I looked above and wondered

Observe the sky, the time of day is not

important. Whether morning, noon, or night,

direct your gaze above the tops of trees,

above those hills, and listen to the notes

of nature with your eyes. Observe the sky.

Select each shape, each line, each tiny dot

in turn, and contemplate the voice of doubt

which asks, “Is any of this real?” then seize

that question; make it look with open eyes.

                                                Observe the sky.

Of course it’s real, as real as any “What?”

or “Who?” or “When?” or “Why?” Or maybe not.

Accepting life is just illusion frees

us for a while. “It’s real” becomes a phrase

of dust. We never stop. We will not wait.

                                                Observe the sky.

Stopping Time

It seems that stopping clocks cannot stop time.

I tried it just this morning. Tick, then tock

(you know what’s coming next: another tick,

another tock; repeat until the end

of time). ‘Remove the battery’, said a thought.

‘Stop time’. The irritating din I thus

un-dinned, allowing me some silence. Tick,

then tock. Another ticking clock to stop?

‘Remove the battery’, said a thought. ‘Again?’

I thought. The irritating din I thus

un-dinned, allowing me some silence. Tick,

then tock. ‘How many clocks does one room need?’

I thought. Not three (you might imagine three

was quite sufficient; you’d be wrong), but six.

How many ticks and tocks will leak from

not just one but six clocks? Five too many; five.

I’ll spare you all the details, save to say

that some time later, all the clocks were stopped.

Returning to the task in hand (a poem),

I sat in clockless silence; tickless, tockless

tranquillity. The poem wrote itself,

as poems often do, and when that final

impression on the paper had been made,

I looked towards the mess of clocks upon

the dresser. Tick, they didn’t go, nor tock;

and though I had forgotten all about

the time, forgotten every second, let

each minute pass, unnoticed, into hours,

until a morning had been lost to writing,

I saw that time had quite forgotten all

those clocks, and moved towards its destination,

regardless of the absence of clock motion.

It seems that stopping clocks cannot stop time,

‘though writing makes it vanish altogether

(if only for a morning). You should try it.

Foopball

The Sistine Chapel is, more or less, stunning,

Helen of Troy’s face was known to set heart-rates running,

Many a Mozart ditty

Has previously been called quite pretty,

And the Taj Mahal looks rather splendid,

As does a broken Ming vase (once it’s been mended).

The majesty of a sunset can seemingly stop time,

There’s even a certain elegance in a well… placed… rhyme,

A Steinway Grand still looks cool, even if you upend it,

The phrase “And then things got ugly” has little to recommend it.

Most people would agree

That the first time you catch sight of the sea

After driving with a carful of children for several hours

Couldn’t be more beautiful if the horizon was made of flowers,

Which, in turn, were being watered by multi-coloured rainbow showers.

Beauty is all around us:

In nature, in life, and in art, Beauty is on hand to constantly astound us.

If a poetic defining of Beauty is what you’re after, for my money, nobody 

   beats,

John Keats:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness.

Which does make me wonder

About the linguistic competence of people who will insist on using this 

   monstrously inaccurate blunder:

“The Beautiful Game”?

Thank you Mr Pele,

For coining this ridiculous and inaccurate epithet to describe what is little 

   more than a ninety-minute melee.

Football? Beautiful? Really?

Not even nearly.

Twenty-two dim-witted thugs, all abnormally fit,

Run around a field doing one of two things: play with a ball, or spit.

“Did you see Wayne Rooney’s perfect lob?”

“No, mate; I was too busy watching David Beckham gob.”

“Yeah, his free spits are amazing; talk about Expectorate it Like 

   Beckham…what a shot!”

As another square inch of the hallowed Wembley turf is covered in 

   mucus and snot.

Some players, like Zola, may only be little,

But look at the things which they do with their spittle.

“And Ashley Young shows us why he has a reputation as a diver.”

“Oi Ashley, your shirt’s all covered in saliva.”

“The referee’s booked him; he’s not about to quibble.

It’s one thing to spit, but to stand there and dribble… without a ball?”

I’ve never been to a pre-match talk,

But I imagine the coach stands next to a blackboard, holding some chalk,

Which he uses to write just one word: Hawk.

They probably don’t do a FIFA coaching badge in aesthetics.