by fellow-feeling, hearts full.

New bridge now, small fords;

farmhands in foaled fields.

Spell

Yes, I think a poem is a spell of kinds

that keeps things living in a written line,

whatever’s lost or leaving – lock of rhyme –

and so I write and write and write your name.

Simon Powell

What was your appeal, Simon Powell?

Your silver smile;

how you held your face aloft,

a trophy, when you laughed.

You had style,

swooping towards Swansea

on your Moto Morini,

brave, bravo!, pale rider.

Whom did you beguile, Simon Powell,

on that ferry in Liverpool?

A poetry girl. Well, well,

you were always poetry’s proud pal;

she was bound to chime with you

eventually,

vowel to pure vowel –

poetry and Simon Powell.

Our days continue to delight us, or appal,

like yours: the birth of sons,

the death of Siân;

then to your Indian wedding on a horse,

your thousand nights; blessed, you told us,

Simon Powell, in your wives,

the seeded futures of your three boys’ lives;

as we by thee, dear Simon; Simon Powell.

Cold

It felt so cold, the snowball which wept in my hands,

and when I rolled it along in the snow, it grew

till I could sit on it, looking back at the house,

where it was cold when I woke in my room, the windows

blind with ice, my breath undressing itself on the air.

Cold, too, embracing the torso of snow which I lifted up

in my arms to build a snowman, my toes, burning, cold

in my winter boots; my mother’s voice calling me in

from the cold. And her hands were cold from peeling

and pooling potatoes into a bowl, stooping to cup

her daughter’s face, a kiss for both cold cheeks, my cold nose.

But nothing so cold as the February night I opened the door

in the Chapel of Rest where my mother lay, neither young, nor old,

where my lips, returning her kiss to her brow, knew the meaning of cold.

The Bee Carol

Silently on Christmas Eve,

the turn of midnight’s key;

all the garden locked in ice –

a silver frieze –

except the winter cluster of the bees.

Flightless now and shivering,

around their Queen they cling;

every bee a gift of heat;

she will not freeze

within the winter cluster of the bees.

Bring me for my Christmas gift

a single golden jar;

let me taste the sweetness there,

but honey leave

to feed the winter cluster of the bees.

Come with me on Christmas Eve

to see the silent hive –

trembling stars cloistered above –

and then believe,

bless the winter cluster of the bees.

Decembers

The single bed

was first a wooden boat;

stars translated for me

as I drifted away –

our cargoed winter house

dark and at anchor –

and then a Russian Doll

where I stilled in my selves;

six secrets or presents

under a thrilled tree.

I saw a coffin, shouldered

through snow, shrouded