Visions of Orion Poetry

Soloman Islands Song

Soloman Islands Song
(four Chinese Quatrains)

He sleeps in humid daylight
over scorched Pacific sand;
distant flags ripple slowly
in Vella Lavella breeze

A sentinel moon whispers
dream long my son of silence;
offspring of a lost wind man
scribbles tears in candlelight

sotto voce words linger,
taut hours unravel in sheets
of slant drizzle – heightens tang
of shaving foam and sherry

Croons with Sinatra record
in mornings bright disarray;
through a window he watches
clouds creeping over tombstones

©️Orion Foote

Third Act

Photo ©️Ida Kar – “And through the spaces of the dark / Midnight shakes the memory / As a madman shakes a dead Geranium” – T. S Eliot

Third Act

At a dawdling tempo
we became this scant thing;
drifting further from days
when clocks went unnoticed,
dreaming in colour – far flung
like hopeful fishing nets.

We tore up the stars,
revelled in dark strings
moaning under night’s cover;
their sad arabesques
falling in madcap waves
– drowning us in song.

And your face turning slow;
like Muddy Waters in mourning.

©️ Orion Foote

Everything He Didn’t Say

Everything He Didn’t Say

You never walked with Lorca
over dusty roads – amongst
the fresh morning twang

of oranges bathed in rain,
or stood your ground to return
fire with blue flames

that burn the skin of beating palms.
You never planted your feet
in dirt beneath a choleric sun,

or turned your face to the sky
to listen with ringing ears;
to wail glissandi with guitars

fuming wild – your lips mouthing
prayers before a volley of silence.

©️Orion Foote

Memory Threshold

Memory Threshold
(On my grandfather’s birthday)

My father’s father
-whom I never knew-
saw first light in the year
that Hardy published
Far from the Madding Crowd.

He surveyed the damage
through Cabbage leaves,
watched birds & bees
illuminate their lives – like plates
inside an antique pillow book.

He and his sister – Mary,
unwanted offspring
of bug eyed immigrants,
clinging to a board clad hovel
in a damp Forbury garden.

Last night, he dreamed he saw
his mother running red lights,
drunk – screaming blue murder
at comings & goings – all hours
along the Devil’s Half-Acre.

This morning, he wakes
to Canterbury Bells & Lupins
throwing colours in his eyes;
like a gaudy postcard vista
from a Cantonese village.

©️ Orion Foote

Field Song

Landscape: Ploughing Scene in Suffolk, 1814 ©️John Constable

Field Song

In ravages of daylight,
he tracks the orb’s decline
towards the arc of the Birch.

Sun baked hours concede
to shadows–blisters crack
with open parched throat;

a brittle earth churning
beneath his cortège–in step
with hooves & gyrating ironwood.

©️ Orion Foote

Codgers Memoir in Twelve Seconds

Each day a dog-eared copy
of its predecessor–a pixelated image
saved too often; in other words,
a shroud over weathered cobbles.

©️Orion Foote 2023

Codger’s Notebook

Rainer Maria Rilke – photo ©️Ullstein Bild/Getty Images “Through the empty branches the sky remains. It is what you have” – Rilke

Codger’s Notebook

Mid-morning Camellias ping
under a muted sundial –
Codger notes their progress;
his concertina file pregnant
with earmarked outtakes.

Afternoon chill factors hove
into view on the horizon –
their misty eyed vapours
hint at surmised outcomes;
all annotations are updated.

Dead letters depart on cue
towards a vanishing point –
time is beside itself, sunbathing
at another empty juncture;
all fodder for the memoirs.

Confessional lines are eclipsed
by paranormal jottings –
reports are completed & filed
without point of reference;
he signs out & shuts down.

©️Orion Foote

Dancing in Absentia

Dancing in Absentia

Why isn’t it enough

to speak the sordid truth,

while a jealous moon steals

our thunder – assumes the limelight

in a twinkling mid-winter sky.

Why isn’t it enough

to dance a rabid Tango – cut a dash

around words etched in snow,

that rise like a chorus

from a well of nothingness.

These peripheral things – sensed

yet not grasped – are hinted at

via dark lesions on the page;

exalted by the shadows they inhabit.

©️ Orion Foote

Returns

Returns
(for Bill)

Slit eyed cherub marks time;
drills his heels like a drunken
flamenco dancer – arm in arm
with snare & hi-hat bluster.

He’s shouting at thunder;
swiping at air with steel baton
in the purge of a moonlit hour.

Merlin’s on stilts with menace
and puffed cheeks – gangly arms
slash & grind, swinging over
the din of hammers.

Fingers bouncing off hot metal;
he’s making mischief – blown back
by the wind – laughing at stars
doing the Jimmy Shimmy Roll.

©️ Orion Foote

In this house & on this street,
I heard you once;
strumming bespoke chords
through an open sash window.
They hung like snowflakes
in the timid light,
fell through black holes
with a handful of stars
— in search of a cadence
that would ring true.

And nocturnal showers
threw down in sympathy,
had a damn good howl
as I carried the tune,
entertained it–unpacked it
bar by bar and took it
away up into the skylight;
falling over myself
to get it down–trading fours
with you like a dab hand
until the wind called time.