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CAUGHT IN THE NET 184 -  POETRY  BY RONNIE GOODYER

Series Editor - Jim Bennett for The Poetry Kit - www.poetrykit.org
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You can join the CITN mailing list at - http://www.poetrykit.org/pkl/index.htm and following the links for Caught in the Net.

Submissions for this series of Featured poets is open, please see instruction in afterword at the foot of this mail.
 

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CONTENTS

1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY 

3 - PUBLISHING HISTORY

4 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY:  Ronnie Goodyer

Ronnie Goodyer is a poet and publisher with six collections to his name.  He was on the BBC Judging Panel for their Off By Heart poetry competition (BBC2) and is Poet-in-Residence for animal welfare charity League Against Cruel Sports. Ronnie founded award-winning Indigo Dreams which he runs with partner Dawn and they were the first joint winners of the Ted Slade Award for Services to Poetry. They live with rescue collie Mist, in an ex-forester’s house in the southwest. They will be bringing out a joint collection in April 2020.

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2 - POETRY 

My Moon in Cancer

There’s a mist over the forest today

hiding the already hidden, deadening

sound and spreading rumours of Autumn

to the full-leaf trees, still warm-rooted in Summer.

Our light tracks which crackled through

the broadleaf, hushed through the pine,

are cleansed by the gentlest water droplets,

floating clouds in gullies and hollows.

It is a day for the trees to stand alone,

for the mosses and grasses to be refreshed,

the red deer to wander at will without

being startled by invasive intruders.

There is change in the air, anticipation.

The Beech is ready to announce this season’s

colours, the Dogwood too. Bog Asphodel

strips its yellow blooms, Sundew its white.

You brought your Cusp of Energy, vibrant,

to meld my Moon in Cancer. Tonight, with

entwined silhouetted hands, we’ll watch our

September Moon glow for foragers and lovers.

In our Northern skies Gemini will shine

just for you. Looking South, Orion will tell us

that Autumn is near. Seasons are changing.

Standing here, we know that we never will.

Dartmoor Song

The cloudburst by ancient Pizwell

had failed to muddy the track enough

to stop our boots and paws progressing

and the wind rustled just long enough

to flutter the lungta style prayer flags

colouring the trees in the Lower Merripit vale,

communing with the hidden shrines

and ceremonial round houses.

The East Dart continued its story

through Bellever and sprayed the old

clapper bridge, designed for carts,

now beloved by catalogues and cameras.

And here I stand, knee-deep in September,

the sun now high and trees dripping apples.

Here you can swallow me whole

or place me with others frozen in time.

Walk me to the rise of King’s Tor

then drop me deep in the Walkham Valley.

Trace me the tracks of the Devonport Leat

to the heart of Foxtor Mires and let the call

of the meadow pipit be my only alarm cry.

Leave me here with the silence that haunts,

the heartbeat that feeds my serenity

and the wind that brushes over these words.

Donna

On summer solstice by the water,

full green reflecting on the pond,

coots collecting bread for their young

and the staccato hum of June insects.

She came from across the Jerseys'

field, a thirty-year-old child, beautiful

and pure. Slightly troubled, she had

experienced another's death through

the ghost of the victim, seeing the wall,

feeling the regions of pain through

prickled skin. She told me without

embellishment, with a natural rush

and held my hand as she described

the surge of warmth that filled her

as he finally passed over.

And later years she held uncertain love,

heart-hoping for the world to relax its grip,

move bright skies into her head, let

all the days be summers. It was time

winter passed, gave her a chance.

I breathed warmth – all I could do.

We were dowsing for reasons in sunlight

and I was comforting with presence.

Later, we watched fireworks over farms

and evening shadows grow longer from

the base of the stones. It all seemed

calm, perfectly calm. The breeze was cleansing

in whispers, our only communication coming

inwardly, from the heart and the breath;

outwardly, with a positive flow of hands

Home

Under camera-stars and gossip-trees,

enclosed in love and love of things,

I can rest informed and protected.

The fussy bee with his golden knees

leaves its sedum patch to dance on my hand

telling me where the first buds are appearing.

The dragons of the air hover emerald

iridescence from six feet away,

happy that the clay pool has refilled.

The pearl fritillary tells me her family

have moved here for the scabious and loosestrife

now their old home is empty warehousing.

Away from home the galleries are harboring art.

Away from home the museums are embalming literature.

Away from home a soldier walks towards us

through a field of dead or dying flowers,

half-buries his rifle, barrel open to the sky,

plants it with papaver rhoeas, before

continuing his search for the perfect rose.

Being There

On the morning-moist edge of Chase Woods

fallen conkers are protected in their

green sputnik cases, lying in a firebed

of wounded autumn leaves. Under the rising sun

the trees are black; to each side a painter

has daubed the canopy with diffused orange.

My dog is a steam train running against

a barrage of birdsong. I’m in a margin of nostalgia

in some spent photograph.

The sloping rows of blackcurrants drop an arc

to the meadow, the gaps between shining

as warming ice, as dew and light live their

daily awakening. There is a reproduction of shadows

in this molten sealing wax of vision.

On this church-chime Sunday, it doesn’t

matter if we loved once; it doesn’t matter

if we’ve never met; it doesn’t matter if our

paths will never cross again. What matters

is that when I exhale this, you sense the air,

my breath the failing breeze you feel;

when I look to the far spire you too will see

across the fields with me, there on the book

in your hand, on every single wall you own,

in whatever direction you care to look.

It’s the only important thing this ennobled moment:

Being there.   

Flames in Mullion

‘Would you buy off a gypsy?

Place your palm on the tablet.’

Pre-digital sun was shining on a man

who used a bale of hay to move a pig

sixty-two years ago. And generations on,

Leanne guided Huxley to his plastic sty

one-handed as she exited the playschool gate.

Mrs Kernow won a one-way ticket

to the Royal Cornwall Hospital

and the Old Inn landlord showed

his latest giant snail to the punters

as someone in early-flowering shorts

ordered two pints of local Doom.

He took his Doom to his wife.

‘Would you buy off a gypsy?’ she asked

as he put shaking glasses onto wood.

The Light Fandango

Thin life-scratches hiss from the Dansette

and we rise in tipsy awkwardness

with that dance of frost and fire,

that dance of smoke and laughter.

We peel our skin and leave on the back of the door

for others to admire while we rub bones

and you choose to float through me.

I froze erect at how that passion could have been.

Ask me a question you laughed and I did;

“How does it feel to be one of the beautiful people?”

“Now that I know who I am?” you say,

smiling at the distance of another song.

“It feels like laughter and frost,

like smoke and fire.” We skipped the light,

leaving the cartwheels for others

who were wearing our skin and looked exactly like us.

Let’s not go out on this winter day

Let's not go out on this winter day,

the wind is shouting at the walls, 

the fire won't take that long to catch,                                          

the softness of the sofa calls.

Let's not go out on this winter day,

let's both hold still and think of ways

to travel worlds inside our heads,

refuse the places winter stays.

Let's walk through books, let's walk through poems,

visit Fern Hill and Dover Beach;

to Yeats' Lake Isle of lnnisfree,

Frost's America, Homer's Greece.

Let's drink too much and let's laugh too loud

let's find what sheer indulgence brings!  

Let's clink our glasses while we can

and catch each other's hiccupping!

Then let our music resound from rooms,

as we struggle to sing as one,

Strawberry Fields, Forever Young,

Redemption Song, Here Comes The Sun.

Let's not go out on this winter day

but well before the flames expire,

let's sink into each other’s arms,                                                

make love before our winter fire.

My Breeze

My breeze sweeps off the sea into Coverack,

where it meets the Moho and cleanses the tides;

where it ruffles the legs of oystercatchers,

cries in song with the curlew, lifts the buzzard.

My breeze warms the air for daffodil and orchid,

takes the Peacock and Copper to spring quill;

seeds the air with valerian and campion,

rocks the ox-eye daisies on wilderness cliffs.

My breeze carries the ancient cry of the vixen

across the co-axial fields of Lowland Point,

raising the heads of Neolithic workers,

the Romano-Cornish gathering furze for fires.

My breeze blows gossamer to evening waves,

hastens the freshwater through Godrevy reed-beds;

it spirals in the past centuries of St. Keverne

and whispers the names of long-dead mariners.

My breeze fades in the sepia tints of dawn,

where shadows mirror flat on the river;

where Helford’s cottages hide in looming trees

and mists rise clear above still masts.

My breeze takes me to wild Goonhilly Downs,

to the rambling estates and country houses;

to coves and meadowland, serpentine and winter beaches;

to the heart that beats forever in Cornwall.

Moho – where the earth’s mantle meets the oceanic crust

Come Away She Said

Come away she said

and I did, to the Logan Stone at

Porthcurno's indigo bay, swept

clean by the busy Atlantic, to find

her on the stage under Minack

Theatre stars, speaking of sharing

a world with wine and paintings;

to the isolation of Rame Peninsula,

where she said we were the only

people left alive; to the higgledy-piggledy

Polperro streets, where we lived in a

house on stilts, roaming the shadowy

wooded valley and counted the blacks,

silvers and blues in the harbour. We

drifted the Lerryn Creek, through the

water-meadows to the spire at Lostwithiel

Church, where we never married.

I crawled to find her under Heligan's

blanket of brambles, lost myself in

the jungle, sought romance in the

Italian garden. I heard her voice echo

through the white yachts at Carrick Roads,

the towering magnolias of Trelissick.

Come away she said,

to the mists settling on the Manacle Rocks,

where she would guide me to the ocean

bed. Hazed in blue and unprepared, I fell

against the serpentine cathedral rocks

and cracked a water-drilled nugget to

the footprint sands. When it split, an inner

fossil contoured against the evening air.

It was then that I traced the outline of

her heart, so cold against my bloody hands.

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4 - Afterword

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We are looking for other poets to feature in this series, and are open to submissions.  Please send one poem and a short bio to - info@poetrykit.org

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