Home James - To Robin on discovering poet James Walker and my past

by David Oakley-Hill,
(Luton, Beds)

I need to go stand in the yellow sky

while it's not quite dark, and the moistened eye

cries to catch the scent of a memory

where a love still hides 'neath the cataract sea


Step out, below the shimmering trees

and sniff the pine in the southern breeze

I wonder, what if some Balkan peak

had claimed the traveller who lets me speak,

from the goat-worn pass to a useful life?

Those dearest gone, while I survive;

love sleeps, but recollections rife

of all their hopes, and all they've known -

that gossamer gold I grasp alone


The weather's wildness brings them back

my passions pop like bladder rack my mother held on Budleigh beach,

'til turning tide our pebbles reach;

enveloped now by sheepskin time - each touch and taste, and sound and rhyme


The best years all were back a while

my sister's wit, my mother's smile

the shells from shores she loved to comb

I clutch; the wax moon takes me home