Roy Ballard

Are you a dark moth from a silk cocoon,
the flower wanderer of the midnight sky
who drinks from honeydew beneath the moon?
Not so, you are my Lady Butterfly.
...

‘Of writing well, be sure, the secret lies
in wisdom, therefore study to be wise'[1]
but what is wisdom how can it be got?
It is not learning; cleverness it's not;
...

The bracken and the mountain ash
cleave to an open shaft;
a dropped stone makes a distant splash
as if a miner laughed
...

The rose that scents the summer day
and flaunts her colour to the bees
knows nothing and has naught to say;
her only talent is to please.
...

‘I was told by Socrates'
said Plato once to Aristotle
‘Something called the axolotl
dwells beyond uncharted seas'
...

Yes, I remember bluebells; in the month of May.
Leaves overhead, unbudding, were still thin.
The lane was mired in puddles on soft clay,
reflecting sky and swallows, cumulous,
...

Blacks beyond black there are and more beyond,
blacks blacker than a lake of bitumen,
wide firmaments of tar and pitch, despond,
asphalt infinities that swallow men.
...

The moon sets; the stars fade; the midnight owl has flown;
the hours creep and she's afraid for Sappho sleeps alone.
She fears there is some shallow maid, some wretched girl unknown,
some artful charmer who has made poor Sappho's love her own;
...

King Winter stripped the boughs of Spring's green leaf,
uncluttered every twig and left it clean.
Now naked skies are etched in sharp relief
with secret writing hitherto unseen,
...

My lady's frown is like a day in June
which should of all the year be full of light
but all is shadowless and dim at noon
for grey skies dispossess its natural right.
...

Whatever you're writing is prose
or it's verse. It depends how it flows.
If it rings like a bell
then it's music as well
...

She did not see the endless stands of trees,
their hollow eyes in shadows by the tracks,
through once-enchanted regions where the bees
were sealing clover honey up in wax.
...

I had done my forty minutes in the gym and decided to take a few more in the sauna. There was only one other person there, a woman. She was, I guess, forty years old or so. Life is enriched by chance conversations. I made some suitable remark and she answered in a distinct accent.
'Are you Polish? ' I enquired.
She made a face.
'No, Russian! '
...

When shall I see the spring again?
Not in April. Not in May.
Of the twelve that leaves me ten,
count the seasons as I may;
...

What is art? With what intention
does its maker make invention?
Is it old or is it recent,
overmagnified, indecent,
...

Did I ever tell you I'm frightened of parties,
of all those bright people and heavyweight hearties?
Well I am. Now it's Christmas, I'm trying to find
...

Over the stile, the sticks and the stumps
goes Mrs. Winter over the jumps;
clearing all the ditches, flooded or dry,
shot from a longbow and feathered to fly.
...

We are such tangles, such a skein of knots,

our schemes and paths put in chaotic state
...

Thirty thousand years ago
my grandfather and yours
our great, great, great….
great raised to the thousand'th power grandad
...

It's a fair drop below and the water is slow
where Lakenham bridges pass over the streams
of the Yare and the Tas; where a fisherboy dreams
of the great fish that go in the deep, lazy flow.
...