King’s Cliff Wood – Anthony Watts

 

And if at times there seems to be

no more to it than this

return with muddied boots to the locked car

 

(groping for comfort under coats, cold nose to cold

nose, the same old words you won’t

or don’t believe)

 

then love is always the path we saved for another

day, the tunnel winding, whisper-filled,

under a sun-rug of November trees.

 

Also (and always) love is the lit sky, shorn

of its restless weathers,

falling

forever

into everlasting.

 

 

Anthony Watts has been writing ‘seriously’ for about 40 years. He has won 26 First Prizes in poetry competitions and was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2014. His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Salzburg Review, The Rialto and Riggwelter. His fifth collection, Stiles, is due to be published by Paekakariki Press. His home is in rural Somerset and his main interests are poetry, music, walking and binge thinking – activities which he finds can be happily combined.

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February 2, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Anthony Watts, boots, cold, comfort, creative, creativity, elements, fall, love, nature, path, poem, Poetry, sky, Somerset, time, trees, tunnel, UK, weather, woods, words, writing Leave a comment

Concierto de Aranjuez – Anthony Watts

 

1

Note by quivering note, the guitar

uncoffins its soul.

Something ascending into deathlessness

pieces together a passion, while outside

the wind is strumming, drumming on the stone house.

 

Under dark beams, the firefly notes

assemble for a last assault. The orchestra

splits the gloom like a flare,

crashes crimson seas over black rocks.

 

The guitar scuttles after, among pools

of silence, picking up the pieces.

 

2

Sad lovely girl in my arms –

If we could be

at one with the wind and the music – no

clocks to watch, buses to catch. . .

 

The wind has gone

wherever a wind goes when it isn’t blowing;

the music sleeps,

curled like a mouse in the cassette

 

while our twin-spooled togetherness

awaits

its next occasion

 

(filed

secretly

between two lives).

 

 

Anthony Watts has been writing ‘seriously’ for about 40 years. He has won 26 First Prizes in poetry competitions and was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2014. His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Salzburg Review, The Rialto and Riggwelter. His fifth collection, Stiles, is due to be published by Paekakariki Press. His home is in rural Somerset and his main interests are poetry, music, walking and binge thinking – activities which he finds can be happily combined.

January 12, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Antony Watts, arms, colours, creative, creativity, elements, guitar, house, music, nature, orchestra, passion, poem, Poetry, seas, senses, silence, Somerset, soul, sound, UK, wind, writing Leave a comment

Foal – Anthony Watts

 

On Thorncombe Hill

I saw the world

 

balanced

upon four saplings

 

itself-begetting

in the dew of the foal’s eyes

 

who whinnying

down nostrils newly bored

 

printed upon that

immemorial quietude

 

his infant sneeze.

 

 

Anthony Watts has been writing ‘seriously’ for about 40 years. He has won 26 First Prizes in poetry competitions and was longlisted for the National Poetry Competition 2014. His poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Poetry Salzburg Review, The Rialto and Riggwelter. His fifth collection, Stiles, is due to be published by Paekakariki Press. His home is in rural Somerset and his main interests are poetry, music, walking and binge thinking – activities which he finds can be happily combined.

September 28, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Anthony Watts, balance, body, creative, creativity, dew, encounter, eyes, foal, hill, horse, memory, moment, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, sneeze, Somerset, sound, UK, world, writing Leave a comment