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| Peter Julian Taylor |
the gardener by Peter Julian Taylor
after Rabindranath Tagore
I plant a sapling
knowing I
will never shelter
in its shade
I sow the seedling
well aware that
I won’t ever lie
beneath its leaves
and though I
know I
never will –
I plant it still
an Arabian horse in a paddock near Penmaenmawr by Peter Julian Taylor
from a lay-by on
the A55 North Wales Expressway
out across a salted furlong there
between the tarmac and the shore
I spied a grey – a spray of horse
against the dark breakwater
pawing at the violet gypsy-weed
a stallion or a mare I couldn’t say
Arabian for sure
that son or daughter of the desert
you could see the pedigree
the silver coat and flat hindquarters
and I’d like to think that as a foal
it had arrived by Arab caravan
the gift of passing Bedouins to
some rag-bone or local quarry man
night-canoeing on Pontcysyllte aqueduct by Peter Julian Taylor
beneath star-laden dark Llangollen skies
with rampant ash and sessile oak below
I scull a drunken boat along the iron trough
and float some twenty fathoms high above
the Dee – my best celestial canoe and me
I don’t know why I’m here – the night
revolving now from alcohol or vertigo
but do recall my father’s fear of falling and
how at the edge of cliff tops and sheer drops
he’d stand behind to hold our collars tight
Dad never did attempt this tightrope walk
this towpath o’er the fields of Acrefair
and he would scare I think to see me peering
from the brink here now – till badgers bark
till cockerels crow and I row back to Trefor
a starling murmuration over Teifi Marshes by Peter Julian Taylor
early morning
first a murmur from the shadows
mono / earthy / sunrise-red / surprising
like an echo from the underground
arising like an ultrasound of thirty thousand bird-wings
beating in the reed and meadowsweet –
reminding me of how we sat alone on Brighton beach that night
the old cast-iron pier alight
the starlings flown
shapeshifters they
amorphous in their daybreak congregation
veiled and vulgar / swift and shrouded
simultaneously cumulus and cirrus in this crowded air
these mocking socialites convene
inclined to flock for warmth on winter nights –
reminding me of when against a windblown afternoon
we spooned among the shifting naked dunes
of Studland Bay
new day / new song
along the hem of Cardigan and Pembrokeshire
the sky is full of words
like chiffchaff / blackbird / jackdaw / jay
and apps are filled with names for gulls and guillemots
but still the starlings arc and shriek above the wood –
reminding me of where we stood / of what was said /
of who you were the day you shifted shape
and turned away
cycle by Peter Julian Taylor
an open cleft of wet and dull
this knot of knoll and moor
its warp and weft of digs 2-up
2-down set out in rank and file
the Tour today will thread the
sheepshank of this duffel town
so colourful its Lycra™ smile
so cosmopolitan a fleet and
silken tilde on these perfectly
bisected streets – the painted
meadow of its peloton a red
and blue and yellow hallelujah
speaking of rivers by Peter Julian Taylor
for Langston Hughes
to you who are America I say
I too can speak of rivers
I’ve known rivers black and bleak
though mine have maybe lacked the heave and tack
the arc and sweep of your deep-dark and vivid waterways
less long and civilized
more trivial my uneventful brooks and creeks have been
each overcome with lungsful of pure privilege
except the bloated Sussex Ouse that rose and rose
and blundered through our Lewes living room
or way back when I fished in dank canals
with neighbours Ian Dale and father Frank
for chub and carp and perch and tench and roach
for trout and rudd and pike and bream
or when we dipped our canes and nets
big brother Mike and I
for sticklebacks and minnows in those stony becks
that bled and spat and spilled away downhill
down sylvan fellside mountain ghylls
and drip-fed into Lakeland tarns
it’s true
I’ve viewed the Hudson from
the roof-deck of the late Twin Towers
vacationed on the Upper Nile
and once for hours I watched
the Great Migration rush the Mara
flush with marinating crocodiles
yes I’ve known rivers
living and life-giving streams
who knows
perhaps my nervous tidal soul
indeed runs deep
beneath this gentle blush of surface tension
trying to identify by Peter Julian Taylor
I saw it too – the dead bird
in the meadow there below a tree
you said a crow
I’m not so sure
but I concede you know much more
about dead British birds than me
it lay in columbine
but no – agrimony you say
so we agree
to disagree
beneath a sycamore
I have no doubt
though planes and other maples
you point out
are easily mistaken for
that proud tall broadleaf tree
your mastery of course
is slowly killing us
it could be worse – no crow died
in the making of this verse
painted lady by Peter Julian Taylor
for Vanessa Cardui
you settle
on a purple head of artichoke
beside my thistle bed
and linger –
mottled wings of white
on black and orange-ochre
tainted
like a nineteen-sixties
Woodbine smoker’s fingers
roosting
as you sit and wait to start
an eight-week relay to
the warmth
of northern Africa –
a journey generations-long
like ours
if one day we should shoot
for super-distant places too
and hope
somehow our children or
their children might arrive
huff by Peter Julian Taylor
Dad dead ten days
our late-night games of draughts
he’d win hands down
pin-sharp my father was
yet somehow half his crown was lost
his life a washed-out dressing gown
his dignity forgotten
at the chapel of repose
unspoken truth hits home
an alabaster dome of forehead rising
from the oaken shadows
and his widow – Wedgwood-fragile
but unbroken
the call by Peter Julian Taylor
for Anne, on climbing Kilimanjaro
and from the south
the misty mountain called you
through the mouth of Mr Mungai
year three geography
his molten flow of tamarisk
and two-tone monkeys
afro-montane forest birds
and rock formations
streams of melting snow
below the craters
Kibo Shira and Mawenzi
names that dripped into your
dreams and then lay dormant
for a million years or so
well maybe sixteen summers
till the mountain called again
and then you went to him
in waterproofs and thermal wear
with hiking boots and walking poles
and slowly-slowly ‘pole-pole’
to the rhythm of your heartbeat
over unforgiving lava
snow-blind in your balaclava
losing feeling in your fingers
ice descending frozen cheeks
achieved your beautiful ascent
towards fulfilment
there on Freedom Peak
Peter Julian Taylor is a writer, editor and photographer living in the Cheshire countryside. His poetry has appeared in magazines including PN Review, The Rialto, Cambridge Poetry and Lucent Dreaming. His work has also featured in anthologies from the 1-2-3, Candlestick, Open Shutter and Wee Sparrow Poetry presses. His debut collection of poems and photographs – ting tong tang – was published by Open Shutter Press in 2022.
Among other commendations, he was shortlisted for the Ginkgo/AONB ‘Best Poem of UK Landscape’ Prize 2022, longlisted in the Cheltenham Poetry Competition 2024, longlisted for The Rialto/RSPB ‘Nature and Place’ Poetry Prize 2020, commended in the Acumen International Poetry Competition 2020, and has twice been highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award (2019 and 2023).
