This morning I scrubbed out the kettle. Next week I can vote in the Labour leadership election. What a busy and fulfilled existence.

See previous Novembers for other poems and pictures. Here is one I love. Gutted that it never wins prizes.

NOVEMBER LIGHT

November light comes sideways,
Licking the trunks of trees,
Polishing the autumn stillness
Brightly, under chill-out skies.

Colour has made an exit:
No flowers, no fruit, no green.
Like a second-rate Midas,
November silvers the scene.

The gentle grey of sycamore,
The shining grey of birch:
Sidelight shows us the details,
Etched with a finger-tip touch.

November has swept the clutter
And opened the widening sky.
The sun, low-slung on the horizon,
Melting tangerine, splats the eye.

UNDER THE LARCH TREES

The earth is black and brown
Under the hidden sky:
Pine needles crumbling down
To layers of peat. A dry

And lifeless, soundless world
Muffles the exploring tread.
The crack of a snapping twig
Arrests us, so dry, so dead.

What is there left to thrill us
Under the homely sky,
Since Attenborough swayed with gorillas
In lazy amity?

The book of nature is read now,
Familiar from cover to cover.
We might as well stay in bed now!
There's nothing left to discover.

But something no-one has shown me
Attracts on the dreary ground:
White threads round a centre, only
A dark hole. What have I found?

Surely the lair of a spider!
In English woods! What a find!
Like frost, the wispy, hider
Circles. Over there! And behind!

The ground is black and brown,
But nature makes use of the gloom.
Just let your eyes look down:
Inventiveness has found some room.

This time last year I was in the western Lake District, where native red squirrels still thrive, (possibly thanks to the game wardens). The poem below is about the successful invader, the grey squirrel. I'll put a photo on facebook.

GARDEN MYSTERIES

Why two red tulips among the yellow?
And why one yellow among the red?
And why one glorious golden fellow
Lonely, in my neighbour’s flowerbed?

Why the neat holes that scatter the lawn?
New chestnut sprouting under the swing?
What mischief done before the dawn
Has soundlessly rearranged everything?

Sometimes we see his feathery silver
Balance and float through the winter trees;
Or watchful still, through frosty shiver,
Grey squirrel, active despite the freeze;

Clutching a nut, like a bright-eyed statue,
But brown eyes restless, always alert;
Hop, skip, pause: still more nuts to rescue?
Leaping faultlessly over the dirt;

Endless activity, graceful, unhurried,
The ghostly gardener alters our schemes.
Collecting, digging, retrieving what’s buried:
Will he open new vistas or scatter our dreams?

I have been looking back over the poems on the website. At least one is so dreadful I must bin it.

Tonight's poem is one I am still proud of, and proud of the shaven-haired daughter who sat in a front row for its premiere.

DEBUTANTES

Our five-month kitten just wants to go clubbing,
With dancing paws and twirling tail, ears pricked,
Pert, pleading face and nifty whiskers; rubbing
And purring round our ankles: Don't get kicked!

We'll keep her in till she's been spayed at Christmas,
To save us from a wealth of tortoiseshell:
More pattering paws! And all that litter business!
Too young to be a mum, so guard her well!

Out teenager just wants to go out clubbing:
Proud-walking, shaven-headed, trendy gear;
Young, open heart, free spirit. Is she rubbing
Against the kind of friends we want her near?

We can't cage her, nor keep her in till Christmas
To smash her wings against the prison walls.
We must lengthen out her tether: it's the business
Of parenthood. Outside, the big world calls.

She's restless, like a boat that bobs at anchor;
Let her practise in the bay, a few more turns;
Then trust her to the ocean. If it sank her,
We'd rescue her. Let's hope that she returns!

We wish her happy ventures and safe harbour!
It's much simpler with the kitten: we'll just guard her!

On National Poetry Day, let us express our gratitude to the greatest!

To Shakespeare - Thanks for 'ROMEO & JULIET'

And did you grieve
For strutting Elizabethans' young lives wasted?
Deaths that leave
Our hearts robbed, bitter for life half-tasted:

The gaps unfilled
For sparkling Mercutio and rash young Tybalt.
Fiery nothings spilled
Easy young blood. Now the world limps, crippled.

Grief that won't sleep:
Black boulder filling the heart's pool:
Silver rings keep
Restless watch around it. Nothing can cool

The fevered night,
Nor dissolve the bitter lump that poisons our days.
Frustrations fight
And grapple to find a meaning, peace through the maze.

You carved a jewel:
Testament to youth with all its flames,
And from that cruel
Sacrifice and heart-break, two young names

Blaze to the universe
Love's tenderness and sweet, sweet power;
Wit and agony framed in verse;
Ecstasy and deadly hour.

You plant a hope
That, though despair has stripped our hearts' bare field,
The memory of wasted love will yield
A spur, to cope.

What use poetry? Not just to waffle about personal anguish, but to help us all make sense of the big issues. Inspired words speak to every generation. Here is a homage to two greats:

KIPLING & HOMER

Singers of comradeship and courage,
Self-knowledge, self-mastery through the struggle,
Teamwork, discipline in the scrummage,
Leadership, loyalty, through triumph or bungle.

Seers, seeing clearly, standing aloof,
Or sharing a drink and yarns, when the crisis is over,
Seeing, amid the turmoil, lasting truth
Of daring or caring for one another.

Lying, like gems in a lava-flow,
Treasures of human growth: courage, speed,
Kindness, initiative, endurance; we owe
To times of pressure, in response to need.

And you, the seers, seeing the glint
And flicker of lasting worth amid the pain,
Sing us the music of shared effort; a hint
Of the fire that forges the steel; the gain
Whose price is bereavement and grief;
The wisdom hard-won, the kindness determined to mend;
To work despite anguish, to labour for others' relief.
You still sing the splendour of spirit that shines to the end.

Cats are well aware who has tamed whom. Nowadays you can use Facebook to comment on my blog.

BELONGING

"Is it your cat, then? Comfy, on your doorstep?"
Steady eyes, sphinxlike, answer my gaze.
"Mangy and thin, it couldn't go one more step;
Slumped in the hall here, end of the autumn days."

Dark tabby, rippled like the ribbed sea sand:
"How could such curling comfort go unfriended?
Huddled on the sofa for a stroking hand;
Food bills and vet's bills till the winter ended."

The ball of tabby comfort makes no move,
No twinge of sadness at its own sad story:
A famished and flinching stray, looking for love,
Now purring, fat and fed, in fluffed-out glory.

"We'd miss it, though we never wanted one;
Much better here than roaming on the rubble."
-- Patterned doorstop in the evening sun, --
"It thinks it's ours now, after all our trouble."

Behind their backs, the furry heap'll
Wink one eye: it's quite sure, you're its people!

The house rewired and a new kitchen! I have cause to praise our craftsmen. Here is a poem about the romance of electricity, before people really understood its power, and a poem about electricians.

THE SPARK - MICHELANGELO’S ADAM

‘Yoo-oo-ou touch my finger tips . . .’ just nearly,
And the spark leaps, that kindles my being.
Me! Loved! Transformed! So clearly
Myself! Step taller, seeing

A self that steps out into fullness
Like the chick emerges from its shell;
No constraints or shackling dullness.
Your gaze confirms. Let my confidence swell.

So the real self catches the spark of love,
The glowing life that warms us into action.
Michelangelo’s Adam reaches for Jehov-
Ah: the thrill: love’s blessing: affirmation

Of all we are, yet more! Blessed into being
A greater self, more real; our full potential
Not fully grasped, but welcome; still freeing
From wispy mists that draped the essential.

Two hundred years before the scientists
The artist used the flicker of life’s spark
To animate that creative moment;
So, in the eyes of love, like breathless artists,
We glimpse a self, new-summoned from the dark,
To tame life’s challenges, and grow with life’s movement.

ELECTRICIANS

Servants of something invisible, faithfully following
Tables and charts and diagrams, practical and ugly;
Laying and checking cables; switches, allowing
Safe choices; twisting and tightening snugly.

No gleam of excitement in your patient work,
Careful and methodical, following the rules;
Selecting the coded colours. Here errors lurk,
Invisible too: mistakes that would trap the fools.

Success marked only by quiet pride
In machines that work, lights lit, industry humming;
Launderette, hospital, fairground ride;
Invisible power at work, doubt overcoming.

Mistakes would flare and flame, blast and dazzle,
Kill and maim under the sky;
Seering overload, with flash and sizzle
Jumping the wrong gaps; sparks or thunderbolts fly.

Invisible power shows only in results:
Baking or welding, drilling, "son et lumiere,"
Music of many kinds. Thoughtful adults,
Quietly faithful, channel the power, with care.