Felled by a tempest.
Thrown into the sea.
Recast by fate
from tree to refugee,
and launched
upon an odyssey.
A rootless drifter
with broken branches.
Flayed of bark.
Scarred by worm-inflicted wounds.
Then beached,
and bleached by searing sun.
Till eager hands reached out
to place me on display.
'Serendipitous', they say.
'A masterpiece'.
'Such subtle textures'.
'Sublime asymmetry!"
John Walter Taylor
© All rights reserved
7 April 2025
Dissolution
A carrion crow
surveys the roofless void,
and fixes on a pointless arch,
an unmeant folly.
The abbey is marked 'ruin' on the map,
not to suggest the picturesque,
but that things tend toward disorder.
Listen carefully.
For among the shards of sun-fired scenes,
unleaded lips remain
to sing a compline prayer,
and remind us of the coming night.
John Walter Taylor
© All rights reserved
20 April 2024, rev. Nov. 2025
One might suggest
your efforts were in vain
to drag ten tonnes of
sarsen stone across an open plain,
then raise it as a rough-hewn sign.
What was the point,
and was it worth the cost?
Perhaps we'll never know.
The cipher has been lost,
and few remain who care.
Or is your message
confident and clear?
Mere megalithic idiom
to say that you were here.
Once.
John Walter Taylor
© All rights reserved
12 April 2025
A chiaroscuro
of charcoal clouds
masses in the East
to mob the morning sun
and blunt its light.
Sensing that Persephone
has packed her bags,
senescent leaves
fall like ancient Rome,
to reveal an empty nest.
Squirrels scurry
along bare branches,
stashing their cache
of burnished chestnuts
to guard against
the coming dearth.
While Earth exhales,
and nights draw in,
mellow pumpkins grin
beneath a harvest moon.
Their fire-bright eyes
watch as the world grows thin.
John Walter Taylor
© All rights reserved
27 March 2025
On a quiet stroll
down a leaf-dark lane,
I met a young man,
from the past
who meandered
through the weeks,
long before the shock
of life’s alarm clock
awakened him
to the glare of awareness
and the certainty
that his letters to the North Pole
would never be answered.
John Walter Taylor
© All rights reserved
18 March 2025
Adam.
Made in the image,
like the movie set of a Wild West town.
A cheap knock-off,
imported from the Middle East
without a warning label,
which proved to be the apple
that spoiled the barrel.
An expelled patient zero,
a walking Wuhan lab of viral sin,
which waits to blight all newborn.
Goddess of the Woods!
You, who never left the Garden,
protect us from his toxic strain,
whose arrogance gives licence
to the axemen
who fell your sacred groves,
and watch the hamadryads die.
John Walter Taylor
© All rights reserved
12 March 2025
John Walter Taylor
© All rights reserved
.jpg)
A ragged headstone
leans towards the West,
and on the grave
a dandelion grows.
Cursed as a weed,
this friendless flower
came as an airborne seed
to pledge a token of respect.
And so its golden florets bloom
in tribute to a nameless soul,
forgotten since the time
rushlights pierced the gloom.
John Walter Taylor
© All rights reserved
Layers of life’s graffiti,
a palimpsest of simulations,
where memories are tagged
and stored on mental celluloid.
Like vintage film,
some frames become effaced
while others dim to silhouette,
all detail lost,
and those that have been scarred
by ancient wounds,
endure and wait,
until a scent, a place, a mention
commands an encore,
and then the beast
that haunts the labyrinth
brings pain again.
John Walter Taylor
© All rights reserved
