Ken's Poetry

Organic Psychosis

Determinedly the sea towers
and covers the scalloped mud banks
changing their pattern whirl by whorl,
rippling the reeds and the grass.
The curlew spills a slow trill
over the evening’s glossy calm
where the climbing tide has drowned
the frantic fingers of the river
and the town stands watching
a spring-tide fantasy
silver the roads and the paths
up to their sand bagged doors.

Trapped and calm in the stone cottage
she dares to think of him again
prisoned by the waters of his brain
the tide slipping gently away,
the mudbanks of his muddled mind
scaling the falling tide a while,
his scribbled thoughts pouring
into the white channels around the print
in newspapers and magazines,
words he made his mooring-posts
to hold him to his stream of thought
sliding beyond his reach,
his mind drained into madness.

The light is dying, and the tombstone moon
arches behind the hunched black of the hill
painting a trembling pathway to her grief.
Death washes round her feet.