ROB LOWE - POEMS

Rob Lowe is a disabled senior citizen living in Milton Keynes in the U.K. where he shares an apartment with a niece who is also his medical carer. He began publishing his writing after retiring from employment as a Student Support Officer. His work has since appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, and journals, both online and in print, most recently in Dwell Time, Libretto, Squawk Back, Silver Stork, Lucent Dreaming, Seventh Quarry, Abridged, Aromatica Poetica The Stony Thursday Book, and elsewhere. He is a member of The Open University Poetry Society, and likes baking, growing things, reading novels and contemporary poetry; as well as listening to live music.

ROOKS
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​Do they know they are the legacy of God?
They saddle the winds with their black flight;
Strut like cocky boys upon November sod;
Their cawing scrawls graffiti on the light:
Not a hundred winter days can rub it out;
Those dried-out nests that look like crowns of thorn,
Which nail demented branches to the skies,
Resist the years; re-used by fledglings born
To the harsh cradling of late March days,
They will gradually fall apart; but not until
Neighbouring woodland has been vandalised;
Neither the farmer’s gun, nor the brown fox
Can prevent this: the world is colonised
By every offspring of God, both good and bad… 

SUNSET DOGGEREL
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​Well, I don’t drive a car
And I don’t watch TV,
And my flat has no central heating.
 
But I do have a place in the sun.
 
I don’t have a freezer
Or microwave cooker;
Or stereo-system, or washer
 
For my life in the light of the sun.
 
I don’t travel by ‘plane;
And I don’t use machines
For those jobs one can best do by hand;
 
It is good to work land in the sun.
 
I don’t do any sports
That demand good physique:
I like walking, swimming and thinking
 
With my wife, and my brother, the sun.
 
You could say that I am,
Like the birds or the lamb,
Untroubled by many possessions,
 
And live in the loved sun’s reflections.
 
I don’t smoke, drink or bet
For my ways are all set
By cycles of day, night and seasons:
 
Those signs that the Sun has its reasons.
 
So I worship God Ra
And am one of his tears
Spilt from his “Barque, of Millions of Years”
 
And I live in the Light of the Sun.

ABOUT BIRDS
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​If we cared about birds
We would not pave our gardens
Nor have so many cats
Nor would we trim our lawns like Gillette shaves,
If we cared about birds
 
If we cared about birds
We would not use slug pellets
Nor cover our soft fruits with netting
Nor would we have
So many polluting cars
 
If we cared about birds
We would dim city streets at night;
Our gardens would have no sensor lights,
Trees would grow by our kitchen doors
And the thrush would sing from a branch
 
Having been outside to the road
Where I live, and looked right and left
At vehicles in paved drives
With cats squatting underneath;
And sensor security lights
Over each garage door and house;
And examined the state of the lawns
Free of invading plants,
I am forced to conclude
That we do not care about birds