Michael Tolkien was born in Birmingham in January 1943. He was brought up in a rural community in the Chiltern Hills, South Oxfordshire until 1956. Following his father's changes of employment, he returned to suburban Birmingham for two years before moving to the Vale of Pickering in North Yorkshire and to Ribblesdale in Lancashire. He feels a close and lasting affinity with these two places. He studied for an MA in English Language and Literature at the University of St Andrews, and a B.Phil in Restoration and 18th Century English Literature at Merton College, Oxford. He settled in Rutland and was a secondary school teacher from 1968 until early retirement due to ill health in 1994. Since then he has worked as a freelance lecturer, in adult education, and focused on his own writing and reviewing.
Rooted
From Refuge (New Generation Publishing, 2012)
Meandering funeral aftermath
finds us side by side
below the comforting splash
of tall, new-leaved limes.
Beliefs and sects creep
into our talk: how some suppose
no breeze can make them totter,
and most don't need to make a stand.
'So what are you now?' I ask.
'Nothing,' you say: assured,
precisely you, leaning a moment
on the chiselled hide of a lime
that knows where it stands,
as you do, gazing clear-eyed
past a blackened tower
to where you stood
and buried two parents,
not two springs apart.
Faith
From Exposures (Red Beck Press, 2003)
I light on autumn crocuses:
pale violet petals bursting
from dry shale. They expose
orange hearts, strong as the yearning
that holds me to you across
a continent.
Miracles
are practical. It's how
you once looked up and spoke
without a word. And now
I feel you here, taking
such careful steps, pitying
the trampled ones who've lost
their chance among the spikes and prickles.
Signs
From Taking Cover (Red Beck Press, 2005)
On a corner of the raised pool
you stand poised, head and limbs
stretched from a long, white T shirt,
touching the moon's tips.
You're eleven, plugged into a stereo,
and there's no god; yet thirst
for the unquenchable draws you
to this sliver of light.
Hazing behind vapour trails
it reminds me you were born
with incurable retina, that
seeing's more than sight.
The pool's edge drops into dark.
Your body at its verge
opens to the monthly sign
of blood dark and cleansing light.
You ask me to light a red votive
candle. I let the match speak.
Raising the flame, you fill
The dark between the horns.