looking out from a cliff-path’s shade of sycamore’s salt-browned leaves a blue water day, fly-crawling summer itches waves winking white the slanted sails of single hulls keeled over one catamaran flat to slapping water sails
Continue ReadingCategory: :Poets
window-watched
lines of drizzle march up the green-sided valley past black cows browsing the grass-nobbled hillsides past drenched sheep in pairs pressed into heather-topped scrapes past five ewes in a line alongside the flat base of
Continue ReadingBehind the mask, closed mouth disapproval
A presence in the mind watches fools gather together cheering one another on in their foolishness. A sky-floating, slip-sliding flock of jackdaws comes down to roost, much as a new thought seeks a place to
Continue ReadingSea Swim in May
The promise of cool salt sting as we undress. Shingle underfoot, I hobble to the water’s edge, inch forward painfully until the wave wash pulls the pebbles under me and I stumble in. The shock
Continue ReadingSong
At the place where the land ended, we stood, hands clasped, drawn by the salt spray, and found there was nothing we could do but whisper the ocean into existence. We let words pour out
Continue ReadingAutumn Equinox
Crane flies hang from the door lintel, dangle their cotton-thread legs in my face; they appear as if from nowhere, have secret business. They seem immune to the spiders’ webs strung out to trap them,
Continue ReadingStrontium Story
A thousand years from now they will open my mouth and my bones will sing the story of my life, how I was a traveller, a rider of sea and air a walker of dunes
Continue ReadingFetching Things
This note is to tell you you must go on a journey. You need to fetch for her: • An elephant’s tear though it will evaporate in your stoppered tube. • A pinch of clay
Continue ReadingHanging On
I was certain the rungs were wooden sure of the rope that had me swinging. Why else was I thinking so much of the grip of past climbers and the dirt pushed into the twists
Continue ReadingLast Night I Dreamt I Slid My Poems into Drawers of Disinfectant to Sterilise Their Titles
Today a poet in black stands at a lectern reading us her words. At the end she straightens her pages says she wants to sing for us. Feet together, shoulders back, she begins. Her eyes
Continue Reading