The History of Herons
(Malpas, Truro) What force is at work scripting this egg yolk, Sculpting the wet tangle of the shelled bird?…
The Rape of Europa
A million fields between Amsterdam and Berlin, sewn together by hedgerows and fences into a limitless skin that covers…
Extra-Curricular
When I was fourteen I lost my soul in the great depression of the Seventies it slipped away in…
Outsleeping the Monsoon
In the purple foothills, the little hours run on light feet like spotted deer in the fallow dark leopard…
How the Snow-Leopard Became
We can barely detect them – Rauschenberg’s white paintings where the only surface interest is the shadow of passers-by…
The Blue Planet
Monks say that icons are written not painted, the gaze always recycled between mother and child. But today reading…
Lough Swilley
I squinted As the light squandered itself Into three plummets – Like votive spears Cast into the scowling water.…
Sur l’Escalier
I have these underwater days, distressed as a little mermaid by memory’s insistent minnowing, a gutted fish, left open…
The Hanging Stone
sing wind sing bracken sheafs sing saxons go away replace their tools with bog-bean spools n cottongrass cambric grey…
Long Learning
the lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne… He walks in and out of my sleep wearing…
In the Drift
Convalescent, by the Kennet side, I see two raucous geese glide down to a synchronised landing through scattered waterfowl.…
Captain of Industry
At dawn in silk pyjamas, mole-skin slippers, he will wind up clocks, dozens of cream zeros set in oblong…
End of Girlhood
The first time a tree called me by name, I was thirteen and only spoke a weave of ordinary…
After the Reading
She breathes in the hairspray topnotes of a highland single malt, which needs a glass not a tooth mug.…
An Endless Trace
These days it is to small things that I go – The double thumbprint on page 83 Of Sir…
Finn’s People (Pobull Fhinn, North Uist)
Finn’s people landed and waited for him till the moors darkened and the seas grew thick. After centuries, absentmindedly…
Ferris Bridges
Further down from Ferris Bridges where the blind old gospel baritone dreamed a mirage of eternal mirrors miniature shadows…
Edinburgh Buses
Strolling around it’s not so changed – Glasgow still has its Lasses All cheek bones And button-nose, grouted faces;…