Barn Owls in Suffolk
I watch them for a long while, the pair rising and courting the field in daylight, the strange…
Occupation
So, I turned to lens cutting for a living. Corrective work, in a time of short- sightedness. ————–An astigmatic…
On the Politics and Poetics of Darjeeling
No milk or lemon, ——love black tea from Amman, ——India. At sea- level, ragged ——monsoons ghost inland, ——millennium…
Through the Witch Window
Soon I’ll be lucent, at your witch window, hand raised ready to knock. There are no lies hidden between…
Pwyll and Rhiannon, from The Mabinogi
It’s little more than a bump in the land, a footnote in the catalogue of hills, crags and ridges,…
Low Altitude
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure. ————————————— — Rumi I fly at a delicately-low…
Second Sight
He’s come to see me off. Limps up the platform after me. I lose sight of him while I…
Kintsukuroi
—The cracked bowl that I mean to repair everyday keeps getting neglected by my secret awe for bone china…
The Whales
Any day now, they will rise again through their cauldron of green bubbles – the gulls lifting off and…
Lieutenant Schmidt’s Ideal Lady
The Lady at the Kiev Racecourse A new century not long begun: a young man, unhappily married and between…
On St Cecilia’s Day
Stop listening to that music and hear instead what the dead are saying who were buried on this day…
The New Tenants
When we go the ivy will slam a fist through the double glazing, push its fingers in between the…
Aunt Amy’s Parasol
For such a sombre woman it strikes an unexpected note of frivolity, with those flamboyant stripes of pink, white,…
Ring of Brodgar
Asking a blessing of stone. Nestled in a blaze, blue water and a cup of soft heathered hills, Orkney’s…
The Tulips
The Tulips enter like a corps de ballet crimson and violet vivid as wax crayons. Heads held high in expectation…
Line-Drawing
for Ken Cold, measured, you drew your father while he lay dying, teasing him into the perfection of your…
Queen of the North
to Auntie Dorothy She was the postcard, then the sea that we competed to be the first to see.…