I could do with a harvest moon

The harvest moon shines for itself and the corn we no longer reap or sow, We cultivate the blue screens. 24/09/2018 — With a turn towards the autumnal, the sense of harvest comes into the air. This poem from 2018 echoes ideas about work in the modern age in contrast with a more agrarian past

He could not pause too long

Along a back road He set off from the village when the blossoms dropped their petal tears and the green buds bid to escape from the branches. While walking along a back road, he was stopped First by an old woman who bent over a stick. The stick gave way on the path. The old

plant this great choice in height and spread

Plant asters by autumn When all else fades, semi-trailing heath comes into its own. In banks and borders snow-petalled asters make a brilliant ground cover. Shimmering their heads: a butterfly magnet in the wildlife garden’s banks and borders. Plant this by autumn, plant this great choice in height and spread before the winter turns. –

It grows ever darker: autumn evenings

During the first months of posting on my blog in 2012, I opened this short piece with a reminiscence about the red creepers that draped my undergraduate university during autumn. I went on to comment on the dark evenings that enclose this season in the Northern hemisphere — I tweet much more when I’m in

the rooted words. Knead! Knead!

The dark encroaches earlier and the temperatures drop. September heralds autumnal change. This time last year I was already battening down by spending more evenings in with the creaking heating, baking and feeling the quiet life.

Black coats, black pavements, black umbrellas, the rain

“Kirchner 1913 Street, Berlin“. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. John Keats wrote his famous ode ‘To Autumn‘ on the 19th of September 1819. This partially inspired my poem posted this time last year. (This year, we are enjoying a generous bolt of extended warmth. The colder snap is still to come.) “Autumn’s ripened harvest store” offers

Nice words of the moment (from autumn)

adroit, adept, conker, weary boeuf and stew. The nights are closing in; the mushrooms sprouting on their monopeds. The pipes are closing in with nights re-wakening with heating. — Here above, some words combined at the end of September last year as autumn brought in a change of light, of taste preferences, of colours and

An autumn evening in

There is exercise in the rooted words. Knead! Knead! Glance, the rooted words are closing in. About the even’ shift the sprouting pipes creak thin their heat – a flailing dance of conker-burst  – Knead! Knead! The Beautiful Life is different. — This poem is part of a current project to write two poems a

Autumn’s ripened harvest store

Black coats, black pavements, black umbrellas, the rain Nights black by 20:00. Achoos in the office. Splutters on the train. Time to switch on the heating and buy doughnuts in the morning. There has sprung the winter hunger and it will only grow — On the 19th September 1819, John Keats wrote this lilting ode