Now

In a week, everything has changed. Now the sun is out, the sky is blue. The seasons have made a turn. — Today I am reminded of a much loved poem look – really look that was inspired by an evocative interview with an elderly gentleman about his balcony garden in the Barbican (London). The return

The good news is

The wet streets open for furtive foxes alleys for cats swaying branches for turtledoves coo-cooing in the rain. Fewer people will be out. 03/05/2020 — An apt poem from the back catalogue to follow a wet, May weekend. It felt like it rained for two days solid, but that is not true. I went out

Airtime will be of little use

What is it even all for? When the End Times come the airtime and savings will be of little use. Every day we lived cost someone something. At some times it was money that cost us. We paid our rent, our food, our taxes, clothes. The leasehold of our lives runs by not to be

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

What to share?

What to share? A truck on the High Road Is a rumble away. Fresh breeze, cold noise, morning cloud. A white morning is smaller than usual. Less time. The garden’s recovering, sucking the soil. Where is the water? 26/08/2018 — This almost early autumn morning was probably the opposite of today. Today, outside, the sky

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. –

There was a first time

There will be a final page, the faded note and empty seats. One day the concert hall will be an office block and after that a hospital. Our hands at the serenade took home the note that fades. — It’s spring again. The blossoms I wrote about last year came too early this year, even before

The colours of the street have changed

Tight red-green leaves sprout on the curbside trees. Drizzle taps the flattened Strongbow cans stomped down with an empty pizza box American hot pepperoni and chilli. Baronsmere’s pink petals line the gutters; blown down in April rains. I even spied a spider. 12 and 13/4/2015 — In rhythm and feel, this poem bears a resemblance

An overdose of summer

Soft to the thumb, the pear I sliced was gone. It was rotten inside. In a wither of ruffles the rose-heads have browned dry in the heat. They sodden after it’s stormed. Even the blowflies ferocious have stopped their wings, landed their green torpedoes for the last time. Something from lunch churns in my stomach