A correct map of 29 Columbine Road

would include the corner honeysuckle hedge and two houses with high walls. Not ours, at first. When did it change? A pink hibiscus in the corner bed is where the hiding-place might be. Two white-yellow oleanders each side of the gate, their seeping white sap not safe. The wet path, too, when it rains the

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

Three poems to end the year

i 8:58PM write poems x1 x1 x1 I wrote on my week’s to-dos. It’s 8:58PM on SUNDAY. The radiator’s cranking up; Counting down to the bedtime routine. This isn’t a poem: it’s a snapshot. ii. write poems x1 x1 The idea was to help me See each output as a ‘1’; As a single entity

Outside the day was perfection

Watching the bees Here are the words of the blazing day and the once beautiful arrangements. It was heady, was it not? The arrival of this brightest of days. Outside the day was perfection. Here a few few bees in the garden hid under clumps of cut grass. Why are they tucking themselves away? Or

Painted Mason Jars, Ideal for Table Flowers

For some, the endpoint comes. For those, it expresses as a deed. For some, how to paint a Mason jar. For those, it is possible to attach a stencil with a seasonal theme: there could be a star for Christmas or a pumpkin outline for Halloween. Overhead hums a carrier on the flightpath. For some

Today, outside, is a new room

An old poem about a new room. ‘To The Valleys‘ offers a similar opening and thwarted journey to domestic encasement. — Twitter: @BeadedQuill Facebook: BeadedQuill Books

I can tell a half bowl of you about leftover Friday rice

It must be the time of year for food thoughts, because ‘Tightly Sealed‘ from this time last year took fridge leftovers as its starting point.  

Just right – a poem about a cooking-pot

When baby bear had left home and then had had a pot, it would’ve been, I like to think, like the silver one I did adopt from outside someone’s wooden gate in the back roads of North London. Either the owners had to relocate or make space for Christmas plunder. Into my little pot, thrice

blushed apricots, green-skinned Hasses

Can you believe two years have passed since the London Olympics? I was fortunate enough to attend an evening of paralympic events. It feels as though it was only last year that I was sitting in the massive stadium, with an enormous lion emblazoned across my t-shirt and yelling encouragement at the athletes. Clearly, it wasn’t. That

A short poem from the wood

They are tall and have green eye-lids. See how they blink at the sun. trees — Being amongst trees makes my soul so happy. There are a number of woods where I live in London and I consider it my commute to work to walk through them when I have time set aside for writing.