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

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

Knowledge

To feel waves must crash if they thirst for the shore; they must trip stones smooth, burst jagged hands, pierce the stretch strain of speckled beanskins learning the ground. The walker must trip. 2003, after Las Vegas, Death Valley and Flagstaff, USA — “Knowledge” appears in Shining in Brightness (2013), my first book of poetry.

A day too fine for words

Trump such sultry sunshine with a screen? That will not stem creation. The words set out for basting in the warmth; crossed the bridge at Embankment station. The Thames and sequins on its skirt, scintilled in summer brio. The words, now on the move, snacked on radishes a frio. — Thursday, 3rd July was such

Saying it Plainly

Ten days ago I didn’t know you. Didn’t know you walked the streets of anywhere walked the streets of London Didn’t know you Didn’t know you had walked the dusty sights of that anywhere near where I had breathed the streets of there and then in London. I didn’t know the sight of each “1

Near Liverpool Street under scaffolding

What do you believe? I believe to see truth lived quietly and consistently is powerful. My father died like that. In trees we find tall truths deeper rooted than human folly. I believe in stakes that make us choose a path right, or left or denial. Denial comes back to haunt us in choice, again.