Poetic writings 

Jack's Head (2004)

An easy hill to climb, with blossom in the pail.

The folkland coos with birdsong.

Jack's head is soon repaired.

Mother of Pearl (2009)

Reigning over this hemisphere

And dictating the seas, whitening

The darkest well and moor,

Cattle shed and stone in full light.

Now's the planetary time to bring

Mary home to rest, a conch song

Of how does your garden grow -

Through the open window.

As Through A Veil (1999)

Sitting in metallic pink-black and

Feeling airborne. This corner

Accommodates me. I spy a book of poetry

Titled 'As Through a Veil' and

Know I must be where I should be.

Cathedral (2001)

You tell me it's the scenery you're admiring, the

Oceanic radar avenue of January's palms

(Recalling a shipwrecked life), this

Slate water rink, a chemistry pallet sky

After rainfall, a solitary fountain reigning.

I am absolutely lost to Miro's design of

Disembodied parts, eight-sided stars,

A child indigo iris of nymph.

You are my scenery, a lulling

Attic space, my oblivious water diver.

How apt that we didn't enter the cathedral

Because we couldn't find the door.

The Thoughts Of A Peahen (2001)

The peacock was the curious stage in

Soundless marine bullet plume enduring

While we lost sight of each other

Again and again.

You only have to turn your cheek

And I am wounded by your opaque

Umbilical wondering, your unique

Fog like a chemical sky after

Catherine wheels.

I decipher your name in the curtains,

The palm trees, the rain, the

Ground lights covering my view at

5000 feet.

Honeymoon (2012)

If we lie still and sync in,

The cicadas settle into flinchless

Incantations, butterflies

Flit between monastic steps and our skin,

Breathing becomes the sea; ebbing out, fading in.

Passing (2003)

The train is driving into the sun,

It seems. Like the clouds have

Never known rain, like it was

Always this green.

His eyes are lost in the motion,

Brown as the horses grazing.

"We are all passing", I heard her saying.

Isa and the Church Mouse (2006)

The tree's mind was carved into its bark, an eye.

Like a mysterious summer totem, speaking in tongues and wild.

We were wild before the years froze you, Isa,

And turned me into a solitary church mouse,

Reeling under stained glass windmills, seeking

The fractured rays of the same sun.

A Preserved Image (1998)

My image was here long before I arrived.

Tiny dust particles whirling, dancing,

Drawing my face.

The summer branches sensed an arrival.

Their tips summoned me here.

And in the backseat of a taxi, the trees

Had sketched my head shape.

#minutiae

August 2023

The healing in a bird's clear, squally call against the sky. The rattle in a Welsh poppy. 

June 2023

Meditation: the eye of a white pansy, the slim neck of a blue glass vase, a Mediterranean tile in blue and white. 

March 2023

Spring - and I'm greeted as I come out of the chemist, by the joyous smile of a little girl in a bright red coat, swinging a toy rabbit in one hand, her dad's hand in the other.

December 2022

Steady galoshes of slush and the occasional syncopated water drop striking a surface and chiming like a fingertip flicking a china cup. 

February 2021

Picturing the stillness of a nighttime sea somewhere, the colour of a blackcurrant and liquorice sweet.  

October 2020

Sunshine on tarmac after rain - even a puddle-anxious cat would idle the while there.

August 2020

An argument of midges like little goading shadow boxers.  

June 2020

A little bird's chirping like the sound of chamois leather rubbing glass.  

May 2020

The garden's dark evergreen, yellow-green, celery-green, silver-green....And the hot mint- or chive-scented sheen of my dog's coat brushing against vegetation.

April 2020

I lay in the garden with the last of Monday, under green, yellow and blue, where I was visited by two wood pigeons, a host of midges, a robin and a fingernail tip of moon.