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.
Stained Glass Windmills (2004)
Much more than rain then, when
The rain simply fell, the days
Made arcs in red and then orange,
The nights were much more than
The sun gone down
Saved (2011)
Claiming the Lake like a
sanctum in you,
An enlivening elixir that resurrects the spark,
Restores fragile fins, saturates sun-worn skins,
Blurs and bears the weight of you.
The evening mirror glimmers, breathes out and in.
A blown surface with light that ruptures,
Reflects all who seek themselves there.
It knows no favourites, only kin.
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.
Fish Bird Cat Dream (2009)
Idling the while on silent fours,
Poseidon finds my shape on the floor,
Fleetingly blinks a kiss, then
Distracted by the Adriatic, tails off like a
Blue-green paintbrush trailing marine,
The unconscious mind's fish bird cat dream.
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.
Berlin, Lindenberg (1998)
The sum flimmers intermittently,
Wave upon wave, so close suspended
In sky. A gold ticking pendulum
Radiating suspense in gauzy rings
Of heat.
She's lightly brushing our hair,
Soon smudging our feet.
Sultry city dusk, a parachute of charm.
The artist washed roofs are blushing
Chalk-brick red and warm.
#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.