Blog

The Small Things in Life. My best small thing is just now; just now lying or, rather, sitting on the bed, propped up against the...

REMOTE TERRITORIES Lately my dreams, which I thought were a remote landscape that I didn’t understand and entered with trepidation and...

HAND IN HAND WITH SNOW FLURRIES FROM A CLOUDLESS SKY. On our way to the reservoirs you delighted in reminding me just how off kilter my...

WISHES OF AN EARTHWORM I would swell up and block the chicken’s craw I would lengthen and throttle the heron’s neck I would grow roots...

A GAP IN THE WALL I haven’t any memory of this occasion and, even if I experienced it, I am not too sure what I was trying to talk about...

BUTTERFLIES I still manage to get into ways of thinking that I would prefer not to have and memories that I would also like to set aside,...

Tooth and claw I wrote this originally, about a different dog when I was still vegetarian. I now eat the fish that are terrified when...

CREMATION The fact that the papers say that domestic abuse of men is not talked about almost means, of course, that it is now talked...

Chestnuts at Great Walstead Prep School. I have found that more and more; when I talk of my childhood, I come to harsher and firmer...

THE SMELL OF SNOW We didn’t get that much snow when we lived in Norfolk, but I remember those days when we did; vividly. I also remember...

REMEMBRANCE This poem is about my son. It was written a decade ago. I am extremely lucky that I have seen him twice in the intervening...

IONA MARBLE I no longer have this stone. It was given to me years ago and I was very pleased indeed to receive it. I can no longer...

DESCRIBING MY FISH I have just realised that I don’t mind how good my writing is; if this communicates anything at all then that makes me...

SUILVEN I only occasionally write poems nowadays and am unsure if I can call them poems, but I have some short pieces of writing that...

SPEAKING WITH BIRDS (This was written just after I had met Wendy and was a reject from one of my chapters in START. I am anxious putting...

TABLE TOP MEMORIES (2011) A little gasp in my mind; that’s my old bowl! You both used to eat porridge out of bowls like this. Mainly rice...

LOST PICTURES (2011) Bright blue, bright blue; so blue that it is white; a glare and a smear that makes your eyes blur; squint up, screw...

STUDIES (2012) SCREW Streaky veined; I don’t know how a rock; the cooled product of magma, lava; I don’t know which. I don’t know how...

The scent of what? Of how my memories grow; the scent of spring and summer, yes that is what I can see when I breathe in. I hear the lap...

Plat, plat, plat, plat, plat, plat. you can hear the water splashing as its feet try to stand on it; break out of it. plat, plat, plat,...