Category Poetry

If music be the food of love then poetry may just be the language of emotion. Home for my own words and those of others who in some way inspire, inform, entertain or educate me.

So Sunflowers Grow

Ukraine sunflowers

Of all the tear-jerking images of war on the edges of Europe, one or two have stayed with me: birds shocked from their treetop roosts by the deep boom of artillery fire; a woman handing out sunflower seeds to occupying…

Lost Words

Here’s how the dream unfolds: behind the gritted lids of night is told the story of an ironed-flat sea – moonlight over mercury. Soon out. Beyond the beach. Deep down below the folds and creases. Rapid eyes. Heart beat increases.…

A Postcard from Tenerife

Dear Mum Wish you were here! El Medano reminds me of Swanage. Sand, sea, sunshine, taut salty skin. The tide of geological time turning as the waves wash in and out and in…But then these days everywhere reminds me of Swanage.  Wish…

The father, the son and the surgical spirit

* wuldres wealdend || woroldáre forgeaf “Take as long as you like he’s ready for you.” Shit and surgical spirit. There, I’ve said itIt’s only taken 22 years A forehead kissed. No words. No tears Too airless. Two chests deflated. His dressed in half…

The patron saint of paint

He spoke to me in a dream on the road to Santiago The pilgrim father. Ochre boots. Lamp black hair. “Any path can be a Camino. “Just start walking. You’ll know when you get there.” Now forgive me if I…

Shaving

I see him still, his face in mine.In this grey hair, that laughter line.Me on a chair to match his heightDad shaving in the morning light.  Reflecting back a boy and manThe man now gone the boy a manDip the…

Swift

First south and west, then north and east, I quarter up the sky.I’m watching for your sickle wings to scythe across my eye. I look, I look, then look again and listen for your scream.But bar the clap of pigeon…

We shall sight them on the beaches

They didn’t want to be fishers of menWomen and children first hauled from the seaAnd laid out on the deck like a prize catchGently by hands that are roughened by saltCalloused but not callous softened by saltTears that fall from…

Biology with Mr Fisher

Lesson one: let nature be your teacher.No scrape of chairs indoors, no blackboard chalkFor him. Classroom fields. An outdoor creatureWho smelled of earth and planted with his talk… Elms. Galleons afloat the pasture seasBut scuttled by scolytus. Now un-helmedHulls, boreholed…

Night farming

Furrows the Plough ‘cross the field of night.Bellows Canis at the owls out of sight.Callow Orion unbelted his might,Shallow-breathed Virgo sowed without fight. Sorrows the brow, Cassiopeia the queen.Mellow the music of Lyra, unseen.Hero Perseus his sword broad and keen.Hallow’d…