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.

Nature’s Alarm Clock

I’m woken by the Dawn Chorus. Not yet the full orchestra. A solitary blackbird playing oboe (chirping is too unrefined a word for it) from the uppermost branch of the wind-stooped apple tree and the dot-dot-dot-dash-dash refrain of a wood…

Sound affects

I’m sitting face to the sun like a Spring flower listening to the sounds of south Shropshire. A wedge of cold air – a thin blue arrow at the horizon and as tall as the stratosphere itself above my head…

National Service

There was three things in Civvy Street wot gave me untold pleasure, Me Boston cut, me Windsor knot, and me creepers made to measure. On me first day in the Army, though, they gives me quite a scare, For a…

This train is for Cardiff Central

“This train is for Cardiff Central.” Blokes in ones and girls in twos. Some in boots and some in shoes. “All tickets please.” Punk with nose ring. Ginger hair. Babe in arms. Collapsed pushchair. “The next station is Stockport.” Kids…

Echo Chamber

His work hangs on the gallery wall. We hear its buzz. We’re in its thrall. Each piece still humming with the thrum. As strong as when the work was done. That clay was soft and took the mould Of artist’s…

Crosshands Cottage

Now as the dusk is drawing in Around these weathered cottage walls The birds sing out an evening hymn Their last before the darkness falls And carried on a gentle breeze Which shimmers through the grass and trees A haunting…

Paris in Springtime

ISIL I whisper je t’aime. You shout hate. I hold hands. You hack them off. The stain on my tablecloth is wine. Yours is blood. I bare my throat for a kiss. Not a knife. Strap children to my chest.…

Unheard symphony

He’d forgotten how to listen. To still his knotted mind until the sounds untangled. Untied one by one from the thrum. Listened. Registered. Identified. Appreciated. More, much more than mechanical. No eardrum beat alone. But notes in a symphony. The…

For the journey

He wore the words like a necklace. Each silent syllable a bead. Pearl by pearl, a string of unspoken sentences. His favourite book steepled on a sunken chest. Treasure without end. I wonder now what page my mother chose. What…