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Poetry, bikes, dementia care...
Poetry, bikes, dementia care...
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 refer to the map. It’s…
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 brush and whip the latherFoamy-faced…
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 wings there’s nothing to be…
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 the blinking eyes of menWith…
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 by the scurvy of disease,Sink.…
Dear Strava I really like your app. I’ve been using it for many years now. In the early days and as an early adopter I even managed to be King of the Mountain once or twice. Or at least on those hillocks (that’s a better…
A lot has been made of Jeff Bezos’s short jaunt into space: whether he might have spent his money more wisely; as world leaders gather for COP26 what impact his venture might be causing the environment; even what constitutes “outer space” given that he barely…
Juji is a mynah bird. Caught up in the evacuation of Kabul along with a young Afghan girl and carried to freedom in a cardboard box, this is quite simply the most moving and beautiful story you’ll hear for a long time. Please do listen.…
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 Aquila surveying the scene. Meadows…
Eastern ashes astir aglow As new moon lips mouth morning’s breeze The arc then melts like springtime snow Unshackling Earth from night-time’s freeze. Nocturnal creatures can’t be caught By hieroglyphs to leaf-lined lairs Their secrets safe in shadows short Billowing steam in sunbeam snares. By…
Everybody heard him, the dead migrantBut still they say, moaning:Our compassion’s much further out than you thoughtAnd not saving but drowning. With apologies to Stevie Smith.
Foz is from Somalia. She steers my mother slowly across the care home lawn. A ship of state adrift on a sea of green. “Here are my two favourite girls,” I call from the shade of the arbour. Because if I wasn’t jolly I’d cry. …