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Category Archives: poetry
Ordnance
Digging trenches, sunken defences against flood and farm-fouled run-off, a discovery gives pause. Once the soldiers ran these cliffs, looking for invaders, boats by night, enemies creeping up with the tide. They left behind a hand grenade, souvenir of suspicious … Continue reading
Posted in poetry
Tagged Britain, Hand grenade, home guard, land mines, peace, unexploded ordnance, war, world war 2
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Seven years
Seven times seven years married, seven years past; a rose remembers.
Raising the dead
They say that Elijah raised a fatherless child, stretched out corpselike over his body, breathing for him, with him, breathing until his new life began. His mother, from then on, developed a habit of peering over his shoulder into the … Continue reading
Trinity
Trinity (in preparation for Sunday) When the children were little, and they wouldn’t listen, they wouldn’t play nicely, or tidy their toys, or eat their greens, or let go of the poor cat’s tender tail, I would say, “I’ll count … Continue reading
Posted in other words, poetry
Tagged cats, children, counting, one, parenting, poetry, three, Trinity, Trinity Sunday
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Between
There is a chasm between birth and being where stuff falls, collects and, hidden by the distance and the dark, smoulders, sending up smoke, ciphers breathed in the language of the unborn and forgotten, known only to their God.
Some things ascend (others do not)
The skylark, singing. Clouds; but those that reach the mountaintop fall as rain, giggling and gurgling. A swan, slow to start, duckpond runway, lifting largely, broad wings set free. Incense laden with prayers, pious particles. A child on a trampoline, … Continue reading
Breathing room
I have expanded since she left, as though she wedged me tight, her elbow in my side, that space whence God had made my other self; restored my second lung inflates; her voice still susurrates as I exhale.
Posted in poetry
Tagged bereavement, family, family systems, poetry, self-expression
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The Mime
Living in a portable Perspex box, beauty teases on the breeze, my hand smacks hard against its borders, my lips bruised from reaching for tenderness.
From a great height
The green wooded hills appear moss-laden, springy, inviting embrace
over the water 