Signals to myself

CLICK ON THE ARROW ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM     It has taken time to realise that these small changes are incremental signals of  approaching decline, not terrifying, just  inevitable and not to be  ignored. The precursor was cancer,  so discrete it was  almost secret, but  careful doses of …

Circus Aeruginosus

    Lifting with one lazy stroke from stunted blackthorn you glide in the silence over sedge then almost brush the rustling carpet  of  dry reed’s autumn seed heads. Your mate follows, on a higher flight path alert for any movement your passage startles.   Your cruel dispossession is fully …

Starting to go

Nothing really prepares us for old age, it’s a mystery kept from the young, to prevent their discouragement.       Like an ebb tide after a full moon life starts to slip from its highpoint and flotsam begins to show.   Expectation has proven false; that age rewards with …

Unexpected

There, just inside the threshold are your treasures beach gleaned sea glass and gathered hagstones. The first pebble-tumbled,  shaped and smoothed. The other’s pierced form thought to void witchcraft. Wire strung hagstone columns guard our house. Myth tells that magic wont travel over water and holed stones, wrongly thought sea …

Equivalence

This poem was written whilst on a river trip from Amsterdam to Budapest in May 2017, whilst I was awaiting the results of a biopsy to determine what sort of cancer I had.     Here in Bamberg we are buying history grateful that no symptoms show the guides are …

Last Orders

This poem won a ‘Commended’ award in the recent 2016 George Crabbe Poetry Competition.  The competition judge, Moniza Alvi, wrote of ‘Last Orders’ “Tragic and hard hitting, I found this poignant poem compelling.”  ” This is a poem with a real sense of urgency”. Every night at seven, he shed …

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