Reflection

I have been working for several weeks on my second book of poetry, ‘Reflection’, which went to the printer last week. I collect it on November 8th. Below is the cover, from a photograph that I took on Dunwich beach on the evening of the longest day.  

Waiting for a wind

Have you ever visited Covehithe in Suffolk? A village gradually being taken by The North Sea. They wait in quietus for their final voyage on a sea they knew as well as land, which seeks again to soak their limbs. Anchored firmly by a shattered church raised for transfer to …

On the Cards

Here is a ‘post-Christmas’ poem. We look forward to receiving updates from friends, but with age the message on the Christmas cards starts to change.   Cover image marked, we seek the inner message, annual brief updates from  distant acquaintances signal reminders  of an earlier existence and place, prompts to …

Listen?

  This is a sad twist on an old tale  — a carol for our present circumstances. Why won’t Wise Men deliver their gifts? They have displayed the glittering promise from the backs of their awkward  mounts, circling  endlessly in the  featureless  waste. Shepherds cannot point the way, they search …

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 …

Complex Signals

I read this last night at the Cafe Poets first meeting in Halesworth Library, after the usual meeting place, ‘Pinkys’ had been burnt in a serious fire.  Given the current heat wave it was like reading in a sauna!   It was a follow up to my other longer poem that I …

White-out

Snow is threatened for us again this afternoon, so here is another Tanka to welcome it:     Each flake steals colour silent theft’s benign softness a camouflaged coup that covers all in fragile crystal immobility.  

Raison d’être

I was thinking about social isolation.  This poem is perhaps one concept of how it can come about. This poem was recently chosen by The Suffolk Poetry Society for publication in their magazine ‘Twelve Rivers.’       I do not look back there is too much to see some …

Who Am I Today?

If you have not yet reached the need for the  morning ritual described in this poem, know that you have it to look forward to.   Is it the aging husband with enlarged prostate? The asbestos handler with pleural plaque? The retired runner with calcified  cartilage and  the mysterious cyst, …

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 …

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