Timothy Houghton

Timothy Houghton

Hummingbirds Some people say not to worry about the air Some people never had experience with Air. —Talking Heads It’s the small talk of wings brushing windows, vibing the casita. The circle of four fake flowers is a compass, a fraught blood-colored universe. I wait...
Ann Gibson

Ann Gibson

Archaeologists’ Handfasting at Stonehenge Against wind and rain, in pre-dawn dark the wedding party troops towards the stones. Pendragon, vestments flapping, leads guests in waterproofs and hiking boots. An hour’s access to the site granted, we’re still stopped at the...
Leonard Lambert

Leonard Lambert

Dog Heaven ….these beings wholly dependent on us whom we have helped lift themselves to gain a soul, but for which there is no heaven… (Letters, Rainer Maria Rilke) Rilke was wrong: …..dogs have their own Heaven, no soul required. As if Devotion were...
Merryn Williams

Merryn Williams

Red White and Blue When I drive past an elder in full flower on June roads, on some national holiday, I yearn for its distinctive scent and colour. There was a poet who saw cow parsley not as a weed, but a luxuriant drift of pure colour, white as you need to get. The...
Michael Gittins

Michael Gittins

Translation of Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) The Wild Rose-Bush How it stands there in the gloaming of a rainy evening; young and pure; offering its shoots with outstretched arms and yet in deep rose-essence, very sure; the nascent blossoms, open here and there, each...
Veronica Beedham

Veronica Beedham

The Old Empire Between Dreamland and the Amusement Arcade, Art-deco’s brown-gold, the foyer – polished wood, bakelite and glass – lit up so you could easily walk in, the usherette in chiaroscuro gloom, ready to take you down with her single torch beam to your numbered...