Guest Poems

Sea-Roads I have come to talk to you Because the days draw in And because I can hear the sea – The distant, long sigh of it. I hear the gull-cry. But mostly, I hear the sea. And, farthest of all, the thunder The ominous deep dirge of it: A shape on the mind’s horizon,...

Blue Moon Once, after the tail-end of a hurricane had blown through the day – the roaring in the trees like a passing train and the rain berserk as it over-ran the valley – once there was this quiet October evening, two full moons in one month, two lives wrought into...

In Churchill’s The boy in the fish and chip shop once felt sad enough to slice the soft white skin on the inside of his wrist. He has a thick scar shining wide and purple like a fat worm sliding up his sleeve. You’ll see a flash of it as he deftly shovels and shakes...

Cracks Like a row of graves the shrunken pots of paint line the windowsill each one sits on a pale strip painted by you. You asked me too many times what shade I wanted for our naked bedroom all the colours looked the same. Your favourite was eggshell white – you said...

Poppies by the Sea Orangey-red prayer flags of the past – they are opium – a secret incense. They are a doorway to everything – from a small room to an endless blue seascape. They launch all the people that you have encountered – the living and the dead. They are the...

For Beirut A cento I Lebanon shall be turned into a fruitful field a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon, as beautiful as the famed city of Atlantis. Walk through the lonely ancient woods hear the voices from the Cedars of Lebanon....

The Other One Opening the blue door of a shed he had called The Other One, his old straw hat tips from a nail, doffed by a breeze predicting a storm. Its crown’s unwinding like a work unfinished, black band sweat salted - so much garden slog under a few retirement...

Rooks Greedy rogues and undertakers, graveyard birds and thieves; thus maligned along with other crows, and all unfairly, to me these rooks are wise in myth and fact, riding the tall-tree sky beyond my window, waking up the spring with their clamorous building. In...

Mrs Mortimer’s Podcast Men? Flowers don’t have much choice when it comes to bees, do they? Children. You get what you’re given and as for the virgin birth. Try it. The root cause of all this extinction rebellion and global warming is over-population and...

Masked Too early and unsteady I walk slowly along the half-empty corridor. My glasses steam as I breathe, blotting out direction signs and leaving me stranded in a boat without oars. What has happened to me? What has happened to the alert, making a joke of my hearing,...

Leaving Home You’re waving goodbye from the shore, smiling. I want to get off the boat, but the swell knocks me off balance and with each heave away from you I’m more seasick, homesick. I call gently to you – No fuss, you’d said. I whisper your name to calm myself as...

The Warning A hi-vis hangs from a billboard across the road, flashing in the wind like a warning against an invisible enemy. No one’s claimed it though it’s been there for days. I retreat to the back of the house to make bread. Maybe some kid will yank the vest down...

A Refuge A family who nobody knew moved into the house with no windows and a hole in the roof. There was hay to sleep on and they collected sticks from the forests on the mountain to light a fire in the middle of the room, kitchen chairs arranged in a circle of...

Learning to Swim Every woman should know how to swim, so she can navigate the treachery of land; the currents and riptides dragging her back to the crossroads of youth, paths never taken, the waxing and waning longing of streets. We stand in a line, at the tiled edge...