Guest Poems

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...

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...

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 the domain...

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...

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...

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...

The silent place Two sets of heavy doors, solid as weightlifters’ shoulders as they roll on their hinges noiseless apart from a small cough of protest or welcome and then you’re in the space: the grand rectangular mural-encrusted incense-hinting carved varnished...

After Daniel McColgan’s Murder His body lies on the pad Under the ash, next to a blackthorn, In the soft hollow of the devil’s punchbowl (His dad says the devil only lurks in dark corners). Ravens stalk his head And tatted flowers creep round The braeface of the caves...

Like Sunrise My uncle said it could come at any time, the knock on the door. The policeman, the waiting car, the high-speed journey through pre-war London. That night there was no time, no time for the usual procedures. They took him straight to the hospital bed, to...

Daily Bread Based on the words of a Ukranian farmer, 5 March 2022 We grow the wheat, give it, for free, to the men who drive the lorries. The men who drive the lorries deliver it, for free, to the bakers of Kyiv. The bakers of Kyiv bake it, for free, into bread for...

Painting You There is a city in your face, I see it in the shadows this fierce light creates. You build a new one every day – Babylon was there, a shimmer of Jerusalem And many a smaller place. They will all fall but only one of them will rise again. Are your cities...

The Plants in a Skipton Concrete Yard The chives are xenophobes. They dig their roots in deeper every year and have taken over their tub. The courgette is an exchange student from France. She is blossoming as hard as she can. She has always wanted to be a ballerina,...

The Race The others had quit the track, I had no choice, I had to step up now. It was like a fight. I grabbed the baton in my shaking hand and clutched it tight. I hadn’t trained for this, and the race was tough, circuit after circuit on rough uneven ground. A jeering...

in real time a day comes when you don’t walk by the sea despite the lovely air of May but go back to the hotel to sleep all afternoon in a room gorging on sun a time comes when you don’t jump up to dance but watch from a corner as couples sway like wheat in the field...

Night Journey: On the Greyhound Bus I trusted the soft-spoken driver, the sound of his foot on the pedal, humming of the engine once we reached the highway, cocooned by other passengers, coaxing me into a dreamless sleep. When we were further south, past midnight, we...