Guest Poems

Egret and Heron Late afternoon, December, in the gloamingacross the bridge near the Willow Walka little egret: black beak, long black legsstartling yellow feet hidden in the grass.I lift binoculars to see him more clearlyand there behind is a spectral followergrey,...

Sightseeing A few summers ago,the cloudless blue a markerto my memory that it was duringCovid times,I saw above my city gardenthat fantastic single bird.A few flaps of its gigantic wingsand it was gone,passing over Cardiff and who knows where else;not in any hurry for...

Insomnia It’s a country I sometimes visitbut I wouldn’t want to live there.Even at 3 or 4 a.m., the bathroom’sstainless steel fixtures, white tiles,hold their own, maintaina careful sanity. The blatant light rejectsany transfusion of darkness. By adjusting the mirrors...

England, Ice Fixed, White with Rage From a train, always train, acres of whiteness, and I watchPast or future, fields of time, seen/unseen, fields of it, the presentRefuses, I only want it more, and gods of modest means,Not first rankers, not famous ones with...

Small Rain, the Sound of Breathing The way a little too much cautioncreaks the floorboards more than clumsiness –so the rain, tonight, small spatters, all around the house… The way I ease the body-weightof last night’s sleep to the edge of the bed…Its cartilages...

The Repair Shop Give me, please, this evening hourof rest, let me sit safely herewatching the show, alone, at home,in the quiet of this room,others busy, nearby, elsewhere,as another day ends. I have chosen this programmefrom all those that tell of the past,carefully...

We Learned That Everything Drifts Green and Purple in the Barents Sea almost everything: R/V Lance wasgrounded deep on an unlucky reef we heard Mayday and drove to assistancesleepless the entire sunlit night. Humming a shanty we wrote for the rescue– our captain...

Big Morning in Rome In the hot magenta of a dark alley,a photoallergic inamorato sees the lady of his lifeand wants nothing more.He rushes through porticos and tourist crowdswho wave positive cardio imagesin the chiaroscuro of endless fog. The lady waits on the...

Salisbury (short let) In the year of the election, in early June,the third year of the war, the four of uswoken – we thought – by the whinnyingof horses; architecture with a sense of irony:we discover the best (least obstructed)view of the famous cathedral is fromthe...

A Poem from My Mother to My Father The way you standcrooked, stoopedin doorwaysunsure of where, why, what the way you asked mejust last weekif we knew each other the way I have to dress youwash youtell youthe time, the day, the season the way you look at melast...

To Grieve Like Kollwitz That night in mid-January,I prayed to the Godof waiting rooms, swimming for my life,and yours.I can still summon that fear,waking before dawnwith tears and cries for help,a litanyof the impoverished. The silencesurrounded uslike an absence I...

Soul Music3 – Swallows My uncle and I flew paper swallows from the high bedroom window. They caught the lifting wind, drifted above the narrow road and pointed metal railings that had somehow escaped the Spitfire Fund, into the small park with its swings, roundabout...

Lullaby I want a slow horse. Those heavy-hoofed kindsthat used to drag a plough across a fieldor haul the beer drays through the town. I’d sit up high, proud as an empresswith reins in hand, an easy sway of hipsrollicking like hills from side-to-side. We’d walk the...

The Best is Yet to Come Everyone agreed it was the polar caps,that went first, followed bythe Colorado River and the birds – pretty much, all of them,not to mention the pandas, the monarch butterfliesand the green sea turtles. But what really got our attention,were...

Anvils I have this dreamof anvils droppingfrom a quiet sky. A scene in a B-moviefrom the Cold War erain glorious black and white. A heavenly protestfrom the gods of waras they lay down their tools. A Dali paintingof shadows fallingon the face of the earth. Or just a...