Guest Poems

Swans At Night On the wildest night of the year’s beginning,the park’s a moor, the pond a heaving ocean.Like hailstones, stars soar past our heads;the trees are stripped by the shrieking gale. My eyes stream and my face feels stretchedand I worry about tomorrow....

Into this Breathing World Found in hallowed soil,his scoliotic spine strungloosely like a rosary(one shoulder higher than the other;five foot eight but would have seemedmuch shorter) he’d been struckby many men so eachcould claim the fatal blow. History has told of...

Carousel Set free – the horses leap out to grasspause – sit onto angular hocksstretch stiffness from limbs cramped too longthen snorting – high stepping they buck – run – droproll over and over – ease rigid spinesmask paint-bright colours in scuffles of dust. Heads...

Samos On the beach wherethe Syrians landedthen walked along the shoreto the police stationleaving their long boatand orange jackets behind, where the sea easesback and forthagainst the landas if trying tomake peace with it,I collected marble pebbles that the waves had...

The Table You made the coffee table long beforeI was on the scene, aged thirteen, a term’s work in the carpentry class, as yet the namesof your wife and children uncarved in your heart; young to master the music of your tools:bit and brace, mallet, plane, drill and...

Spring Returns By the narrow high-hedged lane to Holne;          and then up over the moor to see the snowdrops at St Raphael’s! The gale rocks us; and the rain slaps the...

Breakfast with Michael Longley River and Fountain From beyond the window October’s memoryof what summer might have been poured in, and therewas Billie singing God Bless the Child, there wassun through the apple juice, dazzling the table. There was Hart Crane, there...

Foraging for the Ideal The lights of Macerata, Loreto, Treiapulse across each hilltop townand fireflies swing their lampsover the earthto echo the stars. There’s the scent oflaurel, rosemary, lavenderwild mint and fennel. L’amore che move il solee l’altre stelle warms...

To Cleave This morning a sheer, immaculate skywas bisected horizon to horizonby interlacing white and blue threads of a cloud formation,delicate, curling filaments, intricate weavingsthat bound east to west. And held their breath. I stood at my back door, thinking...

The Other It presses againstmy consciousnesslike a curtain blownby a wind outside. No windows free usfrom our senses’ prisonand linear timeconstricts. But in that other placethere are no walls;past, present, future,stroll together. I cannot shiftthe curtain’s...

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...