Guest Poems

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...

Satisfaction Sometimes, it is the common things that give satisfaction,such as chopping onions, peppers and tomatoesdespite me rarely enjoying cooking apart from the result,sharing food with the one who brings some real point to life,one who lifts me above the...

A Winter Morning Poor naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are,That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm! (Lear) My heart forgets …(Burns, ‘A Winter Night’) The globe has got its change on and frostthe artificer has strolledmadly through the world with a...

She Sews the Starsafter a quilt by Harriet Powers Harriet takes strips of calico,old dungarees. Stitches storiesto warm her children. Job prays for his enemies. Moses lifts up the serpentin the wilderness. A dark day in May. The stars fall.In the Garden of Eden, God’s...

The Seducer’s Hat Like a skydiver about to plunge for the first timefrom the opened plane into breathlessness I stand pressed to the last strip of blackbefore sunlight, gazing across eight feet of blazing tarmac – it takes such courage, this tackling head-onof the...

Grave Sweeping Every Ching Ming, April showers weepmisty tears across the land, seepinginto gaps of loss. Gifts of paper energisethe spirits (a suit, a watch, a house) as warpingflames consume ingots, paper-gold flecks on the vergeof a hot red tin: the borderline...

Elephant Caretaker I cannot imaginestealing an elephant,notorious as they arefor being difficultto compress comfortably,but elephant caretakersuse sharphooks to find the tenderparts of elephants’mouths and inner ears,the secret malleabilityto make the beastsinto...

Circus Act some days it’s the high-wirewe balance on that thin pathunknown danger either side on others it’s the trapezeI swing to you to make the catcha moment of faith above the void today it’s contortionismI put both feet behind my headyou fit yourself into a tiny...

The Conundrum of Proportion You try to force your arm into dolly’s dressbalance her hat like a pimple on your head,crush her cardboard-box bed with your giant toddlerbody, puzzled by further mysteries of perspective:big or close; small or far away; the way your...