Tag Archives: animals

Spoilt for choice…

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This coming Wednesday are the elections for the ‘Tweede Kamer van de Staten Generaal’ – the lower house of parliament.

All over the country, boards have appeared with the 24 political parties. In large cities and towns each party has its own board. In small towns, like mine, the one shown.

On Friday, a pale grey sheet of A1-sized paper arrived by post: names of candidates for the 25 parties. So much detail: it’s essential to orient yourself beforehand. Otherwise, you’d spend too much time in your cubicle on the day, and there will be queues. When I voted in the last elections (November 2023), I couldn’t fold the paper back into its original roadmap shape…

The Dutch are famed for their tolerance. I find that puzzling, but then I spent most of my life outside The Netherlands.

A few months ago, a new political party ‘Vrede voor Dieren’ (Peace for Animals) was established. They split from the original ‘Partij van de Dieren’ (Party of the Animals) because the leader of the PvdD (initially pacifist) changed their views and now supports re-armament. The new VvD rejects re-armament in principle.

You don’t need to have read Animal Farm to think that an animal’s view of pacifism is probably Will I be eaten or not? (paraphrasing a Dutch novelist).

Confidence in politics and politicans

Confidence in politics is at an all-time low. In the August 2025 polls it ranged from 4% – 9%. Some 25% of those polled were floating voters. There are several reasons for that.

Photo credit: MabelAmber via Pixabay

Time lost in the polder…

  1. The ‘polder’ model is the pragmatic recognition of pluriformity. Time is needed to achieve consensus: people will need to polder. However, this verb has a negative connotation in relation to politics. An election will be followed by months of sitting and talking, walking and talking. A ‘formateur’ will facilitate the process. Meanwhile, the previous coalition is just ‘care taking’ and keeps things ticking over.

It also takes several months to organise an election, typically four to five.

The coalition Rutte II was the first cabinet that completed its full four-year term since 1998. Its starting date was 5 November 2021. Since then, just over two years were spent on forming the next three coalitions.

Not lasting the course…

Rutte III – the full cabinet resigned over the child benefit scandal. A parliamentary enquiry had found that officials had knowingly and systematically deprived people who were legitimate claimants. Thousands of people have still not been compensated.

Rutte IV – resigned over fundamental disagreements regarding immigration measures.

Schoof – An unstable coalition from the start: two parties (the Boer Burger Beweging or BBB) and the NSC (Nieuw Sociaal Contract) both new to government and both struggling to get enough credible candidates for their seats. With Wilders of the PVV (Partij voor de Vrijheid) who’d walked out of an earlier coalition government. Seen as a ‘bunch of amateurs bickering amongst themselves.’

Not tackling the crucial issues

The Hague is a long way from the northern province of Groningen where thousands of people have been waiting for over a decade for compensation. (The subsidence caused to properties caused by fracking. Another parliamentary enquiry.) Just an example.

This time I’m a floating voter. So, I’ll go and have another coffee, inspect that grey form a little closer!

Mine

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It’s my pleasure to introduce our May guest poet Jane McKie. We met many years ago on a writing workshop and are still part of an email group. You can find her biography at the end of this post. Cinnamon Press recently published her new poems and I’ve chosen some poems from Mine: vivid, clear embodied images with marvellous economy.

Mine

On nights when the wind drops, I hear it crooning softly,
not like a real bomb. A toothless, barnacled silhouette, wittering
to itself when the tide is low. My friends and I sometimes get close,
daring each other to nudge its rust. But what happens when
the music cuts out? Tonight, the mine’s a mute companion:
whiff of brine, cryptic fist. As my eyelids close, that’s when it—

Kevlar


I am the tattoo of a spider’s web
on a sixteen-year-old girl’s calf.
Traced from a drawing of a photo,
in time, I will thread up her thigh,
over her whole torso, in a riot of
silk that is stronger than Kevlar.

She will wear me like armour:
my vest of ink, her toughest skin.
Who wouldn’t fear a woman
fluent in the language of spiders?
Those twitches in cobwebs
that throb like old wounds.

Dreaming in an age of austerity


Not a single one finished: all mark time
until a rich developer completes the job.
Here, stone knuckles. There, exposed metal rods
stab at the sky like a mech-monster’s fingers.

Not vital or hungry, these resort Titans.
But not quite dead either. Gulls like to roost
in the pockets of them. Gulls dabble bills in
puddles that form from the absence of roofs.

Even small children play in the undead bodies
of imagined buildings, sneaking past tape
to be mummies and daddies in beautiful houses
that shelter insatiable, suckling doll-babies.

Polished malachite


on my desk, riven
with almost-blue, a pool
or algal cistern.

I touch it when I’m sad
and its green eye blinks, rippling
with souterrain light.

Biography


Jane McKie is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. She has written several poetry collections, including Morocco Rococo (2007), Kitsune (2015), and Quiet Woman, Stay (2020) with Cinnamon. Her most recent full collection is Carnation Lily Lily Rose (Blue Diode, 2023). She lives in Scotland, but was originally from the Sussex coast, which inspired several poems in Mine.

Dimmet

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It is a pleasure to introduce our February guest poet Rob Miles. I do not know Rob personally: we have been Facebook friends for some time. I bought a copy of his recent collection Dimmet which was published by Broken Sleep Books. See below the poems for Rob’s biography.

The glorious cover image of a murmuration was designed by Aaron Kent. Dimmet is a West Country word for dusk, twilight. Katherine Towers notes of the collection: ‘These are poems of great precision and delicacy’. I’ve chosen four poems which demonstrate these qualities.

Dimmet

His hands still bronzed, still
baling-raw. His voice
no longer snared, whisper-low
as decades ago, in this same field, he guided me

to not disturb that horse; circling
quietly, its half-scattered straw
an ingot melting, and my thin flames no match
for such a sunset anyway.

*

On this, another near-to-night, it’s clear
that he has no more kept his mind
from wayward sparks than I
have closed my eyes

before any fading fire, ever since recalled
a slow white shadow
steady on its dial
in the always almost dark.

Café Poem

Just when I think there is nothing
so boring

as someone else’s childhood
a toddler

in dungarees is guided
around our table

by his puppeteer parent, arms
up, in a vertical sky-dive, or

like a drunk, when walking
is more about not falling

every step forward
rewarded with a double high five.

I whispered to the dog

that she’d been a winner
a Crufts champion
 
at least twice. Once
she saw off a Dobermann, burglars, a werewolf
 
even the odd Sasquatch.
I reminded her

as her old eyes darkened     
that she had saved lives.

Making Way

A keeper, you said of the house, but I’d sensed everything
trying to make its way: those errant velvet fingers
from your orchid pots; the oak
putting on its chain mail of ivy and moss
and losing; the birds we fed still pinned
to their shadows; crisp wasps
electrocuted by views
through grubby double glazing, and you
just weeks before, showing your wrists
as if uncuffed, asking for my thoughts on a fragrance.

Biography

Rob Miles is from South Devon, and he lives in Leeds where he is Fellow in Film Studies in the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures at The University of Leeds. His poetry has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, recently in Stand, New Welsh Review, The Scores, Spelt, 14 Magazine, Ink Sweat and Tears, One Hand Clapping, Poetry Wales, and four Candlestick Press pamphlets. He has won various awards including the Philip Larkin Prize, judged by Don Paterson, the Resurgence International Ecopoetry Prize, judged by Jo Shapcott and Imtiaz Dharker, and the Poets & Players Prize, judged by Sinéad Morrissey.

Lucy Newlyn describes Dimmet as ‘the best collection of contemporary poetry I have read in a long while’, and John Glenday writes: ‘When it’s done as well as this, there’s nowhere on earth poetry can’t go.’

Filling the well, stocking the pond…

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It’s been a long time since I’ve been out to fill that well. I’ve had health issues and sat at home with the black dog. The exhibition of Joan Miró’s sculptures at Beelden aan Zee is almost closing. On a cold and sunny Tuesday, I got two trams to Scheveningen.

Pair of lovers playing with almond blossom

Beelden aan Zee is the only Dutch museum specialising in sculpture and it’s in a great setting. The authorities in The Hague insisted that the building should not be visible, so it’s hidden inside a dune, and it is mostly underground. From the terrace you can only see the sea, not the busy boulevard. All the materials have a sandy colour. Through plenty of glass in the roof there is a lot of light.

In his studios by the sea in Mont-roig del Camp and on Mallorca, Miró’s love for sculpture was given a huge boost. The (natural) objects he found on his walks were incorporated into sculptures and assemblages, along with everyday objects. The giant clothes peg (painted synthetic resin) was a design for a prestigious project in Central Park, New York. It would have been at least 14 metres high, though it was never realised.

You can see the objects in this bronze sculpture: a paint tube, plastic bottle, spoon. Miró’s bronze sculptures were created using plastic models that he continued to shape until he found them good enough to cast.

The sculpture Monsieur et madame (Sir and Madam) is made of painted bronze. Two different objects form a couple. A square, red-painted stool stands for the man. On top of it is a rectangular white box with a face on it. The round, black stool represents the woman. It has a yellow egg on it. A playful, archetypical representation of masculinity and femininity.

The Monument is the first sculpture as you enter the main hall. You can see some of the light coming through the roof.

It was hugely inspiring to see how Miró continued to innovate and be curious well into his 70s and 80s.

Sleight of Mind

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Image via Pixabay, courtesy Gregory Delaunay

It is a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet David Bingham. We first met many years ago through the British Haiku Society. David was President of the Society from 2020-2022, and in 2020 he was the winner of the British Haiku Society International Haibun Prize. His poetry appears regularly in a wide variety of magazines. See below for further details.

The haiku have all been previously published: in Presence, Blithe Spirit, or Time Haiku. The tanka first appeared in Blithe Spirit and the BHS Tanka Anthology 2022, while the haibun was the winner of the British Haiku Society International Ken and Noragh Jones Haibun Award, 2017. I hope you enjoy the selection.

Haiku

a lifetime
overcoming gravity –
still it gets me down

Private Keep Out
molehills on both sides
of the fence

clear night sky –
lights from both the living
and the dead

away
in the wind …
the word-filled air

is there a word for it?
the sound swans make
when they fly

late spring meadow…
within the yellow
the blue of summer

storming
the old hill fort – bluebells  
and celandine

inland sea
the wash from our boat
moves the border

stream through sunlight through stream

closing over
trails in algae where
the ducks have been

I turn
to call the dog …
then remember

Euston Station –
my skin ripples
in the hand drier

an apology…
the predictive text writes
it for me

Tanka

sun shine
and motorway spray –
I drive through
rainbows
to be with you

silently together
after all that talk
watching swallows
hawk for flies over
the meadow

on waking
I turn my dreams
inside out
letting the seams show
for the rest of the day

doors left
wide open revealing
an unlit space
nothing here to steal
but the darkness

Haibun

Sleight of Mind 
 
Some people need to know how he pulls the shining light bulbs from his mouth, levitates above the stage or escapes from a straightjacket.
 
Me, I like the mystery of it; the explanations are always so mundane. True magic lies in the imagination. Switching off the rational mind. Letting yourself go and trusting the conjuror.
 
I do it with words. Like how I brought you here. Even if you asked me, I couldn’t tell you how it’s done.
 
snowdrops …
mistaking ‘what is’
for ‘what isn’t’
 

 
Biography

David Bingham’s debut poetry collection The Chatter of Crows was published by Offa’s Press in October 2014 and in 2020 he was the winner of the British Haiku Society International Haibun Prize.

His poetry appears regularly in a wide variety of magazines, including Blithe Spirit, Time Haiku and Presence and in anthologies, including: the Wenlock Poetry Festival anthologies for 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016; Beyond Words, 2018 and where silence becomes song, 2019, the International Haiku Conference Anthology, published by the British Haiku Society; In the Sticks, 2021 and Away with the Birds, published by Offa’s Press; In Snow and Rain, 2022, an anthology of tanka published by the British Haiku Society; and Festival in a Book, published by the Wenlock Poetry Festival, 2023.

At different times, he was editor of both Borderlines and Blithe Spirit magazines and joint editor of the haiku and related genres anthologies Ripening Cherries, published by Offa’s Press, 2019 and Shining Wind published by the British Haiku Society, 2024.

He has read his work in arts centres, pubs, theatres, on local radio and poetry and literature festivals. He has read at City Voices in Wolverhampton, Country Voices in Shropshire and as a member of Green Wood Haiku at the BHS International Haiku Conference in St Albans in June 2019.
 
As part of the humorous poetry double act, Bingham and Woodall, he has performed at the Wolverhampton Lit Fest and Comedy Festivals in 2017 and 2018, and at the Ironbridge Festival in 2019.

 


 

Still Life with Octopus

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Photo credit: Grace Gelder

It is a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Tania Hershman. I met Tania a few years ago when I attended a series of workshops she gave on flash fiction. She is a generous, inspiring tutor. I have chosen four different poems from her new collection.

Tania Hershman’s second poetry collection, Still Life with Octopus, was published by Nine Arches Press in July 2022, and her debut novel, Go On, a hybrid “fictional-memoir-in-collage” will be published by Broken Sleep Books on 17 November 2022. Her poetry pamphlet, How High Did She Fly, was joint winner of Live Canon’s 2019 Poetry Pamphlet Competition and her hybrid particle-physics-inspired book ‘and what if we were all allowed to disappear’ was published by Guillemot Press in March 2020.

Tania is also the author of a poetry collection, a poetry chapbook and three short story collections, and co-author of Writing Short Stories: A Writers’ & Artists’ Companion (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is co-creator of the @OnThisDayShe Twitter account, co-author of the On This Day She book (John Blake, 2021), and has a PhD in creative writing inspired by particle physics. As writer-in-residence for Arvon for Autumn 22-Winter 23, Tania has curated a programme of readings, workshops and talks, both online and in person. Find out more at http://www.taniahershman.com

Still Life With Octopus (II)

I only asked her once to climb inside a jar for me. (Before we met, I’d watched all the videos of those experiments.) She sighed but did it, said I could screw the lid, released herself easily. You could become any shape you want, I said. She said nothing. One arm sent itself out to switch the kettle on. While she made us tea, I put the jar back in the cupboard, feeling that slight ache from too much sitting in my hip bones, my lower back, where fixed part meets fixed part of me.

Standardized Patient*

Today I am your
lower back pain. Listen,
I have all the details, will
not veer

from the script. Tomorrow
I will be your cancer
of the kidneys. Next week,

I may be your
one-legged skier (I know,
I know). Whose pain
is this?

*Standardized patient simulation lets medical students practice on people trained to play patients.

And then God

sends someone else’s
Jewish grandmother
to stop me

with a question about birds
I can’t answer. She says – as if
this is her river – I’ve never

seen you here before,
then presses for my
exact address. Instead

of the usual, Such a nice
girl, no husband?, she asks,
No dog? I don’t know why

I tell her then
that I’m a poet, but
the gleam in her eyes

warns me this
is the point
to leave, the unasked

dancing on the path
between us: Will you
make a poem out of me?

Middle of the Night

Night asks me
to wake up. What?
I say. Night whispers
darkly, something
about cats coming in
and out, a baby five
doors down. You
want company? I ask.
Night nods. I get up

and we make tea. Too
early, the cat mutters
as we pass. Night
and I get back
into bed. I’m fine
now, Night says.

Cover design: Ben Rothery

Note: Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life (William Collins, 2017).

Speak to the Earth – poem

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I am delighted to introduce this month’s poet: Jean Stevens. We have met several times over the last two years on writing workshops – all on Zoom.

Jean Stevens’ poems have been widely published in magazines and newspapers and broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4. She is a past winner of Leeds Libraries Writing Prize and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2020. Her most recent poetry collections are Speak to the Earth (Naked Eye 2019) and Nothing But Words (Naked Eye 2020). Her forthcoming collection Always Too Many Miles will be published in 1922, also by Naked Eye.


Jean has worked as a professional actress and dramatist and her stand-up comedy script won the Polo Prize at London’s Comedy Store.


The collection Speak to the Earth is in five sections and I have chosen one poem from each.


Night safari

At the Singapore Night Safari, animals roam freely in moonlight
in environments replicating their lives in the wild. Visitors and animals
are separated only by the slimmest of man-made divides.

I walked the rainforest’s moonlit trail
and found myself among leopards.

They were lean, honed by hunting
and hunger and, as flesh and muscle
ebbed and flowed, I saw
down to the beat of blood
and the almost liquid bone.

Their skin was a print of their own
dark paws walking on sand,
their flanks were brandy and treacle,
brown ale held to the light.

I knelt by the narrow divide
and a leopard lay opposite,
mirrored light in his midnight eyes.

He didn’t blink and I was held
till he stretched and showed his claws.
I turned to the man who stood next to me.
We’re nothing he said.

Hefted
Hefted : accustomed and attached to an area of upland pasture.

It’s cloistered in the depths of the valley
inside this old house, where cellos
have left echoes in the stone,
poets’ words are carved in the beams,
and the bones of cattle lie under slate

but one day I will follow the hefted sheep
out of here through clear northern light
to climb the far hills and beyond to where
there are no buildings, no roads, no noise
except the battering of the wind.

Drama school

Drama schools are fond of sending students
to the zoo to study the behaviour of beasts.
It’s what people laugh at when they speak about
the ‘luvvies’: be a cat, be a dog, be a bloody giraffe.

But look, Lear’s on his knees and clawing Cordelia.
His hands are paws and he’s mauling her body
round the stage, frantic to revive her.

He’s done the mad scene in the storm
railed against every roof
cried: Never, never, never, never, never.

Now he makes us see what we all are
at heart: animals learning to grieve.

Gagudju man
Remembering Bill Neidjie (‘I’m telling you this while you’ve got time’)

This was the man who shared
the long-held secrets of his world.
I met him in Alice Springs, sat with him
in the aboriginal silence, knowing
his closeness to every living thing.

He felt trees in his body,
their trunks and leaves pumping water
as human hearts pump blood,
thought that no matter what kind –
kangaroo, eagle, echidna –
animals pulse in our flesh,

said, if you harm what is sacred,
you might get a cyclone or flood,
or kill someone in another place,
told us we must hang on to the land,
the trees, the soil, because of the day
when we become the earth.

Waking

I wake to bed linen strewn
around like manic laundry
and can’t get out of my head
the creatures I dreamt of
who eat only fruit and leaves

and gaze at the beings
who hack down trees, ravage
land, sea and air, blast their kind
off the earth, and bring silence,
the silence of the animals.

On my way to meet the morning
I’m desperate to hear the bleating
of sheep, the trill of blackbirds,
a dog barking after a stick,
but nothing moves, nothing speaks.

Animals in Lockdown – poem

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I am pleased to introduce this month’s guest poet: Judi Sutherland. We met as poets on Facebook a few years ago and I attended a recent online event where she read her poems.

Judi Sutherland has lived and worked all over England and is now based in North County Dublin, Ireland. She writes about the natural world, about home, place and belonging, and things she reads on the internet. She obtained an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2012 and was awarded the Margaret Hewson Prize.

Her first pamphlet The Ship Owner’s House was published in 2018 by Vane Women Press (available here: The Ship Owner’s House by Judi Sutherland – The Poetry Book Society) and focuses on north south contrasts, specifically Oxfordshire and County Durham. Vane Women Press is a writing, performing and publishing collective based in the North East of England. It was formed in 1991.

A recent booklet Animals in Lockdown was published as a hand-made edition by Kazvina (Karen Little). Copies can be obtained from kazvina@yahoo.es, and proceeds go to Happy Tails Halfway Home animal rescue.

Here is my selection: the booklet’s title poem and three poems from The Ship Owner’s House.

The Animals in Lockdown


The mountain goats have noticed something’s wrong.
Their anxious hooves trot into town
tap-tapping on our tarmac. They’ve come to browse
verges and hedges, keeping down


the wildness, which they know distresses us.
In clearwater harbours, dolphins nose
the prows of empty boats drifting at anchor.
Songbirds note the silence in the air.


A fox sniffs for contagion, scenting only spring,
he knows we’ve gone to earth. He has
mixed feelings about this. The dogs
who shepherd us on our permitted walks


leave smell-messages for each other, asking
‘Lads, what’s going on?’ And here at home,
my cat tucks me into bed each night, checking that I’m safe.
All through the night, she listens for my breathing.

Looking for Kites


I went over to Kinninvie
because I had heard you were there.
I took the straight, whitelined road
that wagtails across the fells.
There were sheep, carpet-backed, in a row
ripping grass, and mottled cattle,
cream and brown like chocolate truffles
tilting their long horns at the sky.
A hawk held steady over a whin bush
and I thought I saw you eddy into the wind
over a broad, shouldering field.
When I turned homewards, the valley
was bright with gorse and rapeseed flowers
and sunshine flooded the far slopes
with summer.

Epigenetics

Certain fears can be inherited through the generations, a provocative study of mice reports. The authors suggest that a similar phenomenon could influence anxiety and addiction in humans.
http://www.nature.com/news/fearful-memories-haunt-mouse-descendants-1.14272

And what scented his fear was this:
the fleet chill of clear air rushing,
the flap of canvas, the propeller’s
halting stutter. Hanging suspended
between sky and Crete, and the silver-drab
of olive trees reaching up to meet him.
I still dream that flight and plunge,
the terror and the black; feel the dull
indentation of the skull, the buzz of metal plates
beneath my scalp. I’m always writing Icarus;
afraid to fall, finding life vertiginous.
He very nearly died. I very nearly remember.

Relocation


So, the place I thought was home turned out to be
somewhere we were passing through, and we
have traded all the grey, red, cream of flint,
brick, render, for this buttered stone;
beechwoods for bare hills, accents clipped like lawns
for vowels as broad as fells. The green-spined lane
became a hard grey road, the kites are hawks,
and the placid boating river is a rocky fall
past a castle keep. Life pitches our tent
in a different portion of the desert. We make it ours.
I can no longer tell you where my heart is.

World Animal Day

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Photo credit: Artcats via Pixabay


World Animal Day was started in 1925. I was looking for an animal poem in my file. Looking back on this experience, we might question the animal welfare aspect. The horse seemed happy enough at the time.

Circus

The Arabian thoroughbred
and his blue-blood spinster
lodged with a middle-aged couple
living in the Dutch bible belt.

My parents despatched
my younger brother and me
that summer to acquire
circus skills in two weeks.

Each morning a child took
turns standing on the horse
as it walked round the ring
inside the stuffy canvas tent.

In the afternoons we swam
in the local pool, tried to get
the couple’s fat ponies to obey.
There were prayers, a lot of eggs.

By the end of the holiday we
balanced, arms outstretched,
on the trotting horse. We swung
off and on as it cantered.

The Nettlebed – guest poet

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Matthew Paul June 2020 (002)

 

I feel that I have known this month’s poet for many years. But, I don’t think we have ever met. Like me, Matthew Paul has been a participant on The Poetry Business Writing School. We both had work published in an excellent haiku journal. I very much enjoy his blog posts and am pleased that I can introduce you to his work: grounded in actual place and rich in vivid detail.

Matthew was born in New Malden, Surrey, in 1966, has worked for 30 years as an education officer for local authorities in south-west London, and lives in Thames Ditton. Matthew’s first collection, The Evening Entertainment, was published by Eyewear Publishing in 2017.

He is also the author of two collections of haiku – The Regulars (2006) and The Lammas Lands (2015) – and co-writer/editor (with John Barlow) of Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku (2008), all published by Snapshot Press. He co-edited Presence haiku journal, and has contributed to the Guardian’s ‘Country Diary’ column.

 
THE TOXTON TORCHERS

Still their identities are secret. Let’s call them Gary and Glyn,
names which are popular then, at the Sixties’ fag-end.
This nit-locked pair of toe-rags, seeking alms box and plate,
enter St Joe’s via its sacristy, find nothing of value
and burn down the sanctuary like proper East End heavies.

They’re not discerning: any place of worship will do-
in the next few weeks, Our Lady Star of the Sea, St Anne’s,
the Kingdom Hall and the new St Margaret’s all go up in flames.
It’s when they smash collection boxes in All Souls that it ends:
old Reverend Carew and his nimble curate get straight on the blower
to the Law, who tip up in Black Marias at Z-Cars speed.

Gary blames it all on gormless Glyn. Brought before the Bench,
their eyes light up like matches as they detail every deed:
how in the new church they hadn’t the heart to torch the tapestries
as so much effort had been put into them, most by Gary’s nan.

 
THE KITCHEN GARDEN

On Capability Brown’s last visit
to this well-temperèd chalkland estate,
he plumped for action instead of advice:
training espaliers of local pears,

which would otherwise have become extinct,
against ev’ry venerable wall of brick—
‘for market opportunities’, he said,
and focused eyes on an artichoke head

whose outer bracts formed interlaced patterns
around the heart’s delirious embrace,
aubergine-veined chroma of grey–jade green.
He claimed it resembled ‘a scarecrow’s brain’.

Unaccountably, he bricked up the arch,
to dead-end our last remaining path;
so now unscalable walls enclose us,
in God’s own country’s Hortus conclusus.
(Both from The Evening Entertainment)

 

TEE (002)

 

THE NETTLEBED

One September afternoon in August, a water vole
beavers through reeds. I feel the slap
of rain on my father’s umbrella. Mercy
and I compare families: I can’t compete
with her memory of travelling,
as one of five kids, with her moody
half-sister in the boot of their dad’s Datsun Bluebird,
without a torch. The teasel-lined tributary disappears,
reappears. Moorhen chicks stumble off lily pads,
to spatter at pace upstream, their parents
flicking tail feathers and squeaking alarm.

We reach beyond toddler-high nettles and burdock—
seedheads packed like the yellowest sunflowers—
to pluck the last few blackberries, sugaring
from ruby to plum. Mercy says the wide outdoors
keeps her well; that nothing else,
neither booze nor love in any of its myriad forms,
quite does the job. We sit on a log to wait and watch.

The moorhens tiptoe over stepping stones fording
back-water channels, to vanish like mumbled
anecdotes. I shake the rain from the brolly
into the river. Day’s end brightens
as an afterthought muttered out loud; becomes
a crumbling hurrah of loneliness. Dusk
spotlights parakeets sidling, like circus budgies,
along the railing of a tower-block balcony.
We realise, then, our arms are stung to fuck.

(Previously published, in a different form, in Fire.)

 

PLOUGH POND

Tiptoeing through them to the Co-op
would be impossible, this ragtag army

of marsh frogs. They block the alley
from our cul-de-sac’s cul, pairing up

to belly down within the water’s grease:
tansy eyes, camouflage-trousered legs

and lime-striped backs, clamped
in the fumble of joyful amplexus.

(Published in Poetry Salzburg Review 34, summer 2019)