So many shades of green, with brown and ochre in between, and flowers sewing up the edges with wild brambles and tidy hedges. I often long for higher hills, a mountain would be better still, but this flat landscape stretches wide, and touches an enormous sky on a horizon laced by wind-sculpted trees that dips […]
Category: Poems
A poem to sum up my feelings in this post.
Smiling in the Sun
Early afternoon sun dapples the half-raised window blind, the part of my desk where the computer mouse sits on its mat, and my cold cranberry tea, ruby red and sparkling. Outside, crimson-berried honeysuckle and wilted orange lilies, wrinkled and raggedy, dance on the breeze, and a butterfly flutters by, tempted by potato plants and courgette […]
In the Frame
On this August day, the breeze ripples green leaves in the quince, plum and willow trees, buffeting an army of tall stinging nettles. Inside the shed, greyed by weather and age, the brambles are uprising, sharp-thorned and striving to escape; they’ve broken a window and are prising the door from its frame. A white plastic […]
Strange Weekend
Saturday was my first outing, all masked up and nowhere to go but the supermarket, strolling with my basket, calm and clean, with civilised social distancing in wide aisles, touching the inhaler in my pocket, no panic, no fear, husband always near. The Sunday walk was leisurely, a lot of heat but a little breezy, […]
On the anniversary of your death
Only a few days away, and nine years on, I recall the luminous hope that opened like a flower in my heart, when you opened your eyes. Death had not got its way. You perched on the windowsill of life, not yet ready to spread your wings, still tethered by earthly things. Hope was still […]
Brent Geese in Autumn
By mid-October, large flocks of dark-bellied geese grate and grumble across grey sky, ticking clouds with wings. They descend on the estuary and spend all winter pecking at eel grass and remains of corn. Their noisy nasal honks pierce autumn twilight like a foghorn, belying the beauty of their flight and the delicate embroidery of […]
Avalon
If only I could float through the mists of time in Morgana’s enchanted boat, to the island of the apples, that fertile fortunate isle that is leaf and sunlight dappled: the place where Excalibur was made and Arthur was laid to rest, with nine queens to watch over him. I imagine how I’d find the […]
Poetichor
The scent of a poem can drive me to distraction, like spores from a page of mildewed putrefaction, accumulated fluff and dust from under the bed, or the grey and blue mould on a slice of old bread; sometimes it’s cherry blossom dancing in trees, an explosion of honeysuckle on a summer breeze, a meadow […]
A Reply to Mother Earth
They read the wildfires, listened to the songs of floods, tornadoes and whales, conversed with owl and eagle, howled with wolves at the full moon. But they ignored them, too attached to throwaway gratification, the centres of their own worlds, to care about the real world. It took a whisper, the gasp of a pandemic, […]
Comfort in Cookies
We stood by a field, watched waves of leafy greenness rolling, wind-blown and whispering, born from earth and sky. We stood and breathed the scent of stiff-stalked oats flourishing and bearing flavoursome, nourishing crisp-cased seeds. I held your hand on that summer walk, a slightly calloused hand normally used to work, sometimes to cook and […]
writing in north norfolk 