She always knew the little dark-haired, brown-eyed child was her mother’s secret. She’d kept the outings in a stranger’s car, ice creams at the airport and seaside trips close to her chest, being only five or six, and loving mystery. When the baby arrived, nobody said a word. There were whispers behind closed doors. The […]
Category: Poems
A Welcome Pause after December Rain
At the window, I watch a sparrow strip berries from the hedgerow. The magpie has ceased its chatter, contemplating things that matter before giving its opinions on the day. And now the sparrow has flown away. Except for a cat that gently purrs, I sit here at my desk alone, my fingers chilled to the […]
Queen of Winter
Cailleach, the Celtic winter queen, atop the Cliffs of Moher, her domain the time from Samhainn to Bealltainn, strikes the ground with her frosty staff, freezing the tops of hill and mountain. From her creel drop curious stones carved with magic, the ancient bones of her husbands and her many children, promises of fertile field […]
Wonderful Alien
Wide-eyed and full of wonder, you hold my hand and guide me through your world. I can only blunder, an ancient alien who has lived here too long to appreciate a single leaf, a muddy pebble or the sun on water. Now I have your eyes to discover the beautiful among the fearful, forget for […]
Embraced by the Woods
The moment boots imprinted soil, the scent of bark and undergrowth embraced us. We brushed past rusty ferns and sodden grass, and acres of trees exhaled into fragments of sky and cloud, a sigh that hugged our lungs and filled them with a woody song. Pinecones on the path, like Hansel and Gretel crumbs, paved […]
Breaking the Silence of January
After the revelry of Christmas and New Year, the silence of January is solid as a block of ice, occasionally melting into shifting swathes of mist grey as wood pigeons and musty house mice. No gentle coo, whistle or twitter of birds, the day is mute; no body warmth or human words until the fire’s […]
Enigma
We need iron in our blood to carry oxygen from lungs to cells, and yet iron left in damp air will rust and its shiny grey will crust with red. The earth is rich and hard with iron, mined for making steel, its solidity tempered and twisted into buildings, pylons and bridges, and its smoothness […]
Grey
January is the month of grey nuances, banks of cloud rarely broken by sun dances, mornings when light creeps slowly in a shadowy wrangle with the unholy darkness of a moonless, starless night. The light of grey is never bright, but in a corner of the charcoal grey a flash of snowdrops greets the new […]
From the Young Poet to the Old
As my early summer sun sizzles into evening, on the other side of a mountain of poetry, winter chill has frozen your fingers to your pen or your keyboard, poems petrify in your head and there’s no escape. My season has begun to flow while yours has ebbed and, although the beach is empty of […]
On the Brink
In these final fading days, we are still entangled in the tattered threads of the old year, teetering on the brink while clinging to our hopes and fears. We take them with us as we lurch into the future, where we build our nests anew, weaving old threads with new, ready to sing our spring […]
writing in north norfolk 