By a river’s boulder-strewn gravelly bed,haiku unfurl in a meadow flecked with dandelions and cowslips. A sonnetfinds a foothold on a face of rock and in fine fissures ballads grow.We smell them in clods of earththat tumble crumbly from the plough;hear them in the songs of birds,trickle of streams and ocean’s roar;taste them in a […]
Tag: earthweal
My Garden Sanctuary
There is nothing neat about it;briars and nettles aboundso thick you use your feet to find some solid ground. It’s a wild jungle for cats and a leafy forest for deer, a green sanctuary. That’swhere I disappear, where poetry is the spin-drift of the green dream, the loose change in the pocket of time; the […]
Tir na Nog
We set up camp on the island, with fires and poteen to warmour skin and the cocklesof our hearts. We danced to the rhythm of the bodhran, sang along to guitars and fiddles,and the rise and fall of uillean pipes’ plaintive songs. The faeries all but laughed at our night-befores and morning-afters, lingering headache hangoversof […]
Holding up the Sky
They fill the earth with seeds and song,their bones and wings need to be strongto bear the responsibility of holding up the sky. They flock above the farmer’s plough,they watch us as we plant and sow,from their aspect up on highwhile they are holding up the sky. The smallest hummingbirds and wrensmake us smile, and […]
Earth Singing
Thousands of years of spinningmake me dizzy, and yet I see more clearly than I did before, despite the salty tears brimmingnot with creatures of the seabut plastic-coated. Scale and claw are permanently swimmingin pollution. Furthermore,I want to be relieved from the constant diggingat my flesh and bone, the chainsawsthat destroy my ancient trees, cause […]
Beltane Blues
Between the trees, the sky has fallen through;it has been conjured into nodding bells,Beltane’s all-knowing fairy traps of truth. It’s a Beltane pool, a soft echo of blueto dive into, a deep enchanted wellbetween trees, where the sky has fallen through. In among the trees the magic grewa shivering, shimmering wood of spellshidden in Beltane’s […]
Weathering the Fantasies
Fantasies make their own body heat; warm air under their fluffed feathersprotects them from all kinds of weather,and it’s a cosy place to tuck their beaks. A build-up of fat under the epidermis is like fantastic thermal underwear; they can sit out long Antarctic winters or soar above the Himalayas. You might think that fantasies’ […]
Throw Away Planet
We dream of fishing for stars in the oceanbut, in the cold light of day,there are more micro-plastics in the seathan stars in the milky way. Whole constellations and shoals of fishare caught in the rainbow sprayof detritus uncoiling like whales’ intestinesand landing on every beach and bay. Human’s packaging and discarded netsare evils against […]
It’s all Rubbish
I walk along flowering lanes flanked by hawthorn and gorse, and a car roars by at break-neck speed leaving a cloud of exhaust, and in the ditch they’ve chucked a pile of cigarette butts and, even worse, the remains of fast-food breakfast, plastic packaging and a dirty nappy; obviously, the child’s meal with plastic toy didn’t […]
Traces of an Elephant’s Tears (Empathy)
I feel the tears, although there is only a trace now. Just like the baby elephant, alone in the zoo, abandoned with only a memory of the mother it will never forget. And what about the mother’s tears? The tears of the herd? It is not absurd that my maternal instinct rears in despair at […]
writing in north norfolk 