Sounding Out Spring

Vowels ploughed into other: opened ground.The mildest February for twenty yearsIs mist bands over furrows, a deep no soundVulnerable to distant gargling tractors. Seamus Heaney In the north, the Ploughis ridden by the moonand frost continuesto clench the earth.Early morning walkingwakens words,enlivens lines from puffsof frozen breath,vowels ploughed into other: opened ground. Punctuated by stoneand root, […]

Humming into the Wind

Through sullen branches of ancestry, a deadened wind soughs a song of loss. Straggling souls skim the trees in skeins towards an ancient rookery to caw themselves to sleep. They echo through insomnolent dreams, but silvered by moonlit poetry I hum against the windy wings, through a mouthful of mouldering leaves, and the succubi of […]