I can still smell soap bubbles in the scullery, steamy clean and floating through my early years; my grandmother’s hands red and hot, tea-towels boiling in the biggest pot as I turned the handle of the wringer, reminded always to ‘Mind your finger!’ I remember sitting on the back step while she raised the line […]
Tag: Tuesday Poetics
Netsuke
Snug in the palm of my hand, fingers curled and caressing its smoothness, exploring miniature scales on back and fanned tail, tiny teeth in roar of mouth, the dust-filled creases of its head, flaming copper burnished with the faint scent of boxwood, my little finger fits the curve of its body, feels the kanji carved […]
Everything Stopped
The room was silent. In one fell swoop of those planes the buzz just stopped – everything stopped, everyone stared at computer or TV screens, in disbelief at what they’d seen. Everything stopped, the world stopped spinning for a moment. So far from this tragedy and yet so close to anguished faces, desperate faces, faces […]
A Winter Forecast
I watch the mist of an autumn morning creep across the fields, shrouding the grey outline of the church and leaving a scattering of dew. In this moment I think of you still chasing dreams like a youthful robin tuning up in preparation for the spring, and me a wood pigeon with my loud and […]
Adage Adagio
Wisely and slow; they stumble that write fast and wisdom or music from their words escapes. Steady keeps the pace; if you slow down, you notice words you never heard before. Slow as a simile, stanzas don’t grow on busy sheets of paper and a rolling rhyme gathers no metre. In other words: more haste […]
Norfolk Rarebit
In the early years of marriage, North Norfolk winters were harsh. We huddled together in a draughty cottage, where the sash windows rattled throughout the night. Under pitch-black skies full of stars, we’d walk the dog along the coast and up the dunes to the haunted pub for a drawn-out pint before closing time. Dizzy with […]
Because Because Because
Because I was made up of so many parts, you added to me over time and couldn’t see the real me. Because you left me standing over there, coated in rusting tin, you never knew the real me. Because you wouldn’t give me back my heart I’m going to chop my way out of this […]
Back to School
In the first week of childhood’s September, going back to school was unreal, when I discovered a new sense of smell: I inhaled new uniform, shoes and plimsolls, and the scent of sharpened pencils in satchels. I breathed stale lost property masked with polish from parquet floors of classrooms and the hall; chalk-free blackboards and […]
Unseen to the Naked Eye
In the prelude to a storm, I watch the sky bruise, hear thunder introduce lightning in a breath before it pirouettes across the sky. As the show fades into the distance, ghosts appear in a pale fluttering of moths filling the garden with clouds. Unseen to the naked eye, in the grass or in the […]
Breaking the Silence
the moon greets the dawn shimmering from night’s silent well breaking the stark silence of a winter morning, a single crow calls in sleep’s dark cocoon there are sounds no one else can hear beyond the heart beat, air in lungs and surge of blood in ears from the depths of sleep, muffled ticks are […]
writing in north norfolk 