As the whole town picked sugar beets,
their breath hugged
furrows in pre-dawn darkness.

a line of hanging hooks
bent us into the dining hall
where we ate like birds

He reads aloud about visiting the Underworld in dreams,
seeing his dead again. Through the big window behind him
there’s a flowerbed and some long grass

      Magic Pennies My dad was a magician. He could make a penny disappear with a twist of his wrist just vanish in thin air to pluck it later from your ear or nose. People laughed when dad did that. He’d put a matchstick in the centre of a clean white...

A key on a short string unlocks
a metal door to an unlit stair, steep
wooden steps, a turn at the top

      Grandfather/Grandson A hot, dry day in an already arid season. I stumble through stands of age-misshapen oaks, leaves blistering brown as they beckon me into the shade. From time to time, I glimpse a clearing to one side of the path, or a view...

Having earned their wings through evolution
it is almost as though they are loth to use them
preferring familiar earth, the old tree’s broad shadow.

 
So, what has brought you in today Mrs…?
Owens. Mrs Owens.

When the light returns

I will remind the garden.

Along with the robins

who have cast off

their Christmas card coyness

to mate.