The Twelfth Day of Christmas

WinterPolish is spoken here and mountains have appeared behind the closed down meat pie factory.  Bears roll their snouts like drunks,lumber down the mountains, lick sticky locked-up gates, globules of gristle stuck in rusted padlocks.  All of us, bears,...

The Eleventh Day of Christmas

A Bus Shelter Near HereAusterity carol made from bits of carols and songsHere people don’t even know what a chav is. Everyone is a chav.There are no posh folk. Unemployment is rife.  ChavTowns website.Once inAway inIn the bleakIn a shelter mean andColdNeighbours’...

The Ninth Day of Christmas

The Bastle HouseEmma looks at the moorland as faces fly by. The alpacas are in the middle of the field. She watches as they drift back, their bodies leaving slanted shadows on the white land under yellow sky. The westerly wind drifts down off the moorland and across...

The Eighth Day of Christmas

JanusIt takes real skill to look both ways.Notice how I keep an eye on yesterdaywhilst deftly skipping over todayonto the thin ice of tomorrow.I know thresholds, those small eventsthat happen between here and there.A small movement and things become,or end, or twist...

The Seventh Day of Christmas

The Goose Moon What are we doing above the poor sea?Do we dream this bridge of windwill reach the sour pines of Europe?Why bother pouring such weatherunder the goose moon. Why bring this denying wing downfrom all the worst clocks of the nightto reach no eye, no ear,...

The Sixth Day of Christmas

Yule TideThe sky burns trotter pink, bladder blue, a skein of golden chicken skinspulled taut by giant needles.Up on the hill the grass grows as white as my hair, cold fistful and clumped. I stalk alone, muttering.Ancient witches cartwheel in energetic fury along the...