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      A Croc in the Field for Harry Paterson Today’s operative on the ohrwurm shift has hacked the WiFi password in the ear canal and now I’m looping back endlessly to a misheard lyric: “you picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille, with four hundred...

      Poet Dead [after Rilke] Laid down, his upraised face is White – offputting – on a plumped pillow. How life takes the He-Who-Knows And His senses and disallows, Absorbs to the year's disimpetuousness. Saw Him alive did the comparative dunce: me. I...

      Pieces “The all-consuming passion is rarely found more than a recipe for misery,” you read and told me you would see about that and joked “Can two people be engaged who are already married?” But it seems I was right after all. I remember the Dali...

      Watching the woodpecker at 5.30 am He appears like a paper bag blown onto the feeder, punching his beak time and again into the peanuts. The minute he sees me he’s off in bouncing flight. Today, it’s early, and I’m sipping tea in the kitchen. He...

      Pleasing the pwca If you follow faerie lights that wisp where boardwalk becomes trackway, make sure you’re stocked with milk, or bread and salt. Simple gifts to please the pwca. And if you live to tell, you will have been lead through the safe...

      Pink Flame My father stitched an evening with current ripples spill over rocks and shadows gather at the corner, Something sweet he whispered, repeated in present tense, joy he folded with care and never used it. He hung his favourite portrait on...

BIG BLISS i was standing very still my mind on the mundane when a bee hit me smashed right into my chest oh! immediately i got a burst of bush fragrance musk & sweet & slightly eucalypt & delicate & wild sense jumped off the sprocket / turned inside...

    Taxi I took shelter under a tree, where you also sheltered. You looked at me awkwardly, as if to say Excuse me before shaking your feathers – a tiny droplet landed on my cheek. Suspended, we held each other responsible for the silence. We listened to the...

Roses Sad how things expire before you work out what they mean. Like earlier I was noticing the rose petals on the path, all damp and slick, and thinking how I will never be truly happy for a thousand uncontested reasons. But now, things are clearing up. I look at the...

For the Peregrines of Offham Chalk Pit The quarry holds your eyrie like a grateful palm. You - indelicate gobber all gape and gum-pink circled in the beach white like a mouth stuck in wonder. O spit-shrieker coming back for yourself, tearing fur so diligently, never...

Give Me Some Sparkle, and I’ll Pay You What You Ask For The cat puts his paw on my hair, and I think about where we could go if we weren't here. Maybe the nail salon, which seems like a good destination for kill time Saturdays. Except that the proprietor always up...

      Dear Fish, Forgive Me Dear Fish, you swam from life and gave your flesh; forgive me. In your ice-tomb, your scales a rainbow of tiny glaciers, frozen in flight; like you, I let myself get caught, sank my heart in a false sea. Factory-ripe, hooked...

When I Met God for the First Time The God I know works as a baker in a local shop. From time to time, I see him feeding the kittens bread crumbs soaked in milk. He is not as huge as the religious men tell us; his hand is small, a normal size like all of ours. He even...

Rhubarb after Norman MacCaig And another thing: stop looking like embarrassed celery. It doesn’t suit. How can you stand there, glittery in pink, some of you rigid, some all over the shop? Deep down you’re marooned, a sour forest spilling out beneath a harmful canopy....

      Hair Cut (Everything You Know About Me I Grew Myself) You stand behind me / catch my eye / take the snatch of silver / to this softness of hair / and steal me strand by strand. / How did I get to a stage where / a stranger could coax me / with a...