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      Old Age What is not to love when you draw back curtains and taste clouds in their newness and innocence or watch the sky raise its brass trumpet in a call to gratitude. What is not to love about the air on your skin, each breath a new miracle or...

      The Perseids at Bannau Brycheiniog At my feet the window sprawls a view of kneaded land, craggy baked by the hand of the gods, dusted green with short bit grass. A sheep walks by along the grey faded road, pitted with age, worn tired with wear....

      In Memory of Anne It hasn’t been this bright all year – the moon’s white scalp, spot-lit, a head turned away from a thing the rest of us fear: unearthly dark and its stars – the small unfindable glass in a vast unwalkable carpet. Night is where...

      Still Life Though I am not a painter this is to be a portrait of my parents and my sister. You don’t have a sister. This is my mother speaking, someone I did once have. I picture my sister in the middle, Dad shuffling along to make her some space....

      The small press publisher You too I guess have studied the surviving starlings as they swoop and whistle by the snack trailer at Moorfoot glinting for crumbs of flaky pastry like a glimpsed field of dandelions and everything turns holy - you...

      Scavengers I loved the tales Luke told me of starving writers, and the sacrifices they made following their hearts. Philip K Dick eating dog food. Bukowski’s candy bars. A forgotten Fitzgerald writing How are you? postcards to himself in the...

      Aquamarine My compass – its needle set with a sliver of blue stone – spins and spins. Breath mists my snow goggles. I wipe them endlessly. Even in these thick seal-skin mitts my hands are frozen. I have been no place as still as this. As white....

      The long arc I seek justice and you hold a seashell to your ear hear oceans whispering limitless sssshhh history heaps sheering waves shattering across reefs sweeping shallow bays rearing breakers pound shelving beaches scatter shells with...

      Something Missing He cuts. I lie still, teach myself to dream of St David’s Bay, seaweed strewn on incoming tides, surfers slice big waves in half. He butchers with hammer, saw. No nightmares, though he says it’s possible-you could wake in the...

      Being Morandi’s Bottle I pull a dress over my head calm foggy blue linen sleeved in lavender, press frizzed hair between two hot blades. I drag a lipliner across my cupid’s bow like a violinist gliding hair over string hovering on a velvety G. I...

      The sea organ city Vigo in Autumn is still a furnace the nightjars roost on ram-tarmacked roads and hot guapas carrying fish baskets in narrow alleys or chestnut groves leading to the sands listen to me hola gracias and other various offences and...

      Bourn Identity   Begins in a bubble strained by chalk. Where the brim-full hill cries, weeping tracks merge into an idea of brook: Letcombe, until merging with Ock. Earth accommodates to accumulate, hollows between course, force and...

      Watermarked There are places in Wales I don’t go: reservoirs that are the subconscious of a people – R S Thomas Cofiwch Dryweryn, that two-word protest, white on blood-red background, landscaped in green, mural on a ruined Llanrhystud cottage,...

      Office Workers Against Sewage Some days I must immerse myself in the waters These days are more than others Monday 09.06 - a sewage overflow has activated Some days on the shore silence as we change snuggle mugs, pass biscuits around Tuesday...

      The Cartographer He does not shout. He charts. Where treaty lines once hung like old nets, he inks the deep, the dark, the yet-unmade. The map bleeds where his stylus rests. Tested: the pipeline’s buried nerve, the cable’s woven thought, the...

      03:41 Downstairs    a poem for insomniacs Huddled on the cat’s blanket, hyenas crying through the night. Scribbled notes regretting tea, the need for light. Time passes, shoulders settle the hyenas to a quiet shout. Everything goes cold as energy,...