Enough of scorch, scald, sore- and rawness.
Sometimes flesh longs for eclipse.

she told me about the still hours
spent at the coast watching the east

Because we were four
and I only had strength to carry one
and knew no other way
I carried the one who called out loudest;
threatened us most.

As you rummage of a morning
among dust-furred personal effects
jumbled in an old
wooden suitcase under a bed . . .

The Lake District Tourist Board
has had no input into what
you are now reading, but I so
miss Cumbria in Holy Week
 

Who will pick the apples now she’s gone?

She has few secrets with her translucent map skin of blue underground rivers visible to scale.

A dozen snail shells exposed on dry soil
in the archangel’s cut brown stalks.
Banded like fairground sweets and helter-skelters . . .

At the shore of impossibility
last moments come to nothing
all our plans die in the salt air
of another new day on the black sea.