Today’s choice

Previous poems

Col Fleetwood

 

 

 

Muckle Flugga
 
Unmoored on an ocean of heather
no wind to pluck the strings
of the aeolian harp

Policed by the unsettling glare
of nesting great skuas
we tread the narrow path

The boardwalk rises and falls
under a sky empty
and scoured of song

To the lighthouse
in search of the solan goose
we press on

Until all land ends
pearl-studded cliffs rear up
to arrest us

And the pitch of the sea
snares the unquiet silence
of our voices

 

 

Col Fleetwood lives and writes in the wild and beautiful borderlands between Scotland and England.

Peter Leight

There’s more waste than we use for the things we ordinarily use waste for, such as piling it on barges and sending them out to sea, tucking it under the surface like a layer of insulation . . .

Ansuya Patel

Women scrape coins from their purse,
count pennies, one lifts up a watermelon
in mid-air like raising a newborn to light.