Working the land on good days, after Easter,
people would hear the breaks occur at school,
children calling as they ran into the playground,
familiar skipping rhymes rising from the babble.

Some days, the privilege of living isn’t enough.
The weight of the kettle is unbearable. You leave the teabag
forlorn in the mug, unpoured.

Slowly, ordinarily, the unimaginable happens,
lowering the past into the dark,
covering it.

If I were a ghost
I think I would shrink
and perch on wooden poles
and deco shades – get a good view
of what I am supposed to be haunting

We left the play early. It was the last day before the start of secondary school. Dad told me off for slapping the seats

There was a time when I took my radio
into the night wood and tuned its pyracantha
needle along the dial through noise jungles
to silent darkness at the waveband’s end.

Find yourself by the lake,
its icy membrane split by the long
arrow of a skein, reflected
flurry of wings, cries

bawling.

The terns lift as one
from the salt-pools behind the beach
– a thick undulating line

Winter soil is hard and hoar crusted,
birds peck with blunted beaks,
pushing up are the blind green pods
of what will soon be yellow daffodils,
given light and air.