Mean sister We are stuck in our own words, not hearing each other. Sixty-somethings, we may as well be six, throwing sticks down the beck or poking dolls eyes out of their sockets, scribbling on their perfect faces. We are well rehearsed, know our cues,...

I heard a calm, clear voice.
But not with my ears. Not my outward ears.
It wasn’t madness…

tall as the absentee house.
How the girl moored her hands and heart charmed by riven bark…

I dream I’m at the hospital
massaging your feet, your tiny feet

that I have freed from their tight
white stockings…

When fog falls over Rough Tor,
the world creaks
on the end of a string…

      Snow’s Reset The roofs blend with the snow-laden clouds, borders softened so it’s only memory that differentiates my space from my neighbour’s. The wet smell confuses pets whose footprints meander over territorial edges, leave crazed patterns like...

      Toughened Bark it takes a hefty blow sometimes to split you open a sharpened blade to split through years of tough old bark in the deeper channels feel how sap and resin thicken sap to carry nourishment keeping the woodiness supple resin to...

A thirty-year-old woman walks into
the wee sma’ hours of a December
night. Snow is light
on her hair and the back
garden shrubs. It thickens. The sky
turns white. She stands still.