Coping Because I had a vivid dream I could telephone you in Heaven, somewhere my brain believes it’s true; delusion is a kind of redemption. My conscious mind habituated to our almost-daily conversation, my unconscious has found a line to sustain...

      My Swallows after Ann Gray I talk to the swallows as they dip and dive wonder if they return because of me. I tell them the cactuses are dying, that I'm the wild boar rooting around for grubs, that I don't sleep much these days. I tell them the...

      Toast Ken (now Kenneth) shrugs. He can’t have his liver ripped out after all without his reading glasses. I have Alzheimer’s. Those marshes. I know. Nigel (already regrettable) shares a name with – let’s leave it at that. Sends new guidelines,...

      Mechanical Bear   I would give you a mechanical bear and watch it move across the table-top. Soon the mechanism would go, poor bear, but you’d improvise and make it climb walls. No bear in history had made it as far. The first bear in space, the...

      The Cosmos of Small Details: When A Young Poet Asked for Advice For Dean Young (1955-2022) Hey Bro, how do we know what’s real? Like what’s really real? Can you actually prove to me dinosaurs existed? Prove evolution? Prove radio waves? Gravity,...

      The Perfect Platonic Prison The canal is the most perfect of mirrors reflecting the purples and blues of the boats and the greens and blacks and blues of the trees. They all reach down in perfect symmetry. There are shabby huts and black cats....

      Bunnies? We were delicate creatures once: shy, wide-eyed, exotic incomers. Holes had to be dug for us. Always toothsome, we have descended the scale of what is desirable, losing caste, coarsening, getting bigger, faster, fitter, more inured to...

      She runs a circus now Her will drives them round the world – a cavalcade of needy clowns, prima donna gymnasts, tigers. Even in mufti, you can sense the whip back on its hook by her basking boots. They keep changing the legislation, so she runs...