It wasn’t the music that drew him,

not at first, but the shape it made

on a stand and the way it took

the light, staring back at him

from the pawnshop window.

And so he decided then and there

he’d learn to play it, taking

for granted his gift and the right

he’d have to cradle it

once he had mastered the keys.

Those first uncertain months

it honked and s...

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In the dark age before Wikipedia

Brooke Bond tea cards dished the data

in a week-by-week drip feed

of bet-you-didn’t-know-that facts.

You could buy an album for sixpence

or snap an elastic band around them –

pocket-friendly, dependable,

your own bright almanac.

But couldn’t your family drink more tea?

– your mother refusing, stubbornly,

to open the packets u...

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I’m working back to the dreamtime

of St James Primary in sixty-three,

the occluded and innocent days

before the gadgets and money took over –

like trying to retrieve the original colours

of bright, ridged slabs of plasticine

from muddied clumps we used

for project work in the afternoons –

my finest effort the model I made

with Terence O’Neill of the martyrdom

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I’m working back to the dreamtime

of St James Primary in sixty-three,

the occluded and innocent days

before the gadgets and money took over –

like trying to retrieve the original colours

of bright, ridged slabs of plasticine

from muddied clumps we used

for project work in the afternoons –

my finest effort the model I made

with Terence O’Neill of the martyrdom

Read and leave comments (0)

I’m working back to the dreamtime

of St James Primary in sixty-three,

the occluded and innocent days

before the gadgets and money took over –

like trying to retrieve the original colours

of bright, ridged slabs of plasticine

from muddied clumps we used

for project work in the afternoons –

my finest effort the model I made

with Terence O’Neill of the martyrdom

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From compartment windows

they were fake, too far away

to be real. Friesians, Shorthorns,

Angus: painted cows

in a book of fields –

while on the train I rampaged,

shuttling impatience

through pages and pages

of green. Unexpectedly,

we'd arrive and land in a world

where they moped.

The first day up, a drover,

I'd goad them on with a stick

then s...

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for my grandfather

When I first came on a visit

to your lime-washed house

– a clean-kneed child from town –

your two great fists

impressed me, for they

were ponderous chunks

of granite, notched

carelessly for fingers

and which, at your own willed

creation, you had torn

from the heart of the land.

Yes, I knew then how

you had risen and, ...

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for my grandfather

When I first came on a visit

to your lime-washed house

– a clean-kneed child from town –

your two great fists

impressed me, for they

were ponderous chunks

of granite, notched

carelessly for fingers

and which, at your own willed

creation, you had torn

from the heart of the land.

Yes, I knew then how

you had risen and, sep...

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la petite phrase  Proust

Back home and married

after our year abroad,

the heat was on all summer

as mortgage rates

and temperatures soared.

Recording it now,

the memory’s triggered

by the music a DJ plays –

which happens to be

George Benson’s Breezin’,

the track that eased me

into jazz, clocking on

in the council yard

to get one step ahead.

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