#WorldCurlewDay2025

I am not your enemy dear messenger,

but still your intent feels murderous.

And though your reckless,

adrenaline fuelled passes and dopplered cries

have sent these old instincts into full flight mode,

my head disappearing into my shoulders,

my sixty-year-old body separated from my bicycle

to lie expediently on this damp grassy bank,

I...

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The Seventh Whistler (after William Wordsworth)

for World Curlew Day April 21st 2025 

By slough and marsh my dog commits

to muck and fun on coastal walk

swathed on our way through rugged fields

in Cumberland’s old mizzled cloak.

Until a statue he became,

as through sea mist the air was split      

with ghostly cry from unlit worlds:

the seventh whistler on th...

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On hard wet ground,

exposed like a pulsing nerve,

half a yard from the comfort of grass,

it writhed unsteadily to unheard music

while the connoisseur’s eye

judged its girth from a bush.

Rainwater marinated

and near wasted after a night of passion,

casting tired letter shapes

as the sun split clouds overhead,

this six inch night crawler

knew its place ...

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Five drab juveniles land outside my window;

goth eyeliner, raucous and rucking over territory,

fouling up my window ledge, five floors high.

Under murmured shadows, three leave suddenly,

startle the two, who, drawing close, look to each other,

before the larger wings it with thousands in late city skies.

The smallest catches reflections in the high rise glass,

checks its rag ...

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In some other universe, you and I didn’t play

football as kids. We weren’t lucky enough to

have Mr Walker as our teacher.

The team photograph doesn’t exist in this other

place, so people wouldn’t wonder why we looked

so serious, you and I.

Or maybe through some weirdness, we lost

the cup final, so the victory meal at the

chippie would have been cancelled.

Or at ...

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Grown wild, unclaimed and loose in lanes,

he peed higher, spat further, swore louder

than any other latchkey street weed.

Green acolytes, summoned with strangled

banshee howls, drawn to worship as he spoke

to us in bloodied tongues for a dare.

Envied for knowledge of hidden pathways

by the railway, and his dead bat in a matchbox,

which some could see for tu...

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Descartes rocked up the other day.

Wanted a deep philosophical discussion

with my dog, Derek:

said that Derek’s theory of Sentience in Sticks

was at variance with the idea of a divine transcendent spirituality

and was completely implausible,  

for what had sticks ever achieved?

Derek responded:

said that consciousness was a ubiquitous feature of the universe,

and pe...

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Forty weeks I wondered what would happen.

Bought a tiny cardigan while waiting,

embroidered with some meadow hares in sunshine

and wee blue shoes that you would never wear.

With little witchy hand you grasped my finger,

your body wrapped in heirloom knitted cloth,

each breath I watched and listened in the pauses

and worried as within the sling I held you.

The dand...

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I wonder if, like me, the winter skies at Cunswick,

swathed in low cloud, above old scars of crag

and frozen garlands of brown bracken,

anticipate the welcome return of African visitors;

if underfoot, limestone bones ache for warmth,

dark fissured slabs buried beneath grass paths,

quietly longing for early May’s trick of light,

tired bodies aloft after months of migrat...

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I took the test again today. Turned on Radio Four.

                Listened to a story about the homeless.

                              Then came kids orphaned by bomb blasts

                              in another country.

But that was too hard,

so I moved on …

Started up the car instead of doing the walking thing;

                it was raining and I needed...

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This is an old feeling,

standing by this evening’s field,

these dark rags hanging, strung on wire,

beaks silent and unmoving under a stretched sky.

So which lore or gods apply?

Would it help to free your feathers,

wake thought and memory in cold skulls,

wear a black cape in silhouetted brotherhood?

Should I take up your work?

Am I a familiar to a Norse god,

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Einstein phoned the other day.

Wanted to speak quite urgently

with my dog, Derek:

said that Derek’s theory of

quantum stiles was interesting

but lacked empirical evidence

and wasn’t supported by

the mathematics.

Derek disagreed:

described the process of walking with me,

taking the early morning river route

along the side of the Kent under Cumbrian ski...

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 … or Not Now Albert

after Albert Einstein and Thomas Morley

It’s about time

but now is not the time

for it is not how now works.

Fa la la la la la la la la,

In fact now is meaningless;

now is a clumsy construct

from Newton’s classical calendar.

                    ...  fa la la la la la laah

         
Behind the times,

now is neither here

n...

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When I am old I shall apply for a bus pass

and roam around Cumbria’s roads on the 555.

I shall sit upstairs at the front of the bus

with a stick and my rucksack,

with a flask and sandwiches

and imagine I am a falcon flying up and over Dunmail Raise.

I will use my bus pass every day,

even on days I don’t need to go anywhere;

I shall scan it just to hear the beep of ano...

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Your love of my raspberries has resulted

in this late evening walk in headtorch,

to hedges of hazel and blackthorn,

far enough from home to foil ideas of return.

Aware of owls ripping through moonlight,

I kneel in damp fescue and sedge,

clutching this tilt trap of quantum uncertainty;

mouse or no mouse? that is the question.

The trap gate opens. You see me...

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Tidy

In a tidy garden, cold on crazy paving, stranded by the shed, the dead rat lies:

reluctant penitent at prayer, thin paws held stiffly,

eyes shut in death throe rictus, tail curled, hugging a frosted abdomen.

Exploration driven by hunger,

the tempering of wariness leading to a lingering end;

lately drawn from Sunday fields, before dawn’s broken promise,

the lure of f...

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Light seeps through cracked lashes.

The new day’s tide sweeps a winter beach,

debris left on rippled sand

forms a room of furniture

in a head weighed with questions.

Out of frozen vaults of memory,

a canvas dragged into the morning sun

thaws slowly, mixed colour through frost

leaching out in blurred patches

on old bones in a strange bed.

Who owns these sho...

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Swaddled and happy,

I drown in my aunty’s best coat;

here on mottled kodak paper,

monochrome fun in a breeze block back yard,

swimming through sixties patchouli oil,

an eight year old ginger face

grinning back through time and fake fur,

hem brushing scuffed Clarks T Bar sandals,

heavy raglan sleeves pulled high

over skinny, freckled arms,

all worries shelved for...

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In search of yew in Borrowdale

that shared the sun with Judas,

I walk a rutted path,

aware of twinges, snares, rocks,

carrying your paints and easel

along with this bowl of words,

no longer fit for consumption,

mold festering in knots

from sour touching fruit within.

And if these words were berries,

gardeners would stand disappointed

at the canker in the bark...

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In expensive shoes,

he negotiated life in the third person;

toes swathed in top quality calfskin,

safe from random shit and shards,

where neither grass nor paved path

could sully his soft arches and soles.

He wore fine suits;

an actor avoiding the fourth wall,

costumed and painted with lines learnt,

senses fenced off with silk and cashmere,

any truthful light blo...

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In the wreckage of a house clearance,

a face distorts in a fractured glass eye.

Painted on gesso and northern white pine,

old acrylic eyelashes flash a recognition.

Stippled like a stormy summer,

worn and battered flanks shiver in the dust.

A torn rosette from a forgotten fete

hangs by a mane, shabby and faded.

Familiar sounds echo in the room:

the rhythmic sq...

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The shed was an apex all-wood

home-built construction,

erected that furnace of a summer

when we burnt in the shade

and our feet turned to leather,

a backdrop of screaming swifts

swooping like mad dot banshees

in the forget me not blue.

We stood back and admired

the woody quality of its sturdiness,

overlooked the imperfections;

worth the blisters and sweari...

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Remote in a Cumbrian village,

removed and adrift as instructed,

I have become a modern Major Tom,

floating with the tins and toilet rolls,

bouncing off the ceiling, walls and floor.

Behind glass, I message Planet Earth,

well placed for views in virtual space,

sitting in a semi, playing spot the Herdwick,

clapping frontline health service warriors

and other admirable...

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Dandelion Sun (opening poem from Fledge published by Maytree Press July 31st 2020)

A child’s sun finds a dream in young eyes.

In blinks of dandelion eclipses,

refracted light reflects on retinas

holding warmth in ragged leaves

below a flower standing up and out.

Ryegrass and foxtail for company,

a golden head of petals,

swaying and slight,

is there and gone and...

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