WE LET IT GO

The accumulation of three score years and five

has half woken me and drawn an ageless blade that

shares my bed – to be clear, its domain lying underneath –

a little blunter than once was, when proud Boy Scout would

scour and burnish carbon-pitted pots and pans in return for

cherished sheath knife, soon to be illegalised (remember

we outlaws’ conspiratori...

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Two pairs of magpies strut and preen

across the greened-up garden lawn

behind the house we bought a few months back.

I note once more the lack of birdlife here –

unlike the cosmopolitan crowds that would

serenade us each day from every bough,

loud enough to shake and wake all lovers of

calypso sung and hung on high,

and thos...

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Moving out and moving on, such is the plan;

we agreed a date in late July –

good for the buyers with half a summer still

to enjoy GB at its best, from breathless arrival,

through the finery of one whole, golden autumn

before hunkering-down deep into winter

and out again when survival allows.

I have, while here for thirty years, learned that

time may be measured by chur...

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And what did you fear when you

thought you might have to fight, again,

to win invitations for your heart and voice, to

reach out with ease to whoever happened to be there?

Now it was, you said, time for poets to refocus –

not just because the others had complied;

isolation and distancing had seen to that.

All of us had sensed change.  You were

a poet if you were t...

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