Paradise Lost?

Big adjustment.  Nothing like retirement.

One minute, I’m your average day to day man -

up at first light, a couple of grapes, then

on with the day job:  Emu; Elephant;

Duck Billed Platypus; Lesser Spotted Toad…

biodiversity makes a demand

on imagination.  But when I tired,

I thought of her under the tree: first bride,

always smiling, beau...

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                        The Carer

She’s been nipped and bit today by an old girl

puzzled in the folds of yesterday.  As she tried

to feed and clean her, acknowledged with shrieks

and skirls, she was fought against with bites

and scratches. When she was tended and quiet,

she combed her hair, grey strands loosening, floating

to pillow and floor.   Then, but only then, she s...

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Last Chance

I took a Fiat Volvo back to 1606.

Raining. Dark.

Shakespeare was coming out the Globe,

full of himself, tragic, a whore on his arm.

‘Get in!’ I shouted.  He ignored me.

‘Right,’ I said; ‘Last chance.’

But the girl he was with gave me the V sign,

carried him off into the shadows.

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Exchange

I took a lightbulb back to 1492:

Christopher Columbus showed me his map,

hand-made, accurate to within 5000 miles;

I showed him the lightbulb.

He peered at the pea-seed of the filament,

breathed lightly on the glass,

let it sit on the palm of his hand like an egg.

I explained it would glow – a moon, a cold candle;

he nodded, turned back to his map,

tracing a ...

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Cast

Before the spirit left,

you had one leg out of bed, toes

touching the floor,

hand tightened on the sheet

as if for a moonlight flit.

I stayed with your cast,

rearranged leg, hand, sheet;

I even called you back,

but you were walking quickly,

lightly towards morning.

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                  Collecting the Bins at Emily Bronte’s

                   ‘What is the matter, my little man?’ I asked.

                   ‘There’s Heathcliff and a woman yonder, under t’ nab,’ he blubbered, ‘un’ I darnut pass ’em.'

                    Long after she’d gone, being reborn

                     on teapots and table mats - daguerrotyped,

imaged and impressed ...

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                               Lovers By The Ice-Age Tarn

Lovers by the ice-age tarn

locked within the season’s frame

tender to the ancient sun

all their urgent naked claim:

"Until the climate takes my eyes,

sun is darkened with its spores,

and all the twisted ammonites

turn to brittle amber tears,

bend me by the golden ice,

tip me to reflected stars;

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Aubade

My mother leaned against dreams.
                        Listen carefully;
she did not row above the river of thought,
she did not bleed a flower of imagination –
my mother leaned against dreams.
On a morning when her children rose in sunlight
to squeeze the kitchen back to waking,
and the table found its legs like a foal,
the black cooker shook its head,
chairs were branch...

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                                                 Moth-Print Spring

Pressed in the pages of this book

the moth that must have rested here

has turned into this powder blur,

the one dimension of itself.

Someone reading one Spring night

shut a sudden paper tomb

and trapped this echo of a flight.

A feint of light drew it there:

a dull reflection off the page

that...

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                 Apparitions

The poor apparitions.  It would be easier

if they ceased to care and took their nowhere

as the end of being here.  Substanceless,

 forgetful, they miss what has come to pass,

and nothing remains of them but pranks?

They dull cold mirrors; barely sway candle flames;

on anniversaries appear in dreams;

in thin involvements bumble under glass,

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                                                     Your-Hope

I will teach my child to read fences

tell the X, from the Y, 

judge tension in the note and the not

I will teach how to curl like a mouse

sense thunders of touchdowns and tarmacs

climb, roll, smell borders

Mother, lover, blood-trafficker,

for sheer map and milk of her life,

I will teach h...

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                                            Spuds

As loved ones buried

grow nails and hair

past recognition,

a fistful of peelings

thrown slovenly to earth

came back in Spring,

leaving me to finger,

stunned as Crusoe,

a row of cold knuckles.

One, forgotten in the cellar,

turned pure alone

and grew a halo of white hair;

ano...

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power company

stop leaving all the lights on I say

we live in a dark house

I want to see you say

get used to it, bats can see in the dark

they get used to it

bats can't see in the dark

course they fucking can, with sound

you mean like with rhyme

shout and bounce it off the world

whisper it into corners

we turn the lights off and try it

bugger you shout

t...

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