The difficulty of a new spoon

The technology of the tablet doesn’t phase her and with the agility of an Olympic gymnast travels from BBC to ITV and back again with the swipe of a finger swinging between a period drama to a murder mystery. Sometimes she worries she will not have the time, time to catch up before the programmes […]

Meta

Meta I used to write poems like this about global warming and cutting down trees. But now I have learnt to write them like this: save the trees/save the forests/save the world.

Edge

Two rocks, a tide race, walls of water. Mouthful of salt, breath of heather. Slap of wave, a nose diving gannet. Seal pups mewing in hidden coves. Yellow canoe negotiating the tightrope between sea and sky.

Blissful Hill, Lovely Hollow

  Blissful Hill, Lovely Hollow   English translations of my house and lane are worth a time reversal – hence my Singer chuntering in the oil-lamp’s light until knees and curiosity are ready to treadle backwards, back past my wedding, back past my birthing, back to my mother and the twinkle she caught in some […]

Mentor/Minotaur

Mentor/Minotaur I owe you a debt of gratitude. You pointed me in the right direction, set me off on a journey that has proved most rewarding. But your influence is all-pervasive. I still refer to you at every turn. Although I’ve travelled a long way, I’ve yet to escape the Labyrinth.

Legs

His ten-year-old legs went walkabout without him. Don’t move, they said, as he lay like a plank, sentenced to six months horizontal, pillowless waiting for the needle man. Later, he sat on his bed, waiting for muscles to return to childish pranks, to seaside convalescence with a family who frowned when he licked the sauce […]

Day 6. Learning a new skill

  Here’s ‘Jessica learned to kiss’ by Charles Tomlinson: http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/jessica-learned-kiss Learning a new skill.