Total

Some thankyous are best private;some deserve a public airing,in case they touch someone else who's suffered:I wrote a poem about my mother's..

What is a poem without a reader?What is a reader without a heart?What is a heart without another heart to meet it,greet it?What are two hearts..

‘Atonement’ – for me, it has a solemn,lifetime, deathtime, this-is-finalring to it – spoken in the severest tonesin some headmaster’s study in the..

Pen in hand, and pensive…sitting by the open window,the curtains moving gently in the breeze,listening to the spontaneous livelinessof the fountain..

Dozing this morning – was I awake,or was I asleep? for many minutes,I entered a bright and shining world,but of my own remembered moments;yet more..

Oh yes he said, there was a birth,you ask me how I’m sureremember shepherds train themselvesto see the slightest thingson dark nights, on starlit..

HasslessFor a summer week he watched her;she watched him watching her.He wrote his music; thought of her,sixtyish, Japanese; flat-breasted like a..

Today, and every day - someone booped!Someone who's paid a lot, not to..An apology, a resignation of their tarnishedposition in our public life?..

Waking this morning is unhurried, even slow –the weather is saying something to the body.The forecast for the day, it seems, is rain.Time, then, for..

The poet meanswhat the poet said;look for the 'meaning'and the poem's dead.

Did humming-birdsforget the words?

Our world forgets – has never known, perhaps –that questions are a treasured magic wand:the question asked, the answer may, most like, come freshly..

Overnight and foreverthe earth is soaked in love.Abundance knows no limitsto its gratitude, to its praise.They have not forgottenwhen things were..

And soon defeat the Taliban?An opium dream! Why, no-one can!It's all world trade: their export crop isin high demand - it's opium poppies,passed via..

I dreamed a dream profound and wiseabout the state of man:the brain a mass of wriggly worms,the mind an old tin can..The first word presents the..

We are born, live, and die.It's tough.Where's my ink-block?[with respectful acknowledgements to Vita Brevis and Art Longer ]

Like a favourite vase,newly washed, sayingI'm beautiful as I am,empty yet shining,what will you fill me with?

to the joyless:it’s out theresomewhereotherwisethere wouldn’t bea word for itpromiseto the joyful:OK OK guyseasy now

for there’s what you planned to write about,and what you find yourselfwriting about; perhapsfind yourself, while writing about..and there’s the poem..

And in case no-one mentioned this to youon those hot summer afternoons whenyou could hear the sound of bat on ball, orball on racquet, or foot on..

What a miserable day.He didn't have the decency to return my call.She let me down.*It is raining.He did not call.I was there. She was not.[with..

It was a late, late night;a wild, wild night;primitive urges which peoplemight never have suspected of youdemanding to be slaked,and slaked and..

She’s dying.She’s had two heart attacks,they say the third, the fatal one,could come at any time.But she’s on her feet or sitting,talking of things..

There is, it’s said, a state of joyful death,known to the wise; and this, more realisedthan that cessation of our mortal breathbeyond experience;..

In the midst of the dense thicketof the poet-milky wood, just beyond the gas pumpsstanding as lonely as a trio of crowswaiting for a poet’s metaphor..