The cemetery cat asleep on the warm headstone careless of the worthy mason’s curfew ignores the adjustment to place my fingernails caught in the fierce scree of memory I try to place the language of a pebble from when we slept huddled at Roaring Meg waking laughing snoring back at snowflakes carried by a pilgrim’s … Continue reading Heart Stone

This is the transmission of leaves the eatings worth of physillids a dusting of nigella seed within the guilty fingerprint by the unravelling meander after rain all cochineal as maple floats those burnt ceramics of summer now cracked and soothed under shade turned to a gentle tajine of promise an exclamation of hover flies pretending … Continue reading The Transmission of Leaves

for a while I was Cathy and that knocking was your return because pain has no gender its seeking ways of counterpoint slim branches on the window wispy enough getting through the social veneer of a card house teeter your breath held within mine from the firebox the slow drumming still so young all wings … Continue reading Wuthering

Now falls a night made rich for haste the autumn moon all coin of blank, counterfeit as the mercy of silence. To have this place in dream by day beneath the hush of slowness beating, a wing’s pause drawing of patience. Call forth an art all blood in making to dive now potent a span’s … Continue reading a Powerful Owl prevaricates

Days flip verso a large bass floating, scored over the inlet breeze pianists compete for what’s left of cool. Notes are transfused eternal, the flamenco trio has a new language George Michael to a different beat. The sky draws sail boards in bluesy clefs the old blokes banter in sets, so familiar they change key … Continue reading Jazz Festival Inverloch, Labour Day Weekend

When death called uninvited I remembered buried outlaw long necks of beer as tubers under the deign of hydrangeas splashing irises beside the straggling hibiscus a fallen rainbow entreating rain the returning blue chequer a flap in the tree house cornflowers adrift (Margaret Olley 'Afternoon with corn flowers').

I There will always be better words waiting.  Hewn from the territory of loss, erupted from joy at love’s motive -  refusing entry – at calling down, straying from the paddock/ crunching as stubble, caught out, irresistible in the turning key’s summons wandering beyond polite conversation, holding down sheet music blowing past the snatch to … Continue reading Almost Shipwrecked on Byzantium