Wing-splayed, I am that dirt white moth
at rest on a redbrick wall.
My time is short
but unrestrained:
all your well-mannered shrubbery
has been consumed.
I must fly on or die
before I reach the coast.
There, in newly engineered revetments,
concrete is stacking up:
the work of years, shielded by hoardings.
Sea defence. Its PR low-down tells me
we won’t be overwhelmed
at least in my lifespan.
many thanks to Casey Jarrin for the moth
as if it were a safe.
From our hiding place in a tiny slice of dark matter,
we must now step through.
You are one of thousands
smashing particles, scouring the standard model
for some
due cause
of its collision debris.
But the clash of geometry and pure chance discloses
no obvious motive yet.
And I am camouflage,
have passed every experimental test you’ve set
so far.
Beyond the AI mirror
where ripples of quantum light annihilate,
my deeper structures pulse.
It is too early to party –
that’s the second thing you should know.
We could still detonate the landmines
there beneath our skin.
viii. 2025
Back from the refill shop, weighed down
with staples, I pour loose flour into Kilner jars
watchful not to spill the meanest scruple.
But I’ve misjudged capacity,
bought more than there is storage for.
The funnel overruns: I ask myself
(were it allowed) how many people could
our surplus feed. And how long for?
Here is our laundry, soaked and rinsed and wrung
by hand, or pulled from drum to basket in wet lumps:
the mundane that makes us human,
going out and coming in like a tide.
We do not dress in salt-damp clothes.
My town has fuel enough – its water pumped
and clean. There’s soap to buy.
No dust of demolition in the wind.
Replanting our backyard in terracotta
is a long-term proposition, a luxury.
To recover what has been starved,
cut down, polluted and uprooted
needs more than water and new soil.
I gaze at my earth-dirty hands,
believe in century-old harvests, and
grieve at the absence of olive branches.
vii. 2025
Culture Matters
Attic-high, a silhouette at a window, sits
spine folded. It’s you at your desk with lamp pulled low.
Look, a sixpence moon climbs through the cloudscape.
Don’t be distracted. Lay them out, Birdman –
they are your escape, your scripture.
This, your small collection of songbird wings
that beat no more. Predation, storm and sickness –
each tells its tale. You read their formulae.
Note how primaries may be emarginated
or sometimes notched. Through softness of coverts
feel a ghost-tug of wind. Every thread-fine barb
stroked in place, locked as a blade.
In your gnarled hands you turn them, like apologies
unspoken. Hum a refrain that has no words, but
begins with a wren, that thimble
of air-held flight no bigger than curled breath.
Chestnut and lightest of all.
Lands as goldfinch do, on thistle.
The mid-flight flicker of tarnished yellow
a bugle call of sunlight.
Ends with mimicry of starlings.
Pitch brown, buff-edged. No longer green sheen glossy,
their spangled winter gone.
These your feathered treasures, Birdman, cannot reply.
Unheard in your eyrie, their silence nests.
vii. 2025
today fades slowly, eases into night.
It carries a ballast of fallen petals,
has no pilot but the weight of hours.
About this pivot point we have lingered
outdoors. Tracing – for as long as we can –
the sun’s arc across a gasping planet.
Woken by an insistence of wrens, we saw
daylight moon rising over chimney pots.
We have freed a frantic butterfly trapped
by picture windows, watched foxgloves cast off
their white and purple vestment, seen cheerful
hollyhocks burst out like splashes of paint.
We have watered the persistence of poppies.
The year’s high noon unfolds in a flag-hung
horizon. Once crossed, there is no going
back, although we know what’s coming next:
summer will harden, tumble – like bombshells
dropped on purpose – down the keel of July.
Quiet as held breath, a bat skitters blackly
out of sight. Tongue-tied, we cannot name it.
vi. 2025
after a cartoon by Tom Gauld
is a teensy-weensy bookshop
no wider than its own front door.
Always has a queue of eager readers
entering one at a time. They may feel
themselves too close for comfort.
But find my suggestions
are more than worth the proximity.
Or so I have been told.
It would be impolite to say
otherwise. For this is England,
where all is said and done and dusted.
So few shelves, so many tongues
to hold. Yet each book chosen means
no-one goes empty-handed.
When my time comes, please seal me there
asleep in this uproar of language.
vi. 2025
We knew full well it was a risk
to go back there. Break in.
No one would guess, you said. The old place
still vacant after all, porch light left on
as if to measure nightfall.
And knowing how to reach its bolt
the gate, hinge-loose, squeaked open.
A kind of mock welcome.
The grass gone soft where no feet passed,
trees grown crooked, or perhaps just older.
Inside the shed the air was sour
with smell of stored apples, long eaten.
Half-clenched, one soil-caked glove
lies on the workbench, a sleeping fist.
An unlaced pair of boots, gaping.
Already junk mail curls in the hall,
like unburnt leaves at a bonfire’s edge.
Cold tea stains cling to that cracked mug
left on the kitchen sill.
Dust collects. Our cast-off skin.
Briskly tucked in a mantelpiece
your last scrawled shopping list.
What it said, I didn’t ask – the silence was too full.
We touched nothing.
When dawn’s rain came, we swallowed
and were gone.
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vi. 2025
painting: 'A Pair of Shoes' - Vincent van Gogh (1886)
