Light flashes in the hedgeas young birdsfree from the fieldstaste the edges of their new world then come to feed from our fingers:sunlight pierces their wingsand the puzzle of leaves and branchesas we watch, remembering Columbathe holy dove and the flames…
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Although I have many doubts about the Government’s approach to Covid, since the outbreak started I have avoided travelling to my second home in Scotland. This is partly because I don’t have a second home in Scotland, but there is…
Read: Missing our second home
The sun plays hide-and-seek among hilltop treesfiring its paintball light onto the valley water,inventing strange angles and impossible colours while shadow ice coats cracking valley wallslike deep-sea teethanchored in cold blood and geese skate like beginners down the canal,breaking the fragile…
Read: Drawn to the edge
Yesterday I took a brief trip back to my childhood – to those warm and sunny days before the climate changed and someone invented speed cameras and drink-driving, and when you could motor down all the streets in my home…
Bob Dylan once said: “I accept chaos. I’m not sure whether it accepts me.” He wasn’t speaking about the COVID regulations at the time, but his comment seems particularly appropriate as the virus-plagued summer of 2020 turns to mysterious autumn. …
Archangels fall from the sky as autumn tiptoes in: they defend the faithful from invisible foes, holding back the bitter rain and the onslaught of dragons All this has happened before, when the stars changed colour, shifted to red and…
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I’m not sure if I should admit to this, but just over 50 years ago I was in the United States illegally. For a fortnight – and I hope that will confuse the authorities enough to let me get away…
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As in a soup, spoon-hot,I float with noodles – the yellow tubes hold me upand I defy gravity,my organs mystified at the lack of pressurefrom above or below All is calm: I drift,waiting for God to speak Like Julian, I look…
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“All of humanity’s problems,” wrote Blaise Pascal, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” He was probably not thinking of coronavirus when he wrote it, but it seems a useful observation in the current crisis, and…
Pulled by the pain of wind and tideand racked by rainyour body moves from side to side You toss and touch the shallows gather in the sheetstumble face down, indiscreet Naked to sand and stone, so closeto land: pillow fair headstranded…
Read: Limit of navigation