Hills stretch away into the beckoning distanceharsh and unknownintriguing and shapely I wander among themlooking for steep paths,that precise point where land gives wayreluctantly to sky touching the forgiving rocksthat beckon to me I am seduced, gone astray:I feel the…
Read: Safe place
If you are, like me, an avid watcher of old movies or a keen gazer at old photographs, you may have been struck by the way 2021 seems in one respect to be heading towards the past. To see the…
Read: Watch the streets: they could soon be filling up again
you lead me to pastureacross the soft sands whereI do not want to go where the water is not stillwhere tides flow in and outbut the pathway is right I see the pasture ahead,the island shaped just for mebeyond the…
Read: Offshore
I may have mentioned the Rosary cemetery. When I “took my exercise” there during the first lockdown, it was almost always deserted. Now, word seems to have got round, and I’m pretty sure it’s not because thousands of people are…
(for Mary Wilson) Out in the snowI hear Mary singing, keeping everything together as always –multiplying by three,then dividingwhile misty men threw ice balls from on high –so white, so dark So long ago, too,juggling in the far north, those cold, cold…
Read: Supreme
During the first lockdown of my life, last year, everywhere seemed empty. When I took the car to the chemist’s to pick up a prescription, there was almost nothing on the road, and hardly anyone walking either. It was weird,…
Bodies make strangers of us as we age:we stoop, whisper, stumble and grow impatient quicklybut in our eyes the real soul lurks:unexpected snowflakes of wit Each one different, though:in my aunt’s face – unseen for years –suddenly my mother lives She…
Read: Beyond
The other day I happened on a TV documentary from 1957, shown by the ever-delightful Talking Pictures channel, which ran through what happened at Covent Garden from midnight till mid-morning the next day. Sound enthralling? Surprisingly, it was. But what…
Walking through waterbeneath the holy city,she feels the weight of the pastwash against her shoulders This is the way in, but it is not obvious:sand and shingle beneath her feetremind her how close the desert is Immersed in sinshe strains…
Read: Walking through water
I’ve just come back from the Rosary again. During the covid restrictions, I have become well acquainted with this hilly Norwich cemetery where my parents and grandparents are buried. It’s only just round the corner and makes an easily accessible…