Sleeper
The train was late –so late it seemed there might be no more trains It caught me unawares…I was lying down: soonit did not move – I did not move Dirt from the railsclogged up my head, filledall those joyous spaceswhere I…
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2022
Nothing is coming
snow sits deep on the road out of collingwoodproud in the sun but here there is only wind:trees and lovers bowingto the inevitable the sound of the climate laughingas mere humans foldin half under the weight of opinion and the Sahara edges…
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Just when it felt safe, we caught it
More than two years after narrowly avoiding lockdown in Bethlehem, after mysterious months of mask-wearing, social distancing and excessive ventilation, enduring myriad unintelligible and illogical restrictions, a spell in hospital with a gall-bladder infection and experiencing all the joys of…
Aldeburgh
The sound of pianos on the beach,the fall of rain on the rooflike stones under the ancient waves Your fingers move like lightningthen slowly, touching me gently:my skin tingles One of us is learning the tunesand how to play them,taking…
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Exactly how safe do we want to be?
It was that profound absurdist thinker Franz Kafka who put it most effectively: it is safer, he said, to be in chains than to be free. Most 21st century activists think the same way. And since safety appears to be…
Nothing is coming
snow sits deep on the road out of collingwoodproud in the sun but here there is only wind:trees and lovers bowingto the inevitable the sound of the climate laughingas mere humans foldin half under the weight of opinion and the Sahara edges…
Read: Nothing is coming
What’s really wrong with 20mph limits, and why no-one cares
Yet another article has appeared in my local paper on the question of 20mph limits – this time by a motoring writer. I was too slow to respond to it – caught in a 20mph zone, you might say. I was…
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Inside a dream
You came into my dream uninvitedunawareflinging your bedroom window openleaning out and laughing this side of the tank trapsthe invaded playgroundthe man with the gunthe man we never saw We walked together down the invisible pathto the distant woodsclose to the…
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Something on the pitch – but is it offside?
There was something on the pitch. All right, there was a ball and there were 22 players – all moving around at various speeds and not achieving very much, especially the ten in yellow and green and their goalkeeper in…
Half pipe
Death-wish figures on skislurch from side to sideblown like winter leaves Twentyonesixty, seventwenty, sixthirty Accidental figures fall through the skyplunge to the edgegather speed sixthirty, seventhirty, midnight Back full double full fullnumbers reach for the starsleap upwards … Teneighty, fiveforty, fifteenfifty……
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