It was the third day of rain:
we started hunting for doves
and acacia wood

A pool deepened outside the house,
and ducks sheltered below leaves
at the water’s edge

We paired off and found high ground –
a nest on a muddy path
beside a waterfall

Different kinds of ships
were painted on the walls,
but none of them seemed big enough

There was some brightness in the distance,
and we voted to leave or remain:
the skies darkened again

This was written a few days before the fateful EU referendum, as we sat in a summer house at Sandringham, sheltering from a downpour.

Stranded at Lamole
in Italian time,
where hours stretch and crinkle
under the Chianti sun,

you take a last sip of limoncello
and reach for the lizard
on the water’s edge,
hoping to save it from drowning.

Your hand touches;
the reptile recoils.

You swoop to scoop it out,
but you come at it
from the wrong direction.

It spills from your slippery fingers
into the pool overflow
and plunges down.

Now when you come to save me from drowning
in these whispering hills,
I will know the importance
of where I stand
the direction you come from,
and the speed of the overflow.

In Italian time
under the Chianti sun
I am practising stillness
so that when your finger touches me
I give way softly,

and recoil
is no longer a problem.

This poem was written a few years ago – in Italy, of course. An intriguing country, on the edge.

On the main drag, by the hide,
a skeleton tree
empty of hangings now
stands calmly

Reeds brush the sky:
blue is removed from blue, and
strange calls are raised in protest

Then they subside
as if knowing it is too late
for beauty, when everyone
believes the same lie

A bunting poses in a nearby bush
and there is movement
just off the boardwalk as we sit
almost sheltered

There is no salt here now,
and no bread, but
the sea will come in again;
tides will turn

whether I am here to witness
or have passed by, despairing
of making a difference

Yes, the sea is always there
in the background,
a gift of faith

sometimes thrown back,
sometimes too strong to resist

This was written after a visit to the nature reserve at Cley in North Norfolk, which had been inundated by the sea and then came back

Day after day, words flow in
like an eternal avalanche
scraping the sides,
burying passers-by

The police close the road
as if that would calm things down
but traffic piles up
in a different place

Everyone is asked
to slow down
but the stories keep flooding in
pushing everything aside

and yes, people are drowning:
shamed and disgraced,
they go under, choked by
the couscous of false assumptions

Cats and dogs assume
mythic proportions,
their adventures heroic,
their owners tragic

We are all doomed
by crystal ball economics
dwindling health service
or misunderstood weather

Yes, all the world is here
in big pictures
and we are sinking
in small pools

unable to believe that
sport is random
and cartoons are much
nearer the truth

Yes, all the world is here,
and at a reasonable price
Fanatics need not apply

So far from Montreal,
you smoke a cigarette with your back against the low black building
where you sang your surreal songs,
and we sat at civilised tables

I want to talk to you about your matchbox
and about that woman who you thanked
for being so beautiful,
but I don’t know what to say

‘I know your father’
doesn’t seem to do it:
I don’t know how you feel about your father

Is he competition, distraction
or inspiration?

Poetry is in your blood:
it flows from that wound in your side,
and the pages turn red so easily

In that respect we are similar,
but I never knew Marianne:
I know your father, though – better than I knew mine:
he died young

You will move on, and I will remain
wading through the songs my father sang
looking for ways to understand
the maps he used, and the hard
landscape he travelled through

The gift of blood
keeps us both alive:
your voice refreshes me, like water, and
your bus pulls out on to the ordinary road

so far from Montreal,
so far

Many years ago I heard Adam Cohen sing at the University of East Anglia. As we left, he was leaning against the wall, smoking, and I wondered what he was doing in a place like Norwich.

You led a busy week:
your diary tells us you tidied up
on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday
Thursday and Friday –
in fact every day, every week, every year –
and often you did the washing
or had the Hoover out

Sometimes people came round – bless them –
and sometimes they didn’t:
you made sure the garden looked nice,
but you always went to bed
at the end of the day

In your diary you didn’t mention supper much,
not even the last supper,
perhaps because you found it impossible
to tidy up afterwards:

too much dead wood,
noisy crowds,
blood and circuses,
power failures,
darkness and light

They didn’t even put the stone back
where it was

Last in my series of Lent poems

Now I see you
waving from a distance
your vivid colours
lit by occasional sun

I remember when you walked with me
past the thin cathedral
and among fading tombstones

You touched me then:
I thought we would get closer
but you slipped away

I hid too,
but in plain sight

I was waiting for you
I thought you knew that

Look at me:
I am waving back

Another poem in the Lent series, inspired by an e-mail from a friend, with the initial idea metamorphosed. Count the words!

The church shivers in the cold
crouched among the snowdrops
slippery in the winter rain

Out of time, figures walk
among the tombstones,
talking of skeletons and saints,
dreams and witches

And one day you may dance here too
disguised as artists and poets
uncovering history by chance

trying to recall faith’s secret meaning
and the way we run from death –
as if there were some other way
to say goodbye

One of a series of Lent poems: this one  relates to
an exhibition in Paston Church, Norfolk

Bodies in the cathedral,
ashes in the ovens:
stations of the holocaust
link death with death

and responses vary:
can you compare one crucifixion
with a million nameless executions,
or does one contain the other?

Do Christians eat up the Jews,
or embrace them?
St Hildegard said
God hugs us

The mystery is this:
it seems we find it hard to hug
without crushing
the breath out of someone’s lungs

This is the first in a series of poem I am writing during Lent. It is a response to a mesmerising exhibition called “Stations of the Holocaust” in Norwich Cathedral. Worth a visit if you live in the area. It ends on Good Friday.

I am light
I make no bones about it

Light fills me
It seeped in
through cracks in my resolution

I breathed it
while I dreamed of candles
that climbed to the moon
and defeated the dark side

Light is in my head
My skeleton glows
and my soul emerges
from its cave

If I touch you
death will flee from you
and you will run along the beach
warning black reckless ships and
shattering rocks

I am light
No-one understands me

I am light
God, stay close to me
when I go out