lobbing stones 

into the upper-mill pool

Failing to see 

the intricacies

of gossamer worlds

Such heavy-handedness

thickens the air

like the threat of afternoon

As something listens

below the reeds

beneath the sound 

of falling water

Subscribe now

Singing through the crackling breath of winter
Unharried by the lumber of rain

With colours robbed by cloudless light
Singing louder than any misdeed

Weaving through baby continents, 
Bubbles the polished waters 
Teaching its young 
The colours of danger

Hunched – and though 
Shy of mischief’s tease
Are unworried by the sun 
That glares up 
Like a sunken penny

You talked above those waters 
That were bullied by the tide
Every part of you hard to please
Below that fall of umber trees.

Your news was like a thrash of birds
And your promises - worm-holed 
Beneath a tumbledown of stars.

I watched you leave, silent 
Beneath that mooned low hush

The memory of you, a tease of distant light.

Past the Well Hill’s slope of houses,
like secret lives, the glossed birds hide
familiar songs carried out to waters,
settling with those flecks of promise,
heckling with the tide.

A path of leaves, dusty, trodden flat,
that widens through a slant of trees
that was once a railroad track, that’s now
a ‘Greenfield Valley’ walk and here,
with guileless hope,

I kick through these spills of russet,
dig deep beneath melts of snow
to feel the cut and twist of root, that faint
awareness of its touch, as this
brief connection grows

Cold like the cloud’s brief skulk and
then mocked by wren and crow, 
its memory, that scours through naked trees,
for a brief reminder of that moment’s fluke
yet lost within the shadows

That hurries me, through a fall of 
stones, copper-coiled and slick
scents of wild garlic, the mill-pool frosted
a mirror of flaxen reeds, a
flurry of starlings’ thick

Wings settling in old abbey walls,
nestled in the hollows, dark eyes sunlit
a glint of stone basking in the ruins,
throwing a line to me, yet severed
by the thought of it.

2. A voice on their mobile phone is their future self, telling them to get a move on. Time is running out.

3. The music they play thickens the beat of their heart.

4. They didn’t see the signs, their eyes lost in someone else’s worry.

5. Like the rest of us, they found themselves stuck in the middle.

6. The body proved it had a mind of its own.

7. Some rules are there to be broken.

8. You have to keep up with the times.

9. Like the rest of us, they wanted to be somewhere else.

10. Because the camera never lies?

                                                     I’m always
                                               wishing for the sun,
                                             yet when it comes  all 
                                         eager, smiling, blinding me 
                                       as I drive and moidering me
                                     as I read, it’s me that starts  to 
                                  hide, closing the blinds with hand
	                          -veiled eyes and then  the  moon
                                 starts, gleaming swollen, slicing-up
                                   the room with shards of  molten
                                     light, that  sweep  across your
                                       sleepy   half-smile, lips that
			                 say more without the fuss
                                               of  sun    and    moon, 
                                                 and this poem’s 
                                                  bloated point.

The sky we looked down on was so old 
a snapshot of its birth,
yesterday’s stars bristled over still waters 
the moon skimmed across its surface
breaking those dark stems of reed,
our eyes caught as flickers in that glassy blue-green. 
As silent as the birds, our smiles hid in shadows,
we were held by the youth in our faces,
believing we would never age.

Believing we would never age,
we were held by the youth in our faces.
As silent as the birds, our smiles hid in shadows,
our eyes caught as flickers. 
In that glassy blue-green, the moon skimmed across its surface,
breaking those dark stems of reed.
Yesterday’s stars bristled over still waters,
a snapshot of its birth. 
The sky we looked down on was so old.