Poetry

When the call came, it took me by surprisethough only an hour beforeI was trying to convince my worried wife.“It will come soon”, I told her, more inhope than in expectation.“You always say that”, she said,“always so positive, so bloody optimistic.” So, when the call...

A cat has nine lives,the number of saplingswe planted in the gardensome four years ago. The saplings each honoureach of our grandchildrenbut there is one tree morespecial than the others. It is dressed in brown leavesprotected by the barewinter arms of the oak...

So let me tell you about the time we sat on the moonand splashed by the sea.Let me tell youhow we roamedthe hills and cameback contented. Let me tell youhow the tide swerved inour imaginationand the stars glistenedwith delight aswe sang to the futurewe...

We may never knowwhat shocking fatecrushed tiny Thomasafter so short a time;what made life seemso fragile and so precious.We may never know. We will never knowhow tiny Thomas would havebonded with Jack his twin,how they would have played,cried and laughed.Just like...

Cruellest April makes way for marvellous May mixing the memory, distorting the desire. For God has played his hand, shuffling a shipwreck of confusion with a sardonic smile, Lockdown meets longing. In the woods outside, the bluebells have bled their joy. And now the...

My fitness coach, Ian, all muscles and bathed in tattoos, back powered by a giant angel, talks of north-east Middlesborough, where he spent his hard-nosed youth. Punch-ups at the weekends, waiting outside clubs fuelled by voluminous vodka. The occasional visit to...

We sit in a congregation Lutheran, as it happens, In Sweden let me say, Listening to organ music, The sparkle of Christmas Lights twinkling In this bold Stockholm church And I keep thinking Is this a real community? The dark-haired woman in front Places her hand on...

If I have held the world too tightly in my tactless hands and hoped to squeeze it like an orange, it was because I was too young to love or that I loved too rashly. Yesterday you came and departed in a hurry, but you left behind a few words softly spoken not in...