Wanting to write a poem, I pulled a sheaf of paper out from the recess of a mottled kauri cabinet and happened on the petals of some delicate blossom pressed pink veined dead centre on the thin blank page,…

Poem from a Three Year Old And will the flowers die? And will the people die? And every day do you grow old, do I grow old, no I’m not old, do flowers grow old? Old things – do you…

  I shall make it simple so you understand. Making it simple will make it clear for me. When you have read it, take me by the hand As children do, loving simplicity. This is the simple poem I have…

  In the silence of the moment a word – a word & the moment – a word discovered drawn from confusion drawn from the air that surrounds you clouds that move over you: thoughts not yet thoughts a pin-point…

The summer’s here. Down to the beach to swim and lounge and swim again. Gorgeous bodies young and old. Me too. Just gorgeous. Just feeling good and happy and so at ease in the world.   And come evening a…

So extraordinary was your sister’s short life, it’s hard for me to see   a future for you. I know it’s there, your horizon of adulthood,   reachable across a stretch of ordinary days, yet I can’t believe   my…

Amelia, your newborn name Combines with the midwife’s word And, like smoke from driftwood fires, Wafts over the lochside road Past the wattle byre – hay bales For ponies, Silver and Whisper – Between drystone walls’ river- Rounded moss-clad ferny…

Like other identical twins, they can be better told apart in adulthood. One is fast to wrinkle her brow, her brain, her quick intelligence. The other dreams inside a constellation, freckles of Orion. They were born when I was thirteen,…

I was a boy when the dinosaurs dragged their dead-weight tails through the museums of knowledge: so suffocating their mass, the marvel of it was they lived at all.   But by the time I got to university, they had…

* in hay waist-deep was  uncle who said he saw lash of rain snap upward viper- sharp to bite the coming-down tail – another tending eaves at top of ladder felt on his back drops worse than wasps to a…

The mouth of the city is tongued with tar  its glands gutter saliva, teeth chatter in rail  clatter, throat echoes car horns and tyre’s  screech, forging new language: a brick city  smoke-speak of stainless steel consonants  and suffocated vowels. These are trees and …

last night you sang to my body  praised every inch of it  made it feel rare and royal  spoke to it the way you might speak  to a child in need of self  esteem     taking time on each part …

This is my prayer to thee, my lord—strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart.  Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows.  Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.  Give…

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;  Where knowledge is free;  Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;  Where words come out from the depth of truth;  Where…

Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!  He is there where…

I want to be as close to you as the name San Juan de Aznalfarache when you struggle to say it. A tune in the head you can’t forget. A name full of vitamins. A word so rich that I…