Just one hair
on a pillow slip or crumpled sheet.
And I would lie, contented on my side,
gaze at it, as if it were you.

​

​

​

​

What I have lost from you,

wisdom, might and delicacy

settled into the thinnest layers

softened by a covering of dust.

for you to touch all I have lost

is to touch that in yourself.

​

​

​

Fragile, Medusas’s Laugh Press 2019

I'm sorry

I let you drop into the ground, that dark place.

Your bones in a box kept from me by the soil they insisted must lie between us.

​

Your skin has flaked into the earth but maybe your bones might shine if I came to you, brushed them clean, stroked them and stroked them until they gleamed.

I don't mind the soil, any love that has leached I will replace.

​

And you?

Do you miss your bones?

Do you secretly wish you could slip down to join them again, fit round them again, walk with them as I so long to do?

​

Dream Catcher 37, Stairwell Books, 2018

Stubborn embers insist - I have not lit the candles but the screen saver is glowing.

The moon slithers in through fog-buttered windows - the dirt spewings of the A10.

The light from the bathroom creeps down the stairs tripping over stripped Victorian paint.

Berries gleam on the mistletoe I did not buy.

 

(More) New Poems for Christmas, Live Canon 2018