A Different Stroke

Riding directly into October's morning sun,

all the white reflecting, light rivering into us

off the long rain-skinned asphalt,

you're holding tight behind me, Dad,

laughing over the throatsong of this big bike's

boxer-twin and all the wind's fierce roar.

We never got to do this, but here, heading to

the hospital, we're doing it anyway. Can you feel

how the hard air makes tears, and all this noise

pares out a filtered shell of voice, inaudible,

so that the beat of consonants, the colour

of its vowels, holds all there is to say?

Nothing's left unspoken, Dad. Hold me, let go,

look, no hands, only light. It's all light ahead.

First published by One Hand Clapping, this is one of a series of poems about the death of my father, a gentle soul.

Ode on a Barge Stove

Cast in cold iron, first time I fired you up

on a chill April evening your backplate was

broken, fuel scarce, and the must of the old damp

boat mixed with smoke and the sweet stench of river.

I remembered joy.

Then summer came and fixing the shitter and

scaffold planks for a table, rebuilding a

galley, swapping rotten floorboards gathered all

attention; you lay cool until replated.

Once lit, here was home.

Since? You glow, roar, tick, November through April.

Here’s to hungry friends, Morsø Squirrel the great

barge stove, hurling slow heat out into winter

through this vessel renovated, rescued, just

for you, you might think.

Winter sees life on a narrowboat compress

to your radius of warmth, the rest - bow and

stern - accessible, but see-air cold, fetch-trips

only. All dwelling happens here; hibernate,

or live in close-up.

And if you think that our two warm bodies - yours

harder, hotter; both a little rusty - two

years in have come to triangulate around

a third, whose heat flows the length, who breathes out spring,

I think you would grin.

First published in The Alchemy Spoon, issue 6

Lundy Island, Bristol Channel

1.

Stubborn as the head of an old flat nail

stood proud of the grain, a danger to slipping

fingers making glib passage over dry

parallels to a channel swell, never

suspecting the force, the sheer stop-and-slice

in an oblong block of granite that is

three miles long and old as the sea

2.

Words like cauldron, scale, and fulmar flit past

as spit in the wind - here, where air havers

(those slow huff instants, clung to the highest

frozeframe toppling blocks) then is lost at sea.

All of us, migrants - birds, even the scribed graffiti

on neolithic graves, christian headstones -

all passing through, all time-ground, ash and dust.

3.

Here's the hut where we friends, migratory,

stop quiet as wind's quick lull, auscultate

a nearer past; bold piracy, slavers' gold.

Bristol-bound ships passed right by here, watched

by bright puffins, shedding spoiled cargoes which

won't melt in time as mere stone - still stand hard,

proud, sharp as any of the dead we build upon.

First published in Alchemy Spoon issue 9

Fatherprayer 

You’ve little need now 

to be held or steadied, even 

at a kerb, but you grip me, 

giggle with each wobble, 

and clasp my arm. 

New skates erase the dull 

glitch and ratchet of everyday

steps, and from here I see you 

gliding out onto life, remembering 

the letting slip that small green bicycle, 

me running close behind, arms 

outstretched, and you, 

knowing I was there but proud, 

gripping a separate destiny with 

your grin and a catch of wind. 

Now, your wheels obey, well 

mostly, and I fatherpray 

to poor earth’s brittle crust: 

stay intact and just hold,

and when you do crack, 

mind to show her love’s gold.

The Last Ness of You

Here, land's last whisper is 

a sandy promontory,

a final whip-thin diminuendo

washed away on one side 

by tide-scrub, on the other by 

estuary scour. Where finally 

it waterlogs, the sand sinks 

to a dun shimmer, reflects

fifty waders’ legs as inked cross-

hatchings, and teems.

//////// \\ ///////// \\\\// //////////// //\\ /////// //

Every ness is a saving grace, too; 

last grasp for wash-aways,

an ending place forever just ahead

of sea's takeover, and a first 

welcome out of wilderness. Across 

time, like this thinning land,

the tidal height between your in-breaths 

and out-breaths attenuated; 

sometimes your smiles still broke clear, 

or a brief scatter of words

like sandpipers, lifted to skim the quiet

unending North Sea surf.

First published Lighthouse Journal vol 27, 2024

Mud Soup and Babble

Just where water and flat mud meet,

there's a line without any edge

where water insinuates infinity in sediment.

That line's hidden away

behind the river's screen,

a longleaf palisade

of flag iris blades,

each one scimitared up through weed that lisps

pure slime, though to touch it gifts

a finger's poor shy tip with something other:

all the fresh-laundered roughness of cotton.

In that secret no-man's gap

water clambers little meniscus ladders,

fiddles capillary ways

between every particulate flake,

interdigitates each spicule of ground mineral

to quench a dark moon-snow

that was carried downstream,

dropped and layered as lines of text.

Mud's history is close enough in to be a story of origin.

Before that it was all just hot bang and dead sweat.

In the beginning was mud soup and babble.

Vowel came first, as wind, before universe

had lips, tongue, teeth. Then consonant,

but not yet word (its slim-fit limbs; its fibs; its hymns).

Nothing happened, mostly. In the beginning

was things let be and then compressed.

The first plosive popped out when mud parted;

a little fart of marsh gas, and all the rest followed.

Mud was first to be marked;

by flies' feet, moorhen's claws, licked into esses

by grass snakes’ bellies: all actions

that left mud impressed, remarking, not quite

remembering, but holding every part as remembrance.

Tenderness came before all this.

A kiss: the one lapping into another;

the liminal before the shore.

Mud won't record the sudden sight -

a cormorant breaking surface now

from just beneath my barge's bow,

a chunky footlong eel twisting

between the grey-pliered billhooks

of its custard beak. All its gallows nonchalance;

juggle-sucking lunch headfirst down,

scrag throat bulging, pulsing with life's beat and fury.

Mud records nothing of death's slow dance.

Nothing but a little guano will be left behind

to mark this brief triangulation of our six eyes,

the two satiated, two busy

being sleeved in black gullet,

two startled, wondering, aware

that if mud won't mark it, descendants will.

A record's pressed, untended as an echo,

its layers slick and smear. This dry set ink.

First published by One Hand Clapping