Priorities Will the world be better with my poem in it? We won’t find out if I hang out the laundry first, or answer emails and scroll some internet fluff. The world may not care what I write about varifocals or politicians or heatwaves, but it won’t get the chance to judge if […]
Marginalia – 100 words
Marginalia When I find something brilliant in a book that bursts with ideas and sparklingly beautiful versions of things I suddenly realise I knew all along but didn’t have the words for it hurts a bit. Tenderness prodded. I want to take these treasures and hug them, sift them, frame them, try them on and […]
Mental load – 100 words
Mental load dentist, haircuts worm tablets, damp on the ceiling just out of date stewing steak, and the squeaky garden gate a change in teenage behaviour, keep an eye on that school trip to be paid for and verrucas again quick trip to the supermarket between band practice and scouts don’t forget Susan’s birthday […]
Herbal Medicine – 100 words
Strawberry Moon – 100 words
Strawberry moon Lush with the kiss of warm evenings and sticky sweet fruit promises it hangs ripe and fat where abundance meets greed and juice bursts, flows, rushes sating all senses In belly-tight contentment, we lie under gentle air that whispers to my skin, and turn to trust this season’s lust and, eventually, […]
Middle-aged bingo – 100 words
What is a birthday – 100 words
Dryad – 100 words
Dryad I’m young in the woods with new-hatched insects, buzzing busy, and idle hop birds, indolent and dusty. I can see child hands, pressed on rock, in sand, digging and wriggling with worms or gleaming beetles, palm of night-green leaf crush. Kneeling to work and study knobbles under canopy ferns: my nest, […]