leaving home
the children’s bubbles
in spring wind

Stolen by a naughty wind
the child’s hat

Eighteen today
she goes out wearing pink fairy wings
and clutching a wand

Three boxes of vinyls,
a suitcase full of paperbacks;
two lives meet.

drifting chimney smoke
becomes an October sky
my hair grows grey

drifting snow
the old sheepdog
feigns a roll

An old woman buys snowdrops –
listens, sixty years ago,
to a thrush.

walking up the hill
we feel for each other –
feeling our age

Too much grief
quietly I oil and sharpen
the old chainsaw

i love saturday night
he said then began
crying into his beer

from the pub sways
a choir, tied and suited,
on a cloud of aftershave

migrating geese –
her scent finally
gone from my pillow

Half-remembered face ahead –
a sudden shared interest
in cloud formation

Lives of the Poets;
immortalised on the page –
a small squashed insect.

Yew-shaded tombstone:
On its faint inscription stands
An empty wineglass

Month after month
On the councillor’s face
A councillor’s mask

Rain and the ghosts of rain
conjure the mountain.
Everything will disappear.

early dark
the cathedral visible
only as windows

Two cups of cold tea
clink together on the nightstand
with each creak of the bed.

Cobwebs
in cracked window glass
an unknown face

nothing to wake me
after the birds
since you oiled the gate

the cow’s measuring eye
dismisses me for more
important things

our house for sale
the trees we planted sparkle
with this morning’s rain

calling home –
the colour of mother’s voice
before her words

She waits with me
at the crossing – the light

Aber’s first roundabout
The whole world turns
Differently now

Hay’s almost in—
Summer’s too short here
for romance

all those things
I wish now I’d asked you
snow falling

she moves out
filling the empty room
spring light

Laughter among the graves
‘the days of man are as grass’
but today’s a picnic

sharing a grave:
two strangers (her husbands)
waiting for her