Thursday 31 December 2020

January























Sky tilted its face to leeward
in the slant of the year ending,
a simple turning away from yesterday
displacing distance, having come this far.

Tuesday 29 December 2020

Surfaces



Layered and level, 
landscape waits for sky…

            …to wash the angled trees with wind or light,
            …to wash the upturned leaves.

Wednesday 23 December 2020

Pure Invention
















Where we live
is pure invention,
the cage in which we pace,
where we dwell, creatures of habit.

Saturday 12 December 2020

Tuesday 8 December 2020

Monday 30 November 2020

Friday 27 November 2020

Songs of Cold














Earth’s spine shivers, remembering snow;
inverted atmospheres press white
on the hollow ground.

Wednesday 25 November 2020

I know what’s














it’s not glass but I see thru it
with my minds-eye
birds-eye beady on the screen
looking for what it is I mean
when I say ‘I know’

Monday 23 November 2020

don’t need rhyme…























don’t need rhyme (not all the time)
and seldom if ever at the end of a line
I don’t use it much but I choose it
at random for words and phrases
to ease the flow, to make it go

Wednesday 11 November 2020

year on year



year on year trumpets sound
thin notes echoing
fading notes on dead walls

Sunday 1 November 2020

My mother, in her agile mind…










My mother,
in her agile mind,
nurtured clairvoyance;
her tea- and cake-time séances
her mysticism in the parlours of an afternoon,
were the leaves in upturned cups
foreseeing tomorrow.

Thursday 29 October 2020

Friday 23 October 2020

saturday









being
released
normal service
to be resumed
when the minutes
have gone un-clocked
and the hours without end
sneak past midnight
till dawn is
broken

Thursday 22 October 2020

sunday





a
kirk
spire
against 
blue sky points 
to a heaven of mystery 
more distant than weather 
or the weathercock spinning 

monday













clocks dominate
the grey dawn skyline 

the small hours fade 

tuesday















wake
as appointed

rise up and go
wherever they tell you
it is morning or afternoon

Wednesday 7 October 2020

wednesday






















mercurial
in its rising 
eloquent until
silence falls 
after all the days before
for all those that now
must follow

Thursday 1 October 2020

thursday
















one day 
marking time
as tedious to go back
as go on to the bitter end
where everything 
begins

Wednesday 30 September 2020

his work
















a hand on a saw
one generation gone
a hand like mine
        on wood
        working the grain

Tuesday 29 September 2020

Circling Water
















Moving air
breathes tongues of cloud
through heaven’s open mouth;

    and licks the salt waves dry.

Sunday 27 September 2020

Na h’Eileanan Mòra


An ocean floor pushed against heaven,

     broke the surface with its basalt bones

where the wind was from the west,

     and the sunlight poured down…











Saturday 19 September 2020

friday
















friday
came and went
the sun unseasonable
the sea reflective
human time
already
begun

Monday 31 August 2020

Horology

















Outside my old room,
humid with dreams, rain fell
warm in the arms of darkness,

drummed its thousand beats.

only roads and rails
















and there were only 
roads and rails
a crossroads
beneath a horizon
a dangerous sky
where trees overshadowed
distance
and clouds
in a smoking heaven

Friday 28 August 2020

Automatic Writing
















The automatic poem wrote itself,
its pen, a jumbled board of keys,
a trivial swill of data and, here,
a work of art, soi-disant, appears.

Thursday 6 August 2020

Mine is the Art












Mine is the art of disorderly rhyme
every word broken, begged or borrowed,
every syllable spoken, a token of tomorrow.

Friday 31 July 2020

Thursday 30 July 2020

Bronzed














I won a war, said one;
I started a war I couldn’t finish, said another,
and we, they said, were cast in bronze…

Tuesday 30 June 2020

Wednesday 3 June 2020

shackled and drawn






















this is how
fortunes were made
from the fruit of our bones
field and furrow subverted open sky
sweat out of sunlit drudgery

Friday 29 May 2020

Triggered by Cloud













On fire in a high sky,
sunlight vaguely filtered,
sliding down, attenuated,
my eyes' pointed staring,
my reminder of a face;

Sunday 17 May 2020

My Old Man's War






















It was little people
Crossing the channel;
Their Dunkirk spirit
Cut the flannel.

Covid-UK










Covid, livid,
Viruses tire us
The things that ail you
Respiratory failure…

Anthropolypse




















Mother Earth,
Oh bother, dearth;
Foiled it, spoiled it,
Death and decay,
No birth today;

Wednesday 22 April 2020

solitary confinement
















long days in a walled garden
the sun leaves behind its shadows
and the wind begins to warm
unexpected and so soon

Gowk











Apryle cam an wi' it
thon heidsman, a gowk himself,
that, lang afore the month began,
had proved himsel mair o a gype
than ony gaen afore.

Tuesday 7 April 2020

Wonder











Time
slides like a river
largely unannounced except for
the sound of air drawn down to stone
and set free as erosion scours
the river’s bed.

Thursday 26 March 2020

Black Haun an the Weaver























Coin spun the air aroon’t an fell on the blue tattoo.
Black Haun cleek’t his bluebird ower the silver’t nickel.
He bade Chaunce to spik afore the Law steps in
tae spik o gravity, averages, diminishin returns.

then there is mystery












then there is the mystery
of upward-falling rain
how eyes become prisms
bending tomorrow’s light

Monday 23 March 2020

Mother

Chiming,
the bells ring for necessity,
crying from their hearts:
who’s there, who’s not,
who was, was never.

Thursday 19 March 2020

in times of isolation
















in times of isolation hear
lone strings vibrate feel
air on your face remember
the shape of crowds moving

Monday 16 March 2020

breeze














wind blows from the east
(no longer an ill wind) and the west
discretely coughs behind its hand

Sunday 8 March 2020

Friday 6 March 2020

Avenue






















Was it sun in the pine trees,
or cypress branches feathered
under snow? or, in the frost,
hemlock needles remembering
lemon-scented spring-time?

Saturday 29 February 2020

Resistance














In the Americas,
never peaceful,
neighbours
in paralysed cities,
dance around each other
and arrive at blows,
words of distance
and dissent;

Smeddum













As if I was ground to dust and my heart still in it,
even with my bones powdered to meal,
my blood dried to a paste and my flesh
in torn strips, dried to pemmican;

I would still drag a smile from this pulled-pork face,
let the half-hearted wind blow my hopeless pieces into piles,
and still feel earthbound energy rise from my grains.

Sunday 23 February 2020

metadata



















software parses
motherboards mirror you
sector by sector
passwords protect us