an open field

... past standing stones, invisible tombs, the path Chaucer's pilgrims took across the North Downs, the stone cold dead in churchyards, listening to the sound my feet make on lanes, on mud and stone, sharing my breath, the thump of my heartbeats, with sheep, the sky, fields. Sometimes I wonder how I got here, what propelled me forward to this moment when the snags of fleece along a wire fence shine with glory, when another rise in the track ahead is an inspiration not a defeat.  And I think of the words, 'yes', and, 'you can', and the centuries of people before me who said them out loud, or quietly to themselves, believing that something could change. And here I am changing almost nothing in the world and still feeling better for it. trail run seeing the wood  and the trees Blithe Spirit 29.1 - 2019

even amongst all this grey light

Into the dark My father cannot name a single animal for the memory nurse. No farm or wild animal. Not even the simplicity of dog or cat or any of the fish he used to catch. I imagine them circling the dark auditorium of his brain – sheep, lion, tiger, trout – a silent carousel refusing to yield to the roll of his tongue.   Parkinson’s dementia a blackbird almost invisible in the winter's dusk First published Haibun Today Vol 13 No 1, March 2019

moon in the trees me and the blackbird singing

my mother cries on the other end of the phone hard rain

Remember. Imagine. I know the smoke and steam of industry. Tall chimneys, the cordons of terraced houses. Shift changes: men in caps and thick jackets leaving or returning home in the dark. The cover of Frances Angela’s new chapbook, Philip Street , evokes these memories of my hometown in South Wales. I recall the streets named for landowners, builders and benefactors. Remember the kids we were warned against playing with …   they didn’t like me playing with patsy o’malley they said her family were thieves and rogues [i] And there was the library too: the library just for the smell [ii] I know that smell: dust, polish, paper.   But then my childhood path diverges from the one that unfolds in the subsequent pages: a children’s home, a catechism class, whiskey. This is not my story. Yet somehow, it is my story, the one I imagine, the one I experience through my senses… pub night the dark heap of mother’s clothes [iii] … and through empathy...

good days bad days always the light at our feet