A few poems from my 2023 Worple Press collection: Beyond the Gate.

***

Using Greenwood’s Large-Scale Map of the County of Suffolk (1825) to find my friend’s house

Slow through rain and murk – down School Lane,
past the gate to Captain’s Wood,
left on Ferry Road, left again by Red House Farm
and then a mile of Roman road and sandy track –

back two hundred years along dotted lines
between black ditches, over wooden bridges
to the edge of the eastern reaches –

fields dissolve, the settle of shingle almost audible;
somewhere close, an invisible river lags
its silty way through marsh and curlew country.

He calls it his lonely house –
this place at the land’s precarious rim.
I hear him slide the bolt of the old oak door,
see him standing tall in a shutter of light.

***

Self-portrait as boundary oak

A few of us still mark the forest’s edge
though some are dead or tilting.

I’m fonder of bones than I was, proud
of creviced bark, circles of growth, years

enclosing heartwood. Each storm
sways me further out over a sandy field

or in towards crowded and earthy places;
it’s late – I breathe, and I listen to breath.

Shadows pencil my skin this cold afternoon
before the green blooding of spring.

***

Burning

I’ve tasted it before, in this boy’s mouth.
He says, Come on! Why not try one?
Okay, I’m ready, I tell him. So he
lights up, leans across and slips the fag

between my lip-glossed lips. A bonfire!
But I suck it, suck like it’s giving me
life – wet Players filter, halting drag

of bitter smoke. Oh yes, I’m trying.
He teaches me how to inhale, hold on,
then exhale politely over my shoulder.

I still have the Instamatic snap he took
at The Anchor on our last date – me
in a black dress, blowing smoke rings,
fairground goldfish trapped in a bowl.

Eighteen years and fifty thousand fags
later, just two months married, in love
with my love in a tiny top-floor flat,
and he falls ill for Christmas – can’t

lift his head to smoke. My chance
finally to go cold turkey. By the time
he’s back on his feet, we’ve both quit.

I must have last lit up on Boxing Day
that year. I can’t now recall the brand,
how it tasted. Did I blow smoke rings?

I’ve no snap to tell me that, or what
I was wearing. My closing fag went un-
noted. One of those endings that only
afterwards turns out to be an ending.

***

Crossing the Styx in the Quiet Carriage

This was a big mistake. The Quiet Carriage isn’t quiet,
it shudders with envy, lust, neurosis, fatigue, regret –
rendered more palpable by the desire for peace.
Those of us who reserve these quiet seats
are super-sensitive. Our skins are thinner.

A woman with a condescending voice insists, Welcome
aboard this Great British Railway Service, her words
accompanied by a sonic rainbow of nose-blowings,
slurps, sneezes, whispers, foot-shufflings,
gut-rumblings, crackling KitKat wrappers.

WhatsApp alerts vie with announcements: Please
leave all your belongings behind. We’re approaching our final
destination, where this life terminates. Take care stepping down.
My time here will soon be done; I’ll walk
into authentic silence, uninterruptible air.

***

St Lucy’s Day, 4.15 pm

A blackbird in the cherry tree
gathers and stitches quiet
into a song for this terse day.

Cold air bristles with sudden dark.
Two robins serenade the street lamp
while children settle in luminous rooms.

She walks into her garden
under invisible stars, to find
and rake and heap late-fallen leaves –

bleached oak and silver birch bark
lighting her path through night
into tomorrow, next year.

*****

Here are four poems here are from my 2019 Waterloo Press collection: Each Other.

How weather affects them

Accustomed to the yes and no of things,
one day she’s brimming, mercurial,
the next, a dish of mud.

When it’s wet, he remembers drought.
When there’s only dust,
he wants rain to flood the shallows.

Winds have scoured her surface,
sunlight has bleached her.
She knows the tight smother of ice.

He positions his boot with care
and enjoying the pressure, the give,
lets his weight slow-shatter the crust.

His prescription

Talk to your Pharmacist if you
take Beta-blockers or Medicines that make you Drowsy
Talk to your Doctor if you may be Pregnant If you are Breast-
feeding If you plan to become If symptoms do not
If you develop new symptoms If you are

Do not if you have ever had
Nerve damage Ringworm Allergic reactions
Heart failure Do not with Paracetamol or Anti-
coagulants Avoid if intolerant If pump has not been worked
for a short period re-prime Never mix with Alcohol

Swallow morning and evening with water
for a week Do not chew If Drowsy do not operate
Never take extra if you wake Do not allow to freeze Do not
use after If you ingest by mistake
Skip at least one

You may drink Alcohol
If you accidentally overdose do not worry
Go immediately to Casualty If you feel no better
Resume as soon as you remember Apply a thin layer Wait
one hour A single Dose may be enough

If you experience Tingling Flushing
Cramps Palpitations Skin rash Weakness
Bleeding or Swelling of face tongue lips or throat Drowsiness
Confusion Increased growth in unexpected places
Make another Appointment

Keep out of reach of Children
Away from naked flame Ask your Pharmacist
about disposal Do not in household waste Set aside
some time each day to Relax and Unwind Keep this safe
You may need to read it again

Her possible deaths

After she’s prepared, she goes downstairs and opens the front door, to find more than half of them missing. This is regrettable but there’s nothing to be said or done.

All day she wonders how many will still be there by nightfall, and she goes about finding things for their comfort. She wants to make them comfortable.

She lays things on the grass around the house – cushions, books, magazines. Red and green apples, cheese and bread. They take what they want, then move away into the trees.

For hours she watches from an upper window, heedless of sunlight edging across the room. By evening, almost all of them are gone.

Just three return the next day, and the next, week after week, helping themselves to her offerings. She comes to think of them as companions, friends. She hopes she won’t have to choose between these three.

How she goes on

When she repeats herself, when she tries
to explain her feelings, pin them down,

he listens for two minutes, no less, no more,
then fills the kettle, sets it on the stove.

While it rumbles and coughs, he considers
the voices around him, their various tones.

The kettle hisses, rattles. And this woman
rattles and hisses too, pacing the kitchen,

her voice rising now with the steam –
higher and thinner. Last week she said

precisely this, how she couldn’t go on.
Can’t go on. Next week she’ll say it again.

Here are two poems from Springlines:

Water spirit

Jack squats
by the weed-green pool
watching water
tumble
swirl and ditch

chasing
into the drown-dark –
endless flow work

all sap-skin
Jack sinks
into writhing wetblack –

head dipping under
and up

the fierce joy-ache
of his frozen skull

and the red iron tang

making him
flip-kick
spit-laugh
shiver-grin

windhints trick-track
air teases water
teases Jack
resting in the deep
inkdark under

windcricked
Jack slow-turns
lift-drifting
quicker now
swells and churns
black stroke blue
mudspins
curls
reaches up

bending into sliplight

slick-backed
all awake Jack
breaks through

and surface-dances

trembling with ripple work

Cart pond, East Chiltington

Low sky. Low mist. Oak leaves curl
the surface of the pond. This pool
is dark green, old. Carts once
stopped here on summer afternoons –

tall nettles, light playing on water,
oxen and horses drinking at the pond’s
perimeter as men dragged
the cart frames in deep and deeper

to slake the wood of iron-tyred wheels.
At dusk, the men waded back in,
hauled out the carts – everything
fitting again, for now.

Summer, cart wheels, clear water.
All known, forgotten. Half-submerged.
Like those men rolling the carts down
and into the pool’s heart.

This poem won the Poetry on the Lake International Poetry Competition in 2013. It also appears in Each Other:

The Aftermath Inspector

The boy wakes to the red call in the green night.
Unmoving on his narrow bed, he hears
his father run downstairs to fix quick tea, and then

his steady dressing – overalls, gauntlets, waders –
according to what kind of aftermath it is.
Hours until he’s back, hours the boy wonders

how many yards of buckled track, how many carriages.
He imagines arclights, inspectors gathering screws
and bolts, identifying scattered parts.

Later, his father props the waders in the shed
and sits. Resting, he says. The boy stays close,
waits for him to search his bag. A trophy from the site.

Over the years he’s brought three merlin feathers,
the cracked skull of a hare, one perfect ammonite,
a roe buck’s antler (velvet still attached)

and now this grey stick with the sway of a swan’s neck.
The boy watches his father place the keepsake
on the store-room shelf, he sees him

climb the stairs to wash, and dress
in other clothes for other work, as people do
who witness engines burst open in the dark.

Here are two poems from ‘Self-portrait without Breasts’:

Two weeks before surgery

Cast me and I will become what I must be

We’ve oiled my shoulders, collarbone,
breasts – olive-scented, shiny
as greased rubberwood, I’m primed for casting.
You soak chalky bandages, wrap me

in slapstick layers of white –
a sacrament to tender body and life.
Working fast before the plaster sets
we smooth wet dressings onto slippery skin –

keep my contours, take my shape;
at every fold and ruck we stop, look closer
to remember. I lie death-still, encased,
breath slow-drawn, not to crack my shell:

an end and a beginning. Beneath the carapace
I hum a lullaby – you lift the curves away,
cast off my breastplate,
air moving like shadow over sentenced flesh.

Breast care nurse

She whistles in – flat shoes, primary colours,
wide smile:

Remember to take some softies when you leave –
use them as soon as your wounds are closed,
wear them with a comfy bra, baggy top,
nobody’ll guess. Then call and make a date
for silicone ones, any size you fancy, they’ll look good
under a T-shirt or vest. Try different brands
till you find what suits – so many kinds,
even stick-ons for nights.

I want to tell her
I am my own woman-warrior,
heart just under the surface. I let go of pretence
weeks before the surgeon drew
his blue arrows on my chest.

I wrote ‘Airman’ when I was writer in residence at Woodlands Organic Farm. It was first published in Resurgence and then in Treasure Ground. It has been broadcast on BBC Radio Lincolnshire.

Airman

Flying Officer Ray Bédard, aged 25, of 439 Squadron RCAF, was flying from RAF North Luffenham in a Canadair Sabre MK2 on 23 June, 1953. He broke from formation and was killed after bailing out while his aircraft was in a steep dive. The plane crashed in a field by Whitehouse Farm near Woodlands.

There’s still the geometry
of lanes and dykes and hedges,
a spirit-level horizon. East, the North Sea
sheet-metal smooth to the sun.
West, a thousand fields beyond Long Tankins

hundreds of nameless shades of green.
Now, as then, the invisible skylark
rehearses, rehearses. The marsh harrier
glides low over wheat, drops on a vole.
Hares lie in hollows, unblinking.

I wrote ‘Valuables’ when I was working at HMP Shepton Mallet.

Valuables

At the second razor fence
she turns right
for the visitors’ locker room;
she leaves her stuff
and takes the key,
pressing it into the corner of her pocket
like a lover’s keepsake,
something reassuring to touch
knowing that later
she’ll wriggle the key
and spring the little vented door
to reclaim the purse,
the driver’s licence, the paracetamol,
the blockbuster she was reading
this morning, as she sat in the sun
on the steps outside
waiting to go in.