In the corner of the garden, in a tree
A squirrel feasts on cobnuts.
It throws half to the ground to rot.
Selects the best of plenty.

The tree is so big now that its pushing against our stone wall, they say.
Slowly, over time, displacing it.
Exchanging its soft Cotswold boundaries with trunk and bark.

We have fattened ourselves on contentment.
The leaner times come in it seems.
I fear I'll lose you and no matter how much I relentlessly reshape,
I can't be sure or certain.

I dream of plain planks in a nunnery cell.
Rough grey blankets against my skin. Feet on a concrete floor.
I'm turned inwards and outwards
Searching for harsh comfort to replace egyptian cotton sheets.

Heights of delarious brightness are gone.
Where there was flesh theres only bone.
All our cushions turned to stone.

In Marcassie, the grass-fed cows are community owned.
Here, ideas are new or flowering.

When everything locked down, we dug a vegetable bed shaped like a coffin.
Those who saw it asked if your husband was buried underneath the kale and beetroot.

A red-haired woman reads a poem to the cherry tree.

In Marcassie, the Northern lights can sometimes be seen at this time of year.

In this room, there is always a fly trying to leave.
It never quite makes it.
It buzzes angily off and on against the glass pane.

Through the window July treetops are a green forgetting of other seasons. Winter is a dream, shrouded in leafy abundance. Spring is a thought of Summer before it came.

On an island in Denmark, you drink white wine.
You are mellow and tipsy, you say.
Hares play in front of you in a field,
They rarely think of leaving
or playing a better game.

When we feel incompatable
and I search my choices for the wrong one
I find none.

I have worries that buss around my head
like the wasps who were nesting in our roof.
There one day, gone the next.

We are masters of the rational.
When heart is gone,
lets see how you fit, how I fit
like peices in a jigsaw,
to make a better whole.

I meet Grace outside Brixton station
Her eyes roll upwards when she speaks of Jesus.
She is pushing the pamphlets of the Lord.
Sword raised and on a mission.
I think I know how this will go.

But does the cleaning up of SE9
The tidy line of once sprawling back street garages,
The neatening of shuttered-down shops
which exhale reggae and ***** and
The popping up of suprisingly good architecture,
Signal a shift in the redemption business?

Grace asks me if I've ever felt envy
I say Yes Grace regularly
She says God will forgive you.
I say I have already forgiven me.

We struggle to win the same ground for a while,
Battle over paths to peace
Go round and round
Up, over and underneath, what she thinks, what I think.
Until with sinking heart and flailing energy.
I move through wild eyed bag ladies
To another piece of street.

She got under my skin did Grace.
Reminds me how stone-carved my faith can be.
Creating certainty, even from mystery.
Perhaps we sin in the same church,
We probably shop in the same covered market.

When nothings wrong,
I dont write well.
I try and fail to think of a word besides 'filters' to describe the light coming through the wisteria leaves.
Soak up the light-filled air of the early morning,
And call this a day of few words.

There’s a new bird in the garden
A call I haven’t heard before.
I dream of beavers, incongruous and out of place.
Dam-building swimmers with no tails.

In a field nearby crows shout their business
I saw the planting there yesterday
A strong woman soring up the earth against the seedlings.

I spend too much on small-***** organic chickens.
Forage mushrooms righteously
Whilst wondering if they’ll make us sick.
I try to get it right
Over and over again