The sea is grumpy
No angry
Foaming
Smashing pebbles
Battering seagulls
Roaring its cold, grey voice at the sky
On the shore I’m small as a pebble
Invisible in the grey wind
Only the rain sees me
The hovering seagull
And the angry waves

Look another way
Toward dreams
My hair is a tangle of black eels
Curled up in flowers
Contained and blue-tattooed
My ******* bare.

My legs hidden
I kick like a mule
My fingernails are talons

You cannot contain me
In this small Spanish town
I am not contained
Anywhere
I spill out of blue
Pluck flowers from the graves of the dead
My mouth is not for kissing.

It was a day for dandelion clocks
A breeze brisk off the sea
The grass waving; an ocean of it
And the seed-heads
Floating on their parachutes
Fairies, you said
Once upon a time

I was surprised
Watching their white drift
The lines of willows swaying

At two
I wondered about lions
Their yellow manes
But these were more like the sun
Burning on the grass
On the day of clocks

A canyon snaking
Through dust
The moon a full stop
A rocky place
Scattered with bird-song

A thousand feet above the valley
Caterpillars
A shell caught in stone
An eagle spinning the void
The sun blazing

An impossible shadow
A long road between stars
Your voice
Cracking the stones

The fire smoking
A meteor burning the sky
The waves calling
You sleeping

White sand
Strewn with violet
A single boat
For carrying

Water ice-blue
Sky-blue
Eye-blue
To drown in

Four walls high
A window against the night
The stars rubbed out
All for breaking

The Nakhal fort cleaner,
broom like an automatic weapon,
bucket, a water grenade.
Posing against the sun-bleached wall
he seems about to run,
as we click
and click,
catching his faded trousers,
his white shirt and grey beard,  
noble nose,
cloth ragged round his head.

I thought he would recite passages of poetry
Rumi and Firdawsi,
I had a mind he could view my heart,
what hid there.
But he said nothing,
and gazed into the lens
like a cat.

With his broom and bucket,
he was king of that place,
sweeping stairs and rooms,
the view to the mountains,
a crenulation,
as we stepped along the walls,
debris from another country,
and waited for his broom
to sweep us home.

How beautiful the light is
A luminosity like something never seen before
How it catches the leaf
As it spins and drops gentle as a kiss
I wonder if this is how you fall
Luminous and quiet
Softly spiralling
But you fall screaming
Blood spills from your mouth
Your bones splinter
And the baby is gone from your arms
The leaf spins and drops
How it catches the light
From your fading eyes

Molehill to earth
Thud, thud and thud
Hurtling
Molehill to grass
Hair flying

Heart to breath
Thud, thud and thud
Flowing
Heart to head
Feet hurtling

Hummock to leaf
Thud, thud and thud
Flying
Hummock to sky
Arms flailing

Foot to root
Thud and thud
Stepping
Falling
Thud

Whisper to me
You tall beeches
Whisper your shadows
The words of your leaves
On clouds I sit
Chalk
Your
Boughs
Long
Shadows
Like tresses
Of hills
Soft and downy
With grass

Listen beeches
Remember your days
The way the sun climbs
And lowers itself
Remember drifts of snow
White as chalk

Whisper your secrets of leaves
Let me sleep
Beneath your shadows
Glad that summer is arrived
Before
Snow

There are places I want to take you
Reed-filled
Sky-bound
Where clouds fall upon land
Empty
Held by waves

There are places I want to take you
Tidal flats of mud and glasswort
Trees knitted by sea-winds
Blossomed with lichen
Silent and rusted

There are places I want to take you
Where wood turns to stone
And stones roll
Under a sky
Embracing the shingle

Here I will show you how the sea flows in my veins
How heaven catches my heart
How you might love me

A chorus of gulls on poles
Lines of gulls on the shingle and concrete
Picking over bones, the innards of fish
Pulling at the corners of fake grass
Fighting over sweets.
Stinking gulls
Mewing
Mimicking cats
Flying
Gulls
Strutting their stuff
Nodding
Imitating boats
And sometimes
Even
Silent

At half past seven
Three blue jellyfish passing
An outgoing tide

In green watered space
Lie mysterious deepen
And four poles white sky

En le vert d’eau
Espaces de la ciel et blanc
Quatres objects mysteres

Voices of birds
A white feather is falling
This April evening

Here trees blossom with plastic
Sweet wrappers garland a mossy wall
Empty crisp packets whisper like leaves
And jagged daisies of broken bottles
Scatter the grass

Here a woman,
Rose tattooed
Skin like the bark of trees
Her eyes tin-cans
Trundles her shopping cart
Over catkins of paper cups

Lager, the colour of sap
Leaks from her hands
Her mouth is a bruised petal

High up on the scaffolding
She is green painting
In soft rain
Now she makes
Silent calligraphy
Invisible to the eye

I want to learn another language
How the sea contains itself
How stars are stitched in the sky
How the heart beats

I want to learn another language
How the hole forms in the stone
If the hole contains absence
Or is the mark of something

Single crow
Beach crow
Shimmer
Green
Rusted
Channel- marker
Crow
Among waves
Crow
As breeze ruffles
Your feathers
Blackly
Crow

In the morning
A flight of constant birds
Over early daffodils
And later such stars there were
High above the night trees
As the frosted breath of the river
Slipped slow-cold through low fields
The water silent among the foxes calling
And now we wait for snow again

Mother
The mother is sad with folded arms. The daughter is not sad. In this way the daughter reflects the circle of gold sequins on her pink sweatshirt while the mother continues to stare at the grey sky and the reflections on the water.

Mother 2
The woman loves her daughter, dresses her in pink, buys her a gingerbread man but the mother is sad because once she used to dance all night and laugh and now she cannot, she sees walls all round her and where once she only saw the sky, the stars and endless possibility.

On the 2.23 from London
are sleepless and dark bridges
many trees, green and damp
sometimes sheep
and a woman's voice reading stations
we might pass through

Corners of fields where rushes grow
And cows chew
Under the smoke of clouds
That's a place I want to be

Small copses
Huddled at the edges of things
Where trees hold out their arms
And dance in the wind
Gifting their leaves
That's where I want to be

The Old Man
Holding his staves
Held between the Downs
And a sky
Blue as a sapphire
That's where I'll be

Friday afternoon late May
hopeful for sun
the leaves a cold green
a dove watching
books
falling in fields

Waiting for the rain to stop,
the wind,
darkness turned blue
first birdsong
early flight,
rumbling
dog to bark,
cockerel,
long night to end,
waiting
for small chatterings,
smell of coffee
waking eyes
the light to come,
waiting
for morning

Pigeons strut
Hopeful among lovers
Someone whistles
With the laughter of flowers
Such lovers
As rain falls

Thinking of
Mulled wine and a tired moon
The edges of things
A slammed telephone
How people whisper
Gossip
Thinking of
Scratchy clothes, cornflakes
Waving goodbye
Thinking of
A chintz sofa, the five o’clock news
Never thinking of you

Against rain
Silver
Splashing
The night dark
Waiting
For the dog in the grass
Unsteady
The rain whispering
A gutter
Singing somewhere

The man is old, his face a map of lines, his skin white with dust, a small patch of blood at the side of his mouth. If his eyes were not open, staring at me through a million pixels, his thousand miles eyes that contain the deaths of babies and seas of unshed tears – if those old eyes were not open, I would think him a man of ash. But he is living somehow, in the rubble of the city. If living it is.