Out-take from The Gospel of Narcissus Another skin has come to nothing, like the snow that fell all day and melted in the space between...

Kyoto Sonnet Today I shared my favourite haiku with him. He listened, although poems aren't his thing. It's the one where the poet hears...

Photograph by Laura Veres Tunnel After the painting "Bytí" ("Being") by Ivana Pavlová One reason for our being unable to become intimate...

The last garden centre The gardener of Aleppo greens a rubbled city. Planting hazelnut, pear and rosemary he hears Beethoven in the...

Low Tide Her litany of lost things: fragmented crab, shell shattered to nothing. Christ in porcelain: a child kept in her pocket that she...

Last Night My Garden Dreamt of Manderley Last night my garden dreamt of Manderley. I only have myself to blame sitting in a well-worn...

Wayfinding i under yellowing branches of birch, in my shirtsleeves, with a glass of red & a book whose verses feel transposed out of &...

A Tune Between the Notes How is it that the fiddler has salmon jumping from her wrists and hills, snow-capped, bent from the same fingers...

Carriage The train station has a high wall and bedding plants clinging to the incline. On the platform, two men stand far apart. I am...

New Words, New Clothes I discarded the words first. And then, for a while, mute silence. I watched and learnt like a mynah bird. அ became...

Mint At ninety all she can still smell is mint as if, when she was very young in the garden of her girlhood home, she wished for a long...

Fight One time, their duelling flutes failed as a mutual deterrent, and they were at each other's throats, our garden blackbird and his...

Paintbrush to a Master For Vincent Van Gogh The bristles are broken fag ends and the stem is severed at the midline but I was his trusted...

Water Mark Water geysers from the road, tarmac humped and cracked as if pushed up by tree roots over years. It gushes muddily down the...

Awaken, Sleepers, Rise! And the sound of the horn was the lakeshore waves lapping the side of stone and the blue-grey music struck our...

Skimming Stones On Beesands beach Grandad taught us how to find the fat, flat stones, the ones with the perfect weight. Next lesson, the...

Why did you Come? Why did you Stay? (Questions asked of Quarr Abbey Monks) Because I'm lost inside the ferry's heartbeat. Because the sea...

Nan and Granddad's Corned beef. Silverskin onion juice sluiced from the jar onto mash. The rhubarb boiled brown to mush under crumble, a...

The Plunge Slack little lump punctured by pin feathers, rain-speckled, muted wings pitched back by the tarmac's solid shock. Near...

Sock Puppet It turns out the dog needs to stand on his hind legs to enter me. I say his because the dog is clearly gendered and swollen....

Polstead A village hall will chew your sound and swallow it; will roll it round like thunder. Foldback helps: speakers that, pointing...

Out There northwest of nowhere awake in the moonless hour night hands back silence chaffinch and blackbird flute arpeggio colours you...

The Boys Are Back Sons of a corpse with a call: "Thrive on your foe's body." Seeking wicked grace, they forget to scream. Silence: the...

Snail hotel I watch from the shelter of the doorway as you start across the grass. So slick and steady. I can't believe the speed...