Still To grasp the delicacy of a wren, one must gently hold the tiny lifeless bird cupped in a palm. The weight of a one pound coin and...

Now I See In the pattern of my mother's dress, polyester pinks and greys entwined with trees and hidden woodland nymphs, unseen by her...

Perseverance From a distance, the red planet's craters must come into focus like giant "o"s shaken loose from an optician's chart. I...

I am trying not to write a poem about you Looking at Tiger in a Storm, I imagine I'm seeing it for the first time, in a gallery perhaps,...

Fearful Killer It felt like fighting not to drown, to be so near the delicate and not imagine its destruction. Every lover's neck...

Our Lady Our lady is in the brambles; Wan watcher of the asphalt As it ascends to the A-road. Stands like a nosy neighbour Head cocked...

Creation Myth On the narrow ridge where I and Thou meet, there is the realm of "between". Martin Buber In days where you were not, I went...

Alone with the Hairy Ainu; Or, 3800 Miles on a Pack Saddle in Yezo and a Cruise to the Kurile Islands by A. H. Savage Landor (1893) I was...

Photograph by John Cairns Rise The cloud that echoes And the plane that enters Through a golden gap Resonate, sound a chord No one heard...

Remembering the Saucer “The table is round And so is my memory” Pierre Reverdy Flowers conspire in the fireplace Casting apricot cups...

Phonebooth Graveyard Below the railroad tracks, beneath the syntax of the city, rows of receivers hang their heads, mourning street...

Anemone Such simple chemistry unlocks a bulb's code – water, light earth, air – so you can hold its flower; like this wood anemone cupped...

Sic 'Em My dog has the mange and I mean bad, half his hair gone, leaving purple skin beneath tan fur. I'm in leg-casts up to my hips this...

Razorblades The bathroom cabinet held a mirror that held back razorblades, smokers' tooth polish, creams which had become a mystery to...

Photograph courtesy of Survivalphotos Night Garden Sympathetic herbs in neglected pots. The gods draw their colours here, cheeks puffed...

Blessed He led our son onto the ice-field without an axe between them. I picture them treading like drunken ants bent under the summit,...

The Death of Chatterton by Henry Wallis George Rawlins writes: These poems are from a book-length sequence that reimagines in fifty-seven...

Paper Snow Recurring heatwave in my throat. My tonsils, unfit for use. The hospital a tan-bricked ogre. Judas kiss from parents, but...

of Taika & the monkeys (—fragment of-from dream). hillside. (thick grass (greenlush) (—o'ergrown). … ). ( … —down. (slope). —by the...

The Year of the Stonemasons There will be an aw- kward opening, a blinking step from cobwebbed doorways, as if a second spring called us...

Here, once again, is Fran's introduction: About the poems It is not easy to explain. I owe more to Roddy Lumsden than to any other figure...

Bedside Table I put my specs on an open book under the lamp On the bedside table, and they start to read. They gather pace, they skim,...

Author's note Baba Yaga is a witch from Slavic folktale. Sometimes seen as dangerous and violent, she is also a healer and a wise woman,...

Holmlea, Revisited Begin with the noise of birds; an owl. Add the wind, the absence of rain. Stir in the silence of an abandoned house....