Maybe this year, he’ll remember:

Once a year’s not asking much

To send a bunch of flowers –

Has he even heard of such?

Even if he has, seems the florist’s

Rather too far for him to walk,

So he just sends a token;

Doesn’t even want to talk

At length to me, or even phone.

Yet he surely must have known

What I wish from him today

Is not a gift and a card, at most

...

Read and leave comments (1)

Let there be peace but not at any price

so games of chance,  rolls of the dice

do not disdainfully dictate like all the rest

that some should rule, some be repressed.

Let lives be counted for their proper worth;

let no human being brought to birth

be sacrificed in vain for wounded pride.

Let not a single man, who died

in conflict, be dismissed as second-rate.

Even the en...

Read and leave comments (1)

The mill looms hulking in the dim distance,

looms now long-stilled but filled with pictures

crafted by Hockney, some of his Bradford

long-remembered when he as a lad, would

sketch the hills and mills with broad strokes

but some more contemporary: coal smoke

swapped for cooler pool or beach scenes

or the bold new Wolds canvases: deep greens

and thick line...

Read and leave comments (0)

An’ tho’ mi mam sed ah’d catch it i’t’ neck

If ah ivver went in ower dee-ap an’ got wet,

Ah’d allus end up i’t’ watter, tha mun bet.

Us kid wor a naingel an’ did as ’e wor towd;

’E warn’t as daft so as ter fetch up dowsed and cawd,

Bu’ ’e allus egged mi on as ah fettled up a dam

’Cos ’e reckoned ’e knew wot a wassock ah am.

Read and leave comments (3)

Aloof, unnoticed, silent, still as death
You hover, as fleets of traffic pass;
Below, unshielded, voles and mice hold breath
And fear, awaiting deadly daggered grasp.

Alert, unarmoured avian bazooka,
You survey, feathered sinewed steel
Bedecked, unbending softness, yet crueller
And choose, radarless, to go in for the kill.

Aloft, unrotored, when wing engines cut;
Y...

Read and leave comments (2)

Clatter of shuttle and rattle of looms

Shattered the peace of the weaving rooms

In Yorkshire and Lancashire’s high rolling hills,

Where masses of mill lasses chattered in mills

Tripping and clopping in crude wooden clogs

Under the fast-running drive-belts and cogs

Which powered machinery, oily and rough,

Manufacturing worsted and cotton and cloth.

Yet the b...

Read and leave comments (3)

That Hogmanay, that blissful distant winter

Along by Brighton Pier, we went to wander.

Resolutions made, we roamed on, rambling

Past the hulks of trundling traffic rumbling.

With no breath of heavy weather brewing,

Sea was millpond still, with no wind blowing;

Mild midwinter sun, echoing summer,

Sparkled on the swell, all silken shimmer.

Squawking seagulls ...

Read and leave comments (2)

As my rattling Transdev bus chugs on

In its grumpy rush-hour peregrination

Through the already darkening day's end

Of Bradford's murky northern outskirts,

Condensation-glazed lad-scratched glass

Metamorphoses the winterworld outside

Into a semi-opaque panchromatic fairyland.

As dozy daylight dissolves to torpid twilight,

Mundane suburbia subtly transforms i...

Read and leave comments (1)

Shame the WOL event at Hebden Bridge has been cancelled. I'm "up North" visiting family and was thinking of coming along! Here's a sestina I wrote on one of my visits. It was around Eastertime but I can't remember which year.

Bus Ride to Hebden Bridge

Today I took the bus to Hebden Bridge

Past unremembered farmsteads on the moor,

No longer proud but broken, bowed ...

Read and leave comments (1)

Chewing the cud unperturbed by the world in the heat’s haze,

Up in the meadow tread red-polled, old, dun cows and brown cows,

Jerseys and Guernseys combining with Holsteins, all fine beasts.

All summer long in the strong, blinding sunshine, the kine graze,

Nibbling the timothy, fescue and rye grass, that high grass

Hiding the hollows, where tussocks of sedge deck the m...

Read and leave comments (3)

We used to trail to see the tewits’ nests each spring,

Sometimes alone, or Uncle Tom would take us there

All dressed in tweeds, a hand-cut ash pole in his hand

In place of that black shovel that he heaved each day

To stoke the boiler for the engine at the mill.

As he was the one that knew best their favoured fields,

He’d lead the way, up Skipton Road, up to the Hea...

Read and leave comments (2)

I’ve paddled through the packaging

And looked at all the labels.

With military strategy,

I’ve plugged in all the cables;

And now it’s smiling smugly,

As it sits on the TV:

The shiny, silv’ry set-top box

Is grinning back at me!

It has amazing functions

(Or so the advert said)

Though I really know I shouldn’t

Fall for everything I’ve rea...

Read and leave comments (0)

I have never been to Newbiggin

Although I’ve seen it on the map and know its name.

Yet I have never been to Newbiggin

Although I’ve seen the sign that points there down the lane.

But I have never been to Newbiggin

Although I’ve seen it stretched out there, across the dale,

Its houses strung like pearls, squat stone

All yellow-grey along the single street.

And I h...

Read and leave comments (0)