Selmer
It wasn’t the music that drew him,
not at first, but the shape it made
on a stand and the way it took
the light, staring back at him
from the pawnshop window.
And so he decided then and there
he’d learn to play it, taking
for granted his gift and the right
he’d have to cradle it
once he had mastered the keys.
Those first uncertain months
it honked and s...
Tuesday 27th February 2024 12:27 pm
Tea Cards
In the dark age before Wikipedia
Brooke Bond tea cards dished the data
in a week-by-week drip feed
of bet-you-didn’t-know-that facts.
You could buy an album for sixpence
or snap an elastic band around them –
pocket-friendly, dependable,
your own bright almanac.
But couldn’t your family drink more tea?
– your mother refusing, stubbornly,
to open the packets u...
Sunday 18th February 2024 10:49 am
St James Primary, Reading
I’m working back to the dreamtime
of St James Primary in sixty-three,
the occluded and innocent days
before the gadgets and money took over –
like trying to retrieve the original colours
of bright, ridged slabs of plasticine
from muddied clumps we used
for project work in the afternoons –
my finest effort the model I made
with Terence O’Neill of the martyrdom
...Friday 9th February 2024 12:10 pm
St James Primary, Reading
I’m working back to the dreamtime
of St James Primary in sixty-three,
the occluded and innocent days
before the gadgets and money took over –
like trying to retrieve the original colours
of bright, ridged slabs of plasticine
from muddied clumps we used
for project work in the afternoons –
my finest effort the model I made
with Terence O’Neill of the martyrdom
...Friday 9th February 2024 12:05 pm
St James Primary, Reading
I’m working back to the dreamtime
of St James Primary in sixty-three,
the occluded and innocent days
before the gadgets and money took over –
like trying to retrieve the original colours
of bright, ridged slabs of plasticine
from muddied clumps we used
for project work in the afternoons –
my finest effort the model I made
with Terence O’Neill of the martyrdom
...Friday 9th February 2024 11:35 am
COWS
From compartment windows
they were fake, too far away
to be real. Friesians, Shorthorns,
Angus: painted cows
in a book of fields –
while on the train I rampaged,
shuttling impatience
through pages and pages
of green. Unexpectedly,
we'd arrive and land in a world
where they moped.
The first day up, a drover,
I'd goad them on with a stick
then s...
Monday 5th February 2024 9:28 am
Visiting
for my grandfather
When I first came on a visit
to your lime-washed house
– a clean-kneed child from town –
your two great fists
impressed me, for they
were ponderous chunks
of granite, notched
carelessly for fingers
and which, at your own willed
creation, you had torn
from the heart of the land.
Yes, I knew then how
you had risen and, ...
Saturday 3rd February 2024 5:25 pm
Visiting
for my grandfather
When I first came on a visit
to your lime-washed house
– a clean-kneed child from town –
your two great fists
impressed me, for they
were ponderous chunks
of granite, notched
carelessly for fingers
and which, at your own willed
creation, you had torn
from the heart of the land.
Yes, I knew then how
you had risen and, sep...
Saturday 3rd February 2024 1:40 pm
Chasin' the Breeze
la petite phrase Proust
Back home and married
after our year abroad,
the heat was on all summer
as mortgage rates
and temperatures soared.
Recording it now,
the memory’s triggered
by the music a DJ plays –
which happens to be
George Benson’s Breezin’,
the track that eased me
into jazz, clocking on
in the council yard
to get one step ahead.
...
Tuesday 2nd January 2024 12:05 pm
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