A cross on a hillock

reminds water

of its changed course.

Scurvygrass, sea aster,

salicornia, thrift.

Redshank, widgeon,

teal, curlew

interrupt the silence.

Their lilting cries

the estuary’s song.

Cold blue river reflects

an aquamarine sky

while light remains

on a chill January.

Express trains clatter

across the horizon

mindi...

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with apologies to Elmore James

The Watergate story was unfolding

the summer I often found myself

covered in dust. Bowie’s Starman

had landed from another planet.

I was a recovering uni dropout

with no clue what to do next.

I don’t remember it raining much.

Still, you could only stand it

for an hour or two. We parked

our bins in an alley out of sight

of the ...

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In faith and hope 

we still drag out  

the recycling bins. 

Snow quickly covers  

our tracks, as if  

we had never been.  

The shop’s carved fox  

has swapped its Christmas 

hat for a white titfer.  

A sign says No Papers.  

The old woman who walks  

her dog in all weathers  

is alone today. I remember 

the pooch is rather small.  

She’...

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Those old engines reminded 

me of my grandfather  

in his final year: wheezing, 

tearful eyes, leaking water, 

tobacco-stained moustache, 

steam escaping everywhere.  

Granted, retaining some grand  

old dignity, but a shadow  

of their former selves.  

Heroes perhaps but this  

was the Sixties: the white heat 

of Harold Wilson, the Moptops, 

Julie Chr...

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The tree is smaller this year: 

those in pots on the patio  

too heavy to drag inside.   

You with your knee and shoulder, 

me recovering after the hernia.  

Yet we’ll have ten round the table 

this Christmas, all being well, 

including three bright-eyed grandchildren 

plus one neurotic greyhound 

spooked by the beeping hob and oven.  

The weather is bleak o...

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I

asleep.

A vision.

Glistening lake

on the drive down south.

Never-before-seen land.

Sand, water, laughter. Bairns, wives.

Pain-easing festival. Beers, bars.

Spirit of Yule, somehow midsummer.

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Why was it built? The line needed

to take a one hundred and eighty

degree turn to avoid trespassing upon

the Duke of Northumberland’s estate.

The price: hacked-out sandstone, a tunnel,

and a viaduct crossing the Edlingham burn.

Blast those shooting parties! No matter:

the navies set to work. The curve adds

to its Grade II listed beauty.

A sign says Private: No Right...

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The driver peers through smoke, looking for the flag.

Annus mirabilis. How Noel Coward despised young people.

Well, he would, wouldn’t he? The trick is making connections,

if there are any. The end of National Service.

The Establishment caught with its trousers down.

You had to be with-it. These funny little railway lines

really weren’t. John Betjeman might scribble a few li...

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Skylarks keep watch above the Roman road;

paragliders gather over Mam Tor.

My leg drags, boulders batter boots;

too many hours indoors. The choice I made.

Stumbling down treacherous rocks, stiff knee,

beneath Peveril’s dark ramparts. Tougher

companions debate the Romano-Britons,

and whether they fled the Anglo-Saxons.

If so, where they did go? Along this ridge,

trekking ...

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To: Private WE Freeman, Recovered

POW centre, Bombay, Indian Command:

Dearest son, After all this long time,

we are so excited, we hardly know

what to do. It seems so strange

to be able to write.

So many letters, via War Office,

Red Cross. When she heard

he was safe she sent three in a week.

Some camps seemed to have fared

better than others. I still tr...

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Sun-blinding vision

of a surfing state,

songs with their feet down

hard on the accelerator.

But the little deuce coupes

have long gone to the scrapyard.

The wild west is back,

if it ever went away.

Beady-eyed outlaws

who don’t like strangers

have taken over the town,

heroes replaced by villains.

Smile, the album

he never quite finished...

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Nobbut a beck to begin with.

The Esk escorted by daffodils

beside both banks, and a train

that escaped Beeching’s

scattergun. Skirts

the moorland’s northern edge,

past lambs and fields

festooned with pheasants.

Scurries over boulders,

relaxes and widens

as we approach the sea,

is celebrated by a magnificent,

redundant viaduct,

a memorial to the line

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An old railroad loco

by the side of a lake

A shocked motel clerk

greets us with the words:

Sadat is dead!

Chocolate chip pancake

late breakfast.

I almost throw up.

Disused Olympics

ski slope. Snow at the top

of Mount Washington.

Hard porn on the motel TV

in Palisades Park, New Jersey.

Bumper to bumper

at night

empty when we r...

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Our one and only trip to America

in the Fall, almost forty-five

years ago. Rhode Island, Cape Cod,

Vermont, New Hampshire, Boston

... Niagara.

We drove through Buffalo

towards the falls, passing gaudy

'honeymoon hotels' boasting

the size of their water-beds.

The view from the US side

was impressive, yes, the little

tourist boat almost under

the cascade...

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The AA, once first in the alphabet, 

takes ages to answer distress calls. 

When someone says AI

I say Ayee!

like a wounded Native American

in a curdled Sixties comic. 

Now Microsoft is offering 

to help me put words together. 

I'm analogue, not digital, 

and aware I'm being phased out. 

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They were refugees from the Costa,

escaping searing daytime heat

and wakeful night sweats

for Northumberland’s short summer.

Beaches that hardly seem crowded

even when the tide is in.

Shrieks of sandcastle excitement

amid the northern wind.

Thirsty hydrangeas soaking up the rain,

flagging hostas reprieved. Weather

as it used to be, while the south swelters. ...

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Rhubarb, laburnum,

rhododendron, juniper,

pulmonaria, digitalis,

nicotinia, periwinkle,

cannabis, aconitum,

salvia, laurel, hemlock,

rosemary, farage.

With acknowledgements to

The Poison Garden at Alnwick Gardens in Northumberland

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‘Mick Jagger has a six-year-old. He’s 80.’

Conversation between two older women overheard on a train

Embarrassing, enduring logo. Those lips.

Jumping Jack Flash, no ordinary wrinklie,  

sired another offspring in his seventies,

still manages to shake those hips.

Faux-rebel with a knowing grin.

Only a nineteen-sixties serum

explains so many honky-tonk women.

Rul...

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Partygoers reluctant to depart.

Last stragglers of the colony line

the turf below the lighthouse.

The engine’s cut; August

wind chills faces. Some still

clump in, puttering outboard

motors frantically clattering

over us and terns on the rocks.

Wintering on the ocean,

returning with sand eel cargos.

The chicks spend years at sea.

What makes us think of them

...

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Like a fought-over bed, the ancient rock
tumbles, crumbles to the shore.
The ferry waits to leave the dock.

Spinning, wind-whipped, on the loch,
struggling against nature in the raw.
Like a fought-over bed, the ancient rock.

The waves heap up, a sudden shock.
Forget for once the thoughts that gnaw.
The ferry waits to leave the dock.

Did you count me lost as you eyed the clock?
Did ...

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The empire called for more men, and they came.

Shipped from sub-continent

to western front,

Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, East Africa, 

largest volunteer army in the world.

They weren’t ready for the cold;

couldn’t understand new officers

when theirs were slain. 

Some wounded, shipped to England,

died and were buried

in a corner of a foreign wood

with Muslim honours...

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Tell it slant, don't tell it straight. 

Don't tell it at all. Show me. 

Lyrical is ok, up to a point. 

Don't overload with details. 

Whoa! Hold it right there. 

This is veering towards 

the anecdotal,

the confessional,

the conversational,

and, Heaven forbid, 

the sentimental. 

I find it easier to get obscure

poems published, than ones 

where the mea...

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for the many hard-working and innocent

Post Office operators wrongly accused and

defrauded by their employer. Some were jailed,

and four took their own lives  

The best comedy lines are funny

because they resonate with truth.

Funny in a mirthless kind of way.

Some Post Office manager

got a huge bonus for installing

a computer system that didn’t work.

They coul...

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Snow on ground for several days.

I’m taken back to sixty-three,

when it didn’t melt for months.

No central heating, frost on

inside windows. You’ve heard

the stories. Eventually the council

tried to clear the streets.

Collected as much snow

and ice as they could,

piled it high in a nearby

car park. A mountain range

for us to play and fight in.

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The pub car park

like an ice rink. 

But the Christmas lights! 

Even the bottom end 

of Morpeth over 

the muddy Wansbeck

is transformed; 

the Telford bridge

dazzles the motorist. 

Our grandchild

banged on the window

when she saw

her first snow.  

Her eyes will widen

once more 

when she spies this. 

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Late November, 

early December. 

The blood-spattered dress. 

The shattered lenses. 

Across the years 

same shock and tears. 

Rifle skills into practice. 

Imagine such riches. 

The Communist, the Christian: 

two fame-jealous hitmen. 

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The rain came from

the wrong direction.

That figures.

Compassion is prohibited.

It’s a hate march

if they don’t like

what you’re saying.

The pantomime villains

who would prosecute

King Wenceslas

and the poor man

gathering winter fuel.

From 'snowflake'

to 'extremist' 

in just a few years. 

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What use is poetry in time of war?

Insular England mourned

a much-loved tree felled

with chainsaw by barbarians

in dead of night. A local

politician compared it

to the death of Kennedy.

Meanwhile Russia continued

to bomb Ukraine, now

almost forgotten

amid daily massacres

in Israel and Palestine.

Evil resumed, three eyes

for one. Yet this feels different.

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Thunderous shooting that transcended his era.
Maybe you have to be a certain age.
When they announced it during the match
the crowd of six hundred
barely reacted. No gasps or murmurs.
My son shrugged, apologetic.

I was thirteen in 1966, watching every game
I could on TV, filling in the wall charts.
Never thought we could beat Eusebio’s Portugal,
the team of the tournament. But two goals
...

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They poured out of Haymarket Metro,

streamed up the hill through

the university towards the Start.

How they cheered Sir Mo Farah

warming up, in ominous, oppressive

heat. Mo the spirit

of the London Olympics over

a decade ago, when we celebrated

our country, the Queen descended

with James Bond from a helicopter,

the last time we felt good about ourselves.

The starti...

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We were born in the same year

at the dawn of the brave new Elizabethan era.

Men-children fussed over by Little Weed,

often collapsing at their own jokes,

cackling, pots rattling, guffawing.  

The strange figure with squeaky voice

they occasionally met in the wood gave

me nightmares. Growing older

we smirked at the druggy connotations.

I saw them as dazed, strung-out...

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Some days he scours the Channel in his boat,

binoculars scanning for hapless migrants

in leaking dinghies; or sits atop

Dover’s white cliffs, keeping sentry

on Britain’s behalf; or barges into

budget hotels, hunting down those

who have evaded his dragnet;

or wipes away the occasional

milkshake, like seagull poo, that has

landed as if from the sky on his jacket.

B...

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I think about Shankly's legendary words,

which he may not even have said:

Some people think football a matter 

of life and death. It's more important than that 

as I lie on the slab, feeling like a stiff

about to be dissected in a TV police thriller,

and hear the orderlies bustling about 

preparing for my procedure

and talking about whether they'll watch

the first Euros ...

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i.m Jox Cox MP

where my brother found a sodden fiver

beside a breakwater and my mother

dried it, spent it on a pair of jeans

for each of us. Riches in those days.

Sealed with A Kiss, Poetry in Motion,

It Might As Well Rain until September

on the jukebox. The train from

Liverpool Street seemed to go on for ever. 

Now driving from Clacton through Frinton

to Wa...

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that he has fat fingers that mean

someone has to squeeze

his toothpaste, so they say.

That he gets enraged when he

has to sign things, and pens leak.

He means well. It’s not his fault

someone had the bright idea

that while we are watching

his coronation we should leap

from our sofas and swear homage.  

It probably wasn’t his wheeze.

It’s not his fault tha...

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Dozens of trains went back and forth daily

to and from the junction in its heyday.

Fifty-five years ago, the last service.

The terminus building still stands,

grand, too grand for just a branch,

but maybe not too high and mighty

for royalty visiting a duke of Northumberland.

Now far more browsers than ever waited

on the platforms throng the old parcels

and waiting r...

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No point in crying, you know why we’re here.

Saw the league tables, smelled blood, descended.

You’re on our list; we can wreck your career.

Don’t try to fool us; we’ve been heads, too.

Educating the underclass? A thankless task.

We got out in time, saw which way the wind blew.

Up all night, checking figures? No matter.

We make facts fit, the one thing we’re good at.

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Their bungalow seemed

to grow out of the ground.

The garden was big enough

to lose himself in.

While grandchildren marched

importantly in and out of sheds,

Dad took me on a tour of his empire

that terminated at the compost bins.

Ran leaf mould through his fingers,

exulting at what he’d created,

the miracle of degradation,

black gold. It’s life that matter...

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The Goons, Bill and Ben,

Hancock’s Half-Hour,

Steptoe & Son,

That Was The Week That Was,

Doctor Who, Blue Peter,

Play For Today, Match of the Day,

Till Death Do Us Part,

Monty Python, Dad’s Army,

Whatever Happened

To The Likely Lads,

Fawlty Towers,

Not The Nine O’Clock News,

Boys From the Black Stuff,

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet,

Yes, Minister, Blackadder,

Det...

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Why was it built?

The line had to take

a one hundred and eighty

degree turn to evade

the Duke of Northumberland’s

estate. The price:

a tunnel, and a viaduct

crossing the Edlingham Burn.

Blast those shooting parties!

No matter: the navvies

set to work. The curve adds

to its Grade II listed beauty.

It appears much shorter

than from below

and closed...

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I go to my room for an afternoon nap,

leave the curtains open

to watch the last of the day.

Thirty minutes later the lights

of the stone cottages are on. 

The wind along Longframlington's 

ridge is blowing hard, which 

gives me comfort, wrapped in warmth

inside, even when it howls a little. 

Sometimes it's a sea battle, 

guns thundering. A mile or two

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It seems like a dream now:

the 1-4 scoreline;

Lampard’s goal that never was;

watching the game with Carol Ann Duffy.

She turned up amid the half-time gloom

in a Ludlow pub, asked if it was ok

to sit near the TV. I made some crack

about political-historical contexts

and Nazi fugitives, and why

Uruguayan officials favour Germans.

She half-smiled: that’s when I gues...

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A village Remembrance service.

The same old hymns,

and pacifist sentiment.

Sun streams through

the memorial hall window

so that I can hardly see.

And when we come

to those words

and the bugle plays

and tears are wiped away

that same sun

has gone down, disappeared.

Why did we fight? Maybe

just to defend the British

belief in fair play, in sticking

t...

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The Angel almost

ambushed us. 

The trees turn

more beautiful

with every mile.

Tyne at low tide. 

Network of bridges,

trains crossing.

Four in the morning. 

Crescent moon

in dark sky. The silence. 

Churchyard gravestones

look like people

in camera's flashlight. 

The blinking of the internet.

Every day, 

a new start. 

I...

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We’re not there yet

but already some details

are etched in the map:

a haunted Roman road

beyond the wall,

leading to the border,

known as

the Devil’s Causeway,

traces of old railways,

a ruined priory,

a nearby river.

Why are you going so far?

some said. Family called us.

A seed was planted.

Time to begin walking again.

Have I waited nearly

all m...

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Easy to spot them. 

Another metallic voice in parliament. 

Exterminate the economy! 

Pound plunges, Britannia unhinged. 

The Daleks take the Treasury. 

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Massed ranks, protecting

phalanx. Precision.

The bagpipes, gun carriage,

martial yet mournful.

Abbey’s organ, choir.

On the streets, in crowds,

in front of TVs. Most things

stopped. Most of us were there.

Union flags along The Mall.

Whatever your colours

a moment in history.

For one day a nation

more or less in perfect step.

The Queen has died.

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Reykjavik, where Reagan

and Gorbachev almost agreed

to ban all nuclear weapons.

Gorbachev, an old man now,

maintains that this dream 

is humanity’s only hope.

The shelling of civilians

is indiscriminate. The situation

has gone far beyond insults,

invective, rhetoric.

Forty years on

I’ll concede that avuncular

rightwinger Ronnie Reagan,

bete noire of...

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Caitlin said in a TV interview

he sometimes spent hours

in the writing shed, only

to emerge with one line

after all that work.

The radio voice portentous,

everyone’s idea of a poet. 

Words that were musical, inspirational,

with no one quite sure

what exactly they meant.

A bard that pulled the birds

and drank like a fish. Why

did he get so pissed?

Wa...

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They crap on us

from a great height. 

It's not symbolic

metaphorical, allegorical - 

it's offishial. It's offal. 

Farewell to the blue wall

along the south coast. 

Hello, polio, and other diseases.

We don't have to follow

the rules any longer.

More in your face 

than piled-up rubbish

in the 70s. Wake up, Britain, 

and smell the ordure.

We're surr...

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