Published in The Interpreter’s House. Read these poems here
Twenty True Things: An Incantation
Published in The Marrow International Poetry Read this poem here
ἀγάπη, Or How Caves Love You
You can read this poem in the Verve Poetry Press Anthology ‘ A Gift Once Give Must Not Be Spurned’. The title of the anthology is a line from my poem. Buy the anthology here
Heronless - published by Ink, Sweat & Tears, November 2022
Read Heronless here
This poem was inspired by the absence of a heron I usually see every week on my way to the Vishuddha Yoga Centre to teach my Tuesday morning class.
After You're Gone - first published in Under the Radar Magazine
AFTER YOU’RE GONE
Your shirt hanging out to dry gesticulates
in the wind, waving its empty arms like wings.
Inside I’ve laid out olives oatcakes hummus
things I love that you will not eat, no cheese
no bread, no meat. Instead of our voices
there is only the hush of my feet on wooden
floorboards, a book to read, a cup of tea
the birds flapping in the tree above your shirt
now dancing loosely in the breeze.
I still haven’t hung the curtains
all those barbed hooks too daunting to approach.
Soon bats will come like tiny ghosts flying
in the face of early night so fast I’ll think I see right
through them to the dark, the stars.
The Bruising Stones - from 'How Do the Parakeets Stay Green?'
Published in my collection ‘How Do the Parakeets Stay Green?’ Indigo Dreams Publishing Limited
THE BRUISING STONES
Then I was a fish, sliding
my marbled body over
the bruising stones
blue limbed pale and
misted as Scottish mornings.
Later we sat a circle, fire
smoked our salmon skin
an adventure away from walls
rules, all things that
bewildered us.
Hot chocolate comfort wrapped
in my numb fingers, thick and
semi-sweet as darkness.
Your faces lit fire-glow
between shadows.
You have scattered since
like feathered dandelion tops
migrating birds, those flocks
of geese we used to watch
leaving each year.
I am living as a human now
fully grown, carving
my life in stone buildings
searching for the ways
the words to stay in touch
with us when we were fishes.