Hand-o-gram I’m premier-rate around Christmas. People need me most when theirs are chapped and sore. At office-parties I twinkle my rings, tickle the boss’s chin. On Christmas Eve I model presents: mittens or golfing gloves for a wife. Christmas Day, it’s cashmere, kidskin, before they nestle in tissue or gaudy crackle. I may peel a…

  The Frost-Tree     You wondered, had a storm torn those branches but decided their lopping was too regular, strategic, too even  for an animal’s bite, or lightning. Had a benign tree-surgeon stripped branches for the sun’s return: end-weight slashed for  new bark in spring or had frost’s conspiracy with freeze-seal air stunned with…

The Garden of Possibilities My quietness has a garden inside it: its walls are dragons from Guandong. A granite dog guards the steps. He holds a ball of chi, has a dragon in him. My riotousness has a pavilion in it: its golden roof flashes back the sun, slowly sets fire to the grove of…

Perigee Moon There’s a perigee  moon tonight so close, so bright I should be able to reach, touch its face and kiss it but it ‘s too to grey to see. I’m still  kicking through floods. Guessed hunched shape on George Street: aborigine man damp, dark and quilted in a street bag for sleeping. Brollies…