January, Cardboard, Double Cheese You carried it from the car on your lap-top, then the new free-view box; toilet-rolls and a bag of Christmas shoes. A girl fills an upper window in the next block, surveys you, latest news, in the week before term. We’ve got another one back! Two lads on your corridor. They’re…

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…

Navigator I licked my finger, held it up, felt salt in the air, scented sea. Maps were misleading. Roads were blue, rivers crimson. There was a knack. I read it from the back, then found the city I knew, lights sparking along streets, night pitching its yawn against windows. Yes, I arrived, but not in…

The Fisherman’s Bride (after GMB) January. I hung a brass chain at my belly. He tugged it, spilt salt-water. February. He rowed me with tranced oars through star-dotted waves. March. He birthed me with his tongue, silver gouts of herring. April. Drunk, hollow-eyed, we took our skulls at dawn to a sweet green gap. May….

Song of the Pebble (after George Mackay Brown) Said pebble to black tulip: ‘Whirl until you’re dark tatters, then die’. Said pebble to owl: ‘A chipped cry, a feathered face. Soon. Soon. Soon.’ The pebble spoke to a man drilling a hole in a wall. ‘Tea; breakfast cob. Tonight, draughts of ale; a long sleep’….

Beachcomber (after George Mackay Brown) Monday I found a high-heeled shoe. Weed slime and tan leather. I gave it back to the sea, to stumble in. Tuesday a head of hair. Next summer it will devastate the coastline. Wednesday a half-bottle of Absolut vodka. I washed my eyes. The sky was shiny with sea-birds and…

Fresher Not to mention your new relaxed sink into your real-self smile, skin blooms in the flash; hair’s grown four inches; or so it looks in that photo ( and when I saw you); body, a slink of the summer one. You seem content, sure, it couldn’t be better, well, what could be, this is…