The local heron reflects on the times Some say they see my shadow underneath me; that it travels ahead of me even but the truth lies somewhere between what the unknowing believe and what the unbelieving know; take fish, reputedly, by me, speared, ingested, carp, ghost coy, booty when they’re grown for the raiders in…

Sunday, not in Egypt I would have stayed at home as lights went dancing in a distant body, a thinking thing, a tall weak hot-house pulse, I mean, kindly, plated in gold and understandably architect of some negativity; the day, dull and silent as dullness even the grey uneventful power ; the mountain ocean, speed…

Re-enchantment? After disenchantment re-enchantment in the moments before the shots the actual deaths of innocent journalists in Iraq, before hard-assed Americans take fire and blame children for being in the way. Did I say re-; maybe its only dis- on this April model of a day just for being in casting the illusion of love…

Faith I hadn’t been back in twenty years and found her sitting by the window in the Queen’s Hotel cracking peanuts with her teeth, then emptying them onto the front page of the Sporting Blue. A clack of dominoes from the other side of the black curtain; the smell of mushrooms being fried; breakfast for…

The Beginning of the World (after Brancusi) Man Ray advised but only he would photograph his own sculptures: sunshine on the golden bird almost made it explode, scratches and stains, there you are. In space, the marble egg, light and shade set at odds and there’s a ball of sun of course behind and we…

Illusionist 1. Night. No moon.  An empty theatre. You.  The stage. To begin again with what you know.  The sleight of hand, the lifted spoon which stroked, will bend and melt. Before the crowd arrives you’ll read the mind of every single person: shoe-sizes; dates-of-birth; their secret dreams. This stage: a box for doves, silk-scarves,…

Hope at 4am after Yves Tanguy Not in fact as a weightless bird which has just taken flight nor a cliff of layered stone, for this is a sea-air scene and the sleep you’ve laid to rest flashes past like clouds or, as Breton said ,writing about this can only exist as a form of…

The Grey Forest (after Max Ernst) A forest is a drawing-board, a supernatural insect, a bone totem in a drained sea. It’s lonely and conjugal trees house the last woman in the world; she grazes naked skin on sharp coral branches trying to reach the seaweed cathedral of shock flowers. Summer for the forest is…

Melancholy and Mystery of a Street (after Georgio de Chirico) She’s a shadow herself, though the hoop’s solid, and, yes, out of the diminishing returns of arched doorways she’s close behind. Beware tall encroaching citizens. Beware the colonnade of sunlight.  Beware tense isometric shapes like the wagon with the deceptive inner space which isn’t space…