As the smoke burns down to my fingers
To blink a bloodshot world away
And drink in rough, and burn, and heat
Until she comes to kiss the dark.
Earthly Pleasures
"The sun hangs low in the sky like a ripe apple
as my bicycle zig-zags over the
thick paint-stripe shadows cast by the trees."
Soil: On Digging a Hole
"A worm has beaten me to the hole I’m digging;
when I pull apart the soil, I find
a slender punctuation mark in the mud.
Its pink body threads through the dark clay."
Petrichor
"in a quiet hollow on the far side of this field
rain patters through the leaves
like twinkling glass"
Return to Oxford
"A peal of percussive raindrops tumble from towering heavens.
A lonely leaf joins the fray in a willowing, whispering wash."
Verbalisation
"Then there is a sudden pull – my loose thoughts spill over the pebbly surface of the page. Images crashing and breaking against sobering stillness, propelling seafoam into the air, rumpling the Edenic crispness of the page."
Paying Attention
"I wrote that the world feels too much of everything,
that I am so lucky to be in it."
Time spent in Oxford
"The photographs on the walls show people years ago in the same spot.
Did they feel the same, love the same, breathe the same.
It seems impossible that they did, even more so that they did not."
Four Children
"And I sat with my back to the skies
as I mouthed out a prayer to the winds
and imagined them ghosts; for where I sat, half-anaesthetised,
four children had used to sit"
Essay Crisis
People often say that progress,
is not always linear.
and p r o g r e s s,
sometimes doesn't always look like 2,000 words* (including citations) on a Microsoft Word document"
The Sword-Cross
"A warrior of Palestine
Traversed with a Cross for sword,
From Babylon to Jerusalem,
Until he spoke not word."
Seven Flowers for Midsummer
"It is a day, and night, which brims in fairies
and women cults and sprites and mothers."
