Earth Poem – She’s Given to Circles

Earth Poem - She's Given to Circles

She’s Given to Circles is an earth poem, a celebration of her abundant love and care, an appreciation of what we take for granted.

She’s Given to Circles – Earth Poem

First, she fed my child a nut, and after that
she grew sprouts under her skin, of grain
and roses and earthworms. Circling, she blew
fire into our stoves, and on hot stones, she fried
green apples and sewed up lacerated skins.
Mother’s pliés and pirouettes scattered stars into place,
she weaved air and light into a feathery cloth
and lay it down
upon reedy swamps and moonlit highways.
On branches too and where the breeze draughts
the round room inside arms allongés. Allegretto.
And now an Adagio, she's wrestling us down,
she's swallowing us into her lap
where she can stroke our wiery heads mid-arabesque,
one by one. Naptime, she's making us sink, she's
slowing us to sleep in the deep of her cot,
she's giving us to her circles and lullabies.
Along the grooves of her fingerprints,
birdsong and light capering and in her dimples,
the scores of lento airs. Already,
the sky is strumming and the land gliding
its bow on our bedding veins. We drip
into the clinging ocean, one by one.

Littering Poems – The Flesh and Bone People

littering poems

As littering poems go, The Flesh and Bone People is a reflection on fragmentation and the need for integration as individuals and communities.

The Flesh and Bone People – Littering Poems

On a sill at dawn,
 when a flock of flesh and bone people
 are bowing out still,
 
a bird's sharp beak beckons and
 pecks a sesame seed the wind
 barrelled up from the burger joint
 
one mile down the road. The wind
 is kind like that, bowling rubbish
 to places where birds can feast. 
 
The litterers feed them, too, 
 ghosts anchoring in leftovers
 and harking back to flesh and bones,
 
hunger-jerked. Once, the ghosts
 plenished the shell. Now, we tan
 our skin, locked out and rootless
 
until the wick frays and the house
 comes tumbling. Jigsaw pieces 
 strewn, only a gloved, slow hand can
 
unpuzzle them now, sew, set, mend and
 blend our ghost with flesh and bone,
 traversing lollipops, taxes, beads,
 
scaffolding, and chains until, toil
 and oil no longer spoil the soil, 
 until the hour is ours. 

Mother and Daughter Poem – The Guardian

Mother and Daugther Poem - The Guardian

The Guardian is a mother and daughter poem, a reflection on giving and receiving care and support.

The Guardian – Mother and Daughter Poem

 With a black biro, she’s drawing
a wave on the white page
mapping Mom’s waverings.
She spots peaks and valleys and floods cutting through.
Like yesterday
before she buried a tablet in her clenched fist.
Aged ten,
she’s learned how to read from Pudgy the dog.
My dog is very smart, you know, she told Belle at school,
he can tell the future, you know.
Belle laughed her off
this is another one of your stupid ideas, Lea.
She didn’t mind,
she knew she could rely on Pudgy
who’d chew the rug or tug her by the leg
before each trip south.
Sometimes,
they’d all have a picnic and enjoy the view from the mountain top.

Wind Poem – Love’s Mending Ways

wind poem

Love’s Mending Ways is a wind poem, a celebration of love and all the wonderful ways it binds, fixes, and liberates.

Love’s Mending Ways – Wind Poem

Inside the earth’s heart and within its fire
the wind is moulding stars and goose quills
like the one, he’s dipping into the brimming vial.
Resting on his palm within the soft curling of his fingers,
the quill spills the ink and a river rises
beyond fields and oceans. And the wind is blowing
the ink as if shaping blue flowers and butterflies
beneath and across your warming skin,
bunching crumbs and binding what is fraying.
Like the girl next door or
me, when sand grits my iris or

the soil whenever potato blight sets in.
Last night, I saw the wind’s curling mouth around a fat straw.
And from the moon, it set free a flood of calligraphy
and a flock of geese, now laying feather down
into the overgrown hollow. Come early summer,
the gander’s quills will glide,
drawing sunflowers and love letters
between a sky-full of wind and a blue ink ocean.