WRITING

I. When they came to cut the trees down They brought dogs to keep us in line. II. We stood behind fences And watched the trees bleed Sawdust and sap. We heard The sound of metal Biting through bark And the inaudible screams Of a massacre. III. Afterwards. Vertical cities gone in a blink. Carcasses scattered No time to decay; Instead, earth cleared to make way For concrete and towers And boxes for people to live in. IV. Did the dogs know what a sin They were committing? Are th

I made a friend today as I stood and stared by the riverside stock still, one meter tall, not half as wide, without a care he stood my heron friend, beside the stream: light dancing over leaves above we stood together; standing there I watched as he, without a care bent down his neck and caught a fish a glistening, red, wet shape: a dish fit for a King or Queen, thought I, enriched by regal dusk light, which began to fade into a velvet night: but then as wind brushed through

She leaves in the night With a passport and an empty suitcase. She walks for hours: And as the dawn rises, the city grows to meet it, Stretching out before her Like an open book. Look: at the people: For whom today Is just a normal day - She hears Words she recognises In foreign tongues - Puts her ear to the ground And swears that she can hear the city’s heart beat A thrilling screech, The dull thud of metal on metal. She laughs as she thinks of the stranger She was yesterday

Rembrandt painted close to One hundred self-portraits In pencil and ink and oils and chalk - Brow etched with lines And glazed eyes That gaze into a world So far beyond their canvas. Was it for Saskia, Those lines were drawn? No-one’s sure Which portraits are yours - Married for love at twenty-two And dead by twenty-nine But not before you bore Four, and lost three babies - Noblewoman to a miller’s son, Later, he would sell your grave to pay his debts, And yet They named an a

Another year old and not wise Wishing to grow younger with age as I watch time run past outside the window. Autumn overstayed its welcome And Winter wouldn’t budge Until suddenly Summer ambushed me Caught me off-guard: and dislodged me from myself. Time heals, only because it forgets An extraordinary thing - Filled with that much pain I’m surprised we get up in the morning And yet we do Again and again. Because: Time is an ocean, Time is a train Time is a dance, a marathon, a

Do not think That you can read me - Curl up with me and bend My pages back To keep your place. That’s not your right to do - I am not bound and hard-backed My pages are not paper thin But they will rip: My spine will snap, My ink will run. Do not think That you can file me Alphabetise me Index me Or toss me away When you have finished. I am not built to entertain Or move you. I am not yours to read And throw away. #poetry

We scattered you Under the fig tree So we could feel your touch On the wind And bite into your fleshy fruit. Some of you we threw Into the lake where we spent last summer. I don’t know Which part of you it was - Your liver, your spine Or maybe your ears (my favourite bit of you) We scraped you Off our shoes where we left you at the end of the garden We wanted you close. They’ve gone now, the fanfare The house is quiet Like lead. Things rustle, and I think of the day I ran ten