Please try to listenEven though I speak a languageYou do not seem to want to learnOr care to understand You have triedFor hundreds of years nowTo fence me inTo turn me from a living, moving museInto something tamed by youHeld fast with nails of wood and iron FixedMappedPinnedControlled You’ve hammered pilesNailed wooden boardsWith fibres rippedFrom […]
on 28 July 2024
Ammophila Arenaria[From the Greek ἄμμος, meaning ‘sand’,and φίλος, meaning ‘friendship, or love’and the Latin arenarius: ‘of sand’] Ammophila Arenaria:‘Sand-lover of sand’They found your chosen homeSo strangeThey had to tell us twiceAnd felt the need to useBoth Latin words, and GreekTo make some sense of youIn doing soThey doubled down on loveAnd chosen habitatJust as yourselfYou […]
on 14 August 2024
Lift up your wings to breathe!Push down, fly forwards, and exhale!Fleet floating flight of avian formYour life untetheredUn-held by land, or lane,But linked through cycled timeAnd gently overlaidWith bonds of nesting place Your home is ethereal abundanceFree folding, fading flowOf life that sweeps and soarsTo heights by most unknownAttuned to flight and feathered altitudeA sisterhood […]
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Brought here by ice-age glaciersAnd held in Boulder ClayAcross an ache of time Twelve thousand yearsFirst passedBefore you droppedLike fruit to shoreWhen rain and winter tide releasedIts crop of marbled stone More precious than indigenousCretaceous chalkThey call you all ‘erratic’A Glacial TillOf errant wanderingThat brought you here fromScotland, ScandinaviaAnd English mountain peaks Your names: Red […]
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We started off with agencyWhen human hands held fastTo flag-fist, flowing runesThat spoke and swoopedTo spell their way across the skyIn fabric-flapping consonantsAnd wind-enabled vowels. In letters shifting fastThen holding stillWe shaped a coded wavering –So knowing eyes could spy, and fathom outOur words, our thoughts,When ears, blown deaf with wind,Sat cold… dead… spent. What […]
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A slither of our livesSun blessed on shingleA click that capturesWorking daysAnd down-time spentWith friends and family. Are we so strange to you?The lives left long behindThrough time and tide? Our lungs breathe, like yours,Our muscles hold –We are watching you watching usAcross time.We look outSeeing you from our photographBecause a gaze will always go […]
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As I stand here alone,Already? Can it be the end of day? NightfallWhich seems to come,Yet somehow doesn’t quitePulls out my breathAs I look on to seeIn twilightBoth sun and skyExhale a doubtful end. Stood hereFace kissed by salty airAll worlds and times and homes seem in slow fade –As I admit, at last, this […]
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Carbon, bonded left and rightTo Oxygen,Or standing, pyramidical,With Hydrogen in foursWill kill us all. Near forty billion tons of itPumped out each year across the GlobeFrom fossil fuel combustionAnd the stinking smear of human toil –Polluting lungs,Wrapping a world, not ours to spoil,In warming blanketsSewn of sulphurous smoke Sometimes, we justify our vandal violenceThrough cases […]
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