empty house
dust on the dressing table
cobwebs in her hair brush

The phrase February fill dike came to mind. Googling it I found this article from the Guardian two years ago, which reports that “southern, central and eastern regions […] are teetering on the brink of drought”. It also says, somewhat surprisingly, that February tends to be one of the driest months of the year.
Not wanting to get political, I’ll just mention that I was told as a child that “bad governments bring bad weather.”
Well, whether drought or flood, we seem to have been having bad weather for years. The poem below was written in January 2001:
Continue reading “yet more weather”
Although I understand that the UK weather was dreadful over the holidays, I’m not sure that it was really cold; certainly there are already signs of spring about. Of course we’re bound to get some real winter weather later, so I hope Nature has the good sense to be patient.
Chrysalis
Tight as apple pips,
buds spiral around
a moss-supple stalk
anticipating spring
when they will split
and shake free
tissue wings.
That’s a draft, and questions remain:
Continue reading “work in progress”
For years I have been sure that there’s a poem in the woodshed. Today, I seem to have found another fragment: