Selfies with Mum at Corbière Lighthouse We buy Mr Softees with flakes. Gorse wafts spring through car windows, the sea pokes small fingers round the base of the lighthouse. I queue at the van on the slip. Mum decides she hates ice cream. I eat two. She tells me Dave worked at the lighthouse, how he climbed all the steps to get to his bed.

Willowbrook sounds so homely I told him about that willow tree. When your road's name ends in brook, you kind of know but don't think. I got the kids out, that was my main worry. The neighbours helped. He doesn't listen. Its roots... The brook did its job, water was flowing. But there was a blockage. Water came up the drains over the kerb,

Glass wing Smooth between finger and thumb in the earthbut still jagged, a piece of bottle glassrefracts as you lift it and find it holdsa bubble like the absence of a seed. I don’t know what I’m doing, what it meansto be coming back here day after day. On a stalk, dessicated-looking, dead, a moth passes for a scrap of dry leaf.

A scent of pine You stroke my hair and the movement of air through my lungs and body becomes one with peace. Not sleep. That may follow, but right now, no need or wish to lose a single moment of this. The weather in your chest is blue skies and sunshine. Rainforest too, lush with leaves, feathers and birdsong. Your arteries…

Albion Street i.m. Catherine, Michael and Thomas Brogan Here's Michael and me, in our Sunday best, years before Craven Street was built, or the houses for the Albion works. It was lovely here then. You could walk up our road to the orchard, then nothing but fields, with buttercups and cranesbill and grass that silvered when the wind blew, far enough from the workshops and mills…

Tilting away from the sun There is something in the air. The postman mentions it and our friend Mike who has called to say goodbye. He needs to be nearer his family and his son is returning early from Qatar. The year is slowly losing itself, returning me to those old griefs: the Christmas card list shortening, attic emptied of Topper sails,

Orange Cats My dad was my age when he sat in his window in the town where I sit now. Looked out. Noticed a ginger cat, who lived nearby, creeping along his wall. Dropping down on my father’s side, belly low. ‘The fat orange cat is getting closer…’ he wrote to me. In place of a novel. All I want now is to write to my children.

You Eat Mango Pickle straight out the jar with a spoon. It sets you alight as it goes down, diamond-concentrate, makes you cough, eyes watering, oh, the burn, you need more, want more – oh! a disruption of paradise jostles on your tongue,riotous-rich, feral-fragrant, you eat it neat, no naan needed, fennel seed, coriander, chilli tang, cumin, black pepper, fenugreek…

Cyprus, October 2019 The mountains ask for nothing The sea has its own time I’m in a place where old men interrupt my solo suppers to show me card tricks raise rabbits too fat to come to any good, though the chickens roam free, smirking I’m waiting for something to go wrong, trying to write without metaphor or simile longing to use ‘verterbrae’

What the Tide Brought In It wasn't driftwood or jellyfish, not rope or cracked plastic, not the usual ghosts of summer— but a door. Painted green once, now weather-flaked and sea-soft, hinges rusted shut, and no frame to speak of. It lay on the sand like a promise undelivered, half-buried by seaweed and yesterday's tide. A child touched it first,

The grateful garden This dry spell has conjured no magic for the plants, left them rather sawn in half, unable to drink at all. The few drops that fell the other night just teased petals and leaves, offered nothing to deep roots. So, now that the rain is bouncing off the dry earth, the garden had better be grateful, show some love…

Fool’s Gold There are certain answers in this life filters if you like through which we strain out the truth. Sometimes we imagine something precious but mostly we get mud and a bitch of a sore back for our trouble. * Perfero Ergo Sum I hurt. It is how I know I’m alive. But what kind of life is it…

The big silence The rail their hands touch as they touch each other’s trembles. They look up. All above is an umbrella its dome drizzled inside by the lights of mega-millions of stars. And they stare, quiver in the ferry’s slow sways with wind-watery eyes that don’t notice darkness only brightness on endless journeys from before this world began. His fingers feel the newness of her…

Panenka To dare to execute a Panenka, to venture the quick run up, then stop, the keeper falling hook, line and sinker for your dummy, the devious Panenka a mere chip, not the slam of a Stan Wawrinka backhand, just a gentle nudge and drop into the centre of the net. The nerveless Panenka, time freezing, the planet grinding to a stop.

The Amateur Era A half-moon sheds light enough for him to read the tidal flow and ease the boat into the spot where he can rest his oars and let the current carry him back to the silhouette of island and a flashback of the afternoon, last match minute, eyeing the flag behind the goal, holding the breaths of eighty thousand…

Hoofprints Our road’s a giant horseshoe imprinted in the hillside. Up, around and through the gaps, straggly grasses, workmen’s huts, brick mounds and boys with cigarettes. But where are the horses? We live in a drive but walk, get buses, ride our bikes or split apart our go-karts on its great white concrete slabs. Once we woke to cows in the garden…

Hanging out the washing It might have been ok just to leave the laundry out but I didn’t trust the clouds. At times today, rain’s gusted in from the west, strafing houses across the valley, leaving us dry. Now they sit in a stripe of sunshine, windows aflame as rain streaks ours. Sunset has switched round the pattern. The laundry snuck back between…

Björk I hope she lives in Iceland in a remote wooden hut, or a crystal cave, disconnected from the madness, imagining fantastic things that will seep into rock, flow down glaciers and out into the wider world. Her only companion should be a small Icelandic horse, its back bowed, listening patiently to her three octaves bouncing around the mountains. The tectonic plates shift by fractions;

Truce Back then you waited to do battle after school, throwing soil in my hair, sliding fat worms down my back. In return I flung your cadets and Action Man over Mrs O’Brien’s wall— brother and sister, we fought it out. Once, a parcel came from far away, a doll with powder-blue eyes, hair a mother would kiss at night…

Soft-lit Days Over her shoulder autumn equinox recedes. Five more minutes of light, disappear daily gathered by the birds, perhaps along with their autumn berries. She takes soft footsteps towards winter solstice. * Tihar, Festival of Light Butter lamps appeal to Laxmi, Goddess of wealth, smoke and moisture cling to the post monsoon air suspended on diesel fumes coughed from the last buses…

How to build a fire First, a big fat bed of crisp packets, pork pie wrappers, cigarette cartons. Don’t worry about how many, we will add more later. Build a rickety structure out of wood, with lots of gaps between the struts, to let the air in. The wood should be old and well seasoned. The older the better. Now, check the weather;

Agaete for Wendy Reid What if I wished you this– rolled energy threshed by a trapped, kept angry Atlantic? Kinetic brimming rock holes at Las Salinas, full-on with the high tide's brunt force. Think now in long-spent lava rings, think dangers contained – under the surface devils ride chutes. Think just-hidden tunnels formed by eruptions, blocked by oceans. I wish you wisdom, chilled and served fizzed,

A view of Runcorn Sun fights winter’s east wind and wins. The Bridgewater canal is gaudy with painted narrowboats. We climb above towpath and town to coconut scent, a flowering of gorse, and broom. The Mersey at full tide gleams as if cleansed by spring. The green-leaf wings of a brimstone, the only butterfly I’ve seen this year, briefly catches my eye and is gone.

Flint and Glass Both shine when in love. One's opaque and sparks if struck precisely. The other's more a container than a weapon, dangerous only if broken. I'm neither. If beachcombing is hope and moon an aide-memoire, then I'm shingle. However noisily love surges through me, my hollows tire it out. Tonight the tricked moon's slipped from syntax into my child's eyes.