Solstice
The crows were not a flock,
just countless beings, treading air
around the wrecks of trees,
apparitions of the winter’s dying light.
Black as tea leaves, black as days,
their blackness effortless.
And below,
one crow was eying broken worms
inside a furrow;
again, the earth was turned.
First published by Green Ink Poetry
The crows were not a flock,
just countless beings, treading air
around the wrecks of trees,
apparitions of the winter’s dying light.
Black as tea leaves, black as days,
their blackness effortless.
And below,
one crow was eying broken worms
inside a furrow;
again, the earth was turned.
First published by Green Ink Poetry
Butterfly Boy
Along the track-bed of the disused line
Strides butterfly boy in bright sunshine.
He walks on through a rocky cleft to the wide
Cliff tops with thistles, gorse, and celandines.
Lundy’s high, and so the fair weather’s set.
He watches Red Admirals and Peacocks glide
And then climbs down to a pebble cove beside
The old lime kilns, which brambles now entwine.
He sits. He unpacks his bag – a butterfly net,
Old jam pots, and a flask of carbon tetrachloride.
Now, he is ready for the hunt
And very soon with a swish and a flick, a butterfly’s confined.
Then, carefully (and with an untroubled mind) he slides
His catch into the killing jar. Later, it is precisely set
With his bright needles – a new object for his strange cabinet.
After John Moat
Unpublished
Along the track-bed of the disused line
Strides butterfly boy in bright sunshine.
He walks on through a rocky cleft to the wide
Cliff tops with thistles, gorse, and celandines.
Lundy’s high, and so the fair weather’s set.
He watches Red Admirals and Peacocks glide
And then climbs down to a pebble cove beside
The old lime kilns, which brambles now entwine.
He sits. He unpacks his bag – a butterfly net,
Old jam pots, and a flask of carbon tetrachloride.
Now, he is ready for the hunt
And very soon with a swish and a flick, a butterfly’s confined.
Then, carefully (and with an untroubled mind) he slides
His catch into the killing jar. Later, it is precisely set
With his bright needles – a new object for his strange cabinet.
After John Moat
Unpublished
Rain Wolf
Every day the old man walks and talks with his dog
and today’s topic is the smell of the rain.
She sniffs the air to prepare for this time.
On some rainy days they wait and watch
and look at the dropping rain like a child
examining drips, transfixed in the moment.
One day, the lakes ran dry, and the moment
it rained his senses were heightened – wolf-like,
acutely aware. He recalled as a child
he raced outside, his face to the rain,
his clothes were soaking, more joyous than to watch
inside in the dry. And now, this time,
he puts on his waterproof coat, this time,
with hood drawn tight to protect from the moment
the rain arrives on the wind. He watches
bubbles on little rivers, and his dog
licks water straight from the road. The rain
is thick and cold, but his inner child
is making mud like he made as a child
to channel the rainwater until such time
it overtops the dam. In the rain
they walk on through the wet woods. In a moment
he sees a bullfinch and he says to his dog,
“just look at that red!” – she says, “watching
red, is the smell of the rain”. He watches
where in a stream he stood as a child
who hunted for fish in pools, while a wolf
was delving in leaves, and he thought of the time
he looked and studied with care each moment
a raindrop enlarged a puddle of rain.
It seemed to be logical then: examining rain,
the day before he got his first watch,
in the lonely old house, passing a moment
or longer duration, to gaze as a child,
looking out, when the parameters of time
were different; maybe like time for a wolf?
Being in the rain reminds the old man of a child.
He examines his watch and thinks there is time
for this moment when walking his dog.
Every day the old man walks and talks with his dog
and today’s topic is the smell of the rain.
She sniffs the air to prepare for this time.
On some rainy days they wait and watch
and look at the dropping rain like a child
examining drips, transfixed in the moment.
One day, the lakes ran dry, and the moment
it rained his senses were heightened – wolf-like,
acutely aware. He recalled as a child
he raced outside, his face to the rain,
his clothes were soaking, more joyous than to watch
inside in the dry. And now, this time,
he puts on his waterproof coat, this time,
with hood drawn tight to protect from the moment
the rain arrives on the wind. He watches
bubbles on little rivers, and his dog
licks water straight from the road. The rain
is thick and cold, but his inner child
is making mud like he made as a child
to channel the rainwater until such time
it overtops the dam. In the rain
they walk on through the wet woods. In a moment
he sees a bullfinch and he says to his dog,
“just look at that red!” – she says, “watching
red, is the smell of the rain”. He watches
where in a stream he stood as a child
who hunted for fish in pools, while a wolf
was delving in leaves, and he thought of the time
he looked and studied with care each moment
a raindrop enlarged a puddle of rain.
It seemed to be logical then: examining rain,
the day before he got his first watch,
in the lonely old house, passing a moment
or longer duration, to gaze as a child,
looking out, when the parameters of time
were different; maybe like time for a wolf?
Being in the rain reminds the old man of a child.
He examines his watch and thinks there is time
for this moment when walking his dog.
Rain Wolf won third prize in the Rialto Nature and Place poetry competition judged by Pascal Petit and was published in The Rialto issue 94.
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Home
If now, I was to leave this place and drive for more than seven hours (excluding Costa coffee stops), I would arrive (over the bridge that wasn’t there), to the white town by the rivers and cliffs – by the lime kiln with hidden silver coins and all day long out over the sharp rocks to the anemoned pools starfish and crabs – if you kick a limpet fast enough they don’t have time to cling on. From the pretty shell I took home, a crab crawled out and died. Beyond the lockups (which were not always locked) out over the fields past the black and white milkers to the old quarry, unfenced, swinging down to a small rock ledge above the deep dark water where weeds over and under grew sticklebacks and whirligigs and pond skaters and water spiders – the beetles diving with a silver bead stuck to their arses – a long time could be spent hanging there with a jar. No one knew and no one asked. The tadpoles I transplanted home never turned to frogs. I believe that is a thing – non-transformation – not changing staying the same, staying where you belong, not belonging where you stay. two figures approaching a stile her hair like scorched cornfields red campion, honeysuckle a deep, dark coombe steep hart’s tongue ferns some easy talking figwort and helleborine sheer green-black water falling thinly into a cove wood, weed, pebbles, tar plastics, rope shoved/sorted by winter storms ribs of black stretch to the sea, where he recalls cold pools deeper than his arm bleached trunk, beached below decaying cliffs and between here and now right here, smooth, hot as magma, hard like steel blue-grey, white veined salt rime rimmed pebble rubbed pans, with a stone resting within his hand on the small of her back no shade, dazed water sun flash blinded chests rise sea swells uneasy decades echo sea sound only insistent now what if this or this persistent now what if this or this incessant now what if this or this The above two poems were published in Stand Magazine (https://www.standmagazine.org/) Volume 21, Issue 3, December 2023. Home received a special mention in the Newcastle University Channcellors poetry competition 2022. The Stormcock
I walk after the storm and before the storm coming and as the storm abated the Stormcock sang and I wondered, what is it like to be a bird not knowing the names of storms what is it like to be a bird weathering storm after storm and in that moment I knew and I would tell you but I have no words for that tune and no voice to sing in This poem was first published online by Poetry Wales: https://poetrywales.co.uk/jim-lloyd-how-i-wrote-the-mistle-thrush/ |
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A far sea
What a puzzle, my love To think, how a raindrop’s course is set. I remember, once, discussing this with you. How one mountain breath can send it going To one shore, or another, switch-like As if falling atop a giant letter ‘A’. Since then, I have grown fat And accumulated gold. But the falling rain? – I could only ever watch. Golden shovel after Sylvia Plath This poem was first published online by Allegro Poetry https://www.allegropoetry.org/p/issue-30-march-2023.html
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The Wild Call was first published by bind
Intake
Daily, drearily, I pace this path. And now a precise
easterly interrogates the star-white aspens
richtering the ocean's tempest – the ash's
broken stumps resisting. No winds now
can stir the bones of this dead farm
and the ridge-back, grey-blacked means on which I tread,
step by slow step, into the ghostly dawning.
Shiny beads abacus the gates and the rose hips
shriek their silent scarlet into the darkness.
Beasts grumble in the barns
and the low drizzle-mists come lower;
my ankle twists in the moor bleached grass.
I prop against the cold of a deserted monument
and feel a drop of rain – the way I take it in
and then breathe out;
how easily everything finishes, then starts
Intake was first published online by One Hand Clapping Xmas 2022
Daily, drearily, I pace this path. And now a precise
easterly interrogates the star-white aspens
richtering the ocean's tempest – the ash's
broken stumps resisting. No winds now
can stir the bones of this dead farm
and the ridge-back, grey-blacked means on which I tread,
step by slow step, into the ghostly dawning.
Shiny beads abacus the gates and the rose hips
shriek their silent scarlet into the darkness.
Beasts grumble in the barns
and the low drizzle-mists come lower;
my ankle twists in the moor bleached grass.
I prop against the cold of a deserted monument
and feel a drop of rain – the way I take it in
and then breathe out;
how easily everything finishes, then starts
Intake was first published online by One Hand Clapping Xmas 2022