Recent poems, as first published. Copyright remains with the author.
Top path
Nothing in the house to stay for
so I take the lane to the wood
leave the unopened letter
for the path’s black-biscuit tar.
It goes up where the wood
turns air half a degree cooler
light more grey than green
the edge-mud unglued by rain,
a fringe of white speedwell,
sprays of unfolded bracken
knobbly leaves newly open,
the lichen-frosted trunks
of sycamore and rowan.
A man and his retriever pass —
a wink, Little bugger he is,
the hill’s lean steepening,
breath matched to the burn
each stride harder than the last,
t-shirt wicking sweat.
I halt, the hill flattens,
my damp back cools and I shiver
looking down at the small houses
sprinkled there with mine,
roofs wet with someone else’s rain
and the lane going back down
to the letter.
First published in London Grip New Poetry 61, Autumn 2026.
Again
Again the rock is wet. Again no spring.
Sheltered under the ridge the fence post
leans where it always leans. Mud.
A buzzard mews, turns in the wind,
a faraway engine grumbles.
On the ewe-path worn to here,
close to the face of cold granular rock,
I trace the grain of a fracture with my finger.
It turns darker where it is damp,
runs along a seep line stained by lichen.
Water doesn’t make these fractures.
It finds them.
But I know what I want to find.
Not the famous springs. The other side,
where fewer people come. Unnamed,
they trickle downhill to the brook,
months between rain and what seeps out.
No one knows how full the hill is.
Standing at the fracture, there are only signs.
Wet rock, the must of old water,
fern growth at the seep line.
The ferns are green.
That could mean anything.
My hand feels cold as the rock again,
a drop of water runs down my wrist
from the rock or from the air,
I can’t tell.
You come back when you come back.
I know that now. I’ve always known it.
And this path knows my boots.
I look at the stones below.
Exposed, I’d forgotten how pale
they are when the spring fails.
I place my hand back on the rock.
Something at the lip of the fracture—a bead,
or the light shifting. I watch it.
It doesn’t move. It doesn’t go away.
I turn back, find the brook again
running on whatever came before.
First published in Ink Sweat & Tears, June 2026.
Sounding
Eubalaena, the right whale, named by the men
who killed it. Slow swimmer, shallow feeder,
floats when dead. Right.
Against the grey sea, their dark-rimmed
backs signal breath. They embrace face
to face, travel long distances as mother
and calf. At rest, gulls on their pock-marked skin
feed on their flesh.
Inuit whalers find a bowhead
on the Alaskan coast. A hand-thrown
exploding harpoon tip
embedded in its side. Dated 1885.
For years the plankton thin. Fish
that feed on the plankton thin.
The seabirds. The grizzlies that feed
on their washed-up carcasses.
If a whale falls, it feeds the seabed
for decades. In Provincetown,
tourist boats leave the harbour in spring.
For the whales.
You used to be here. Sometimes
you still are. You keep returning to this.
I stayed when I should have gone.
The cow and calf followed for half
a morning. They knew the calf
would surface first. Knew the cow,
the others, would never leave
a dead calf.
At dawn, closer than expected,
a fluke splashes the surface. Gulls
lift, wheel for a moment, salt air.
Out there, dark ocean, the right whale surfaces.
Diatoms flash in their millions in time
with her song.
First published in Anthropocene, July 2026.