Conversation at an airport, Sunday a.m.

She's sitting alone in the departure lounge, wearing a lime green 'welcome to Ireland' stetson over her frazzled white-blond hair. A man approaches, his clothes creased, his face red and crumpled.
'I like your hat.'
'I'm furious, don't come near me!'
Her words come out through clenched teeth at dangerously high pressure.

After the wedding, outside the church

Two grubby white scottie dogs appear from nowhere, skittering around the gravel from group of guests to group of guests. They are eager to be fondled, and in return they will stare into any stranger's eyes with love. One wags his tail so hard, his rear end lifts of the ground as if he's taking off.

In a field near Darrow

The sheep lies with its stomach wool pressed against the wet grass. On her back a crow shuffles a few paces forwards, settles, watches the morning come on.

Sky bites

Not pieces of sky, cool-blue and smooth in your palm, but oddments of pretzel nuggets covered in sesame, raisins, moss-green pumpkin seeds, sealed in plastic and handed out at thirty thousand feet.

Row of giant sunflowers

Their heads hang heavy, their faces dark, their yellow manes blazing.

Between emails

the blue-tits gobble blackberries outside my window.

Lemon marscapone cheesecake

It's the wrong kind of cheesecake. After the feeling of injustice blooms and fades I enjoy it anyway.

Start again

I wrench the stiffening runner bean plants, the papery corn from the ground.

How to plant bulbs

Spend a long time flicking through the catalogues: can-can girls, bright spurts, flouncy flirts, serious dark tulips. Plant the bulbs in clutches. Splash purple around the bird feeder, ring trees in yellow, dot red against white walls. Enjoy pushing the plump promises into the earth. Become a squirrel. Forget where you've planted them, forget that you've planted them at all. Get on with your life.

Poem

He wrote it when he was 18. That desolate teenage part of him aches and keens.

Afterwards

The body is nowhere to be seen - pigeon feathers feather the lawn.

Pitter patter

The rain accepts everything: dirty tissues, tarmac, brambles, skin.

Just sitting

I sit in lotus on my zafu and stare at the roughly-plastered wall. My mind, desperate for company, magicks faces from the dots and smears.

Walking home through the graveyard

The cold nips at my ankles.

Greedy

Small patches of spider's webs are greedy for the light that is scattered everywhere in the morning dew.

Bird caught in the vegetable patch net

She flies at the net from all directions. I wait for her to become tangled up, her head poking through one of the holes, her wing feathers bent. To carry her free I have to hold on tight to her beating breast.

Caversham park

A man and his son are feeding a loaf to the swans. Light pretties the water. The first boat to go by is 'Dragonfly'.

Pring!

the street light tastes the dark: time to light the street

On the wall

A frozen drip of paint.

Aborted

A dark green tomato the size of a cherry nestling in the grass.

Perfect marriage

Yesterday's juicy strawberries, today's lemon cheesecake.

Fragments

Slicing strawberries and clouds of ripe aroma floating up. Sliding my feet into soft-as-thistledown slippers. A green flat-bodied beetle clambering over the hawthorn twigs. Finding them in the bird book: Collared doves.

3rd prize at the Sherfield Show in the 'animals made from fruit and vegetables' category

Erin's mouse - pear body, chili tail, fragments of avocado skin eyes, carrot stick feet and orange peel whiskers.

Touch them and see

The pampas grass pushes out tubes tipped with creamy tassles: they don't feel as soft as they look against your cheek.

Standing by a busy road

Each car carrying a rush of sound like a shroud.

White

A roadside blanket of scrubby dark green shrub: quietly sitting amongst the tired leaves, a tiny five-petalled flower white as paper.

Fidget

The longer I stare at the screen, the more my brain fidgets in its skull.

brambly hedge

outside the window blackberries darkly swell, bringing the sweetness of Heaney's poem to the tip of my tongue

circle of marrow-life

a rotten marrow bursts, smears a slimy sludge against my t-shirt, down my trouser leg

Birthmark

As if crushed rose petals stirred into milk were spilt across her cheeks. The rest of her skin pale. Her hair dark. Her eyes. Does she know how beautiful she is?