he still denies he's been drinking. his voice is less slurred today - we continue our conversation.

cuckoo


cuckoo
cuckoo




cuckoo

a gentle rain between me and the crimson tree

lightly leaping from blog to blog, finding kindred spirits

the day after Duncan finished the marathon in 3 hours 52 minutes

yesterday's blood blister is already healing

London marathon

Just along from where we wait at the barrier for my brother, 22 miles out of 26, a slight man suddenly wobbles and arches his back in agony. A steward helps him away from the stream of runners, and lowers him gently to the curb. They sit together and wait for the medics and she rubs his back, an offering of consolation, of love.

something leaks into the spaces between the words

Telephone counselling.

This one cries that everyone lets him down before I get it wrong and he hangs up on me. This one is slurred and confused but 'hasn't had a drink'. This one hurts.

...the way the red fades to white on the woodpecker's chest...

She isn't herself any more, but then she probably wasn't before.

I would like to write a poem about banana pancakes but they do it better themselves with their sweet cloud of golden-baked aroma

yesterday's raquets and shuttlecock thrown down onto the grass

In Richmond Park

Twenty or so, they stand in a disorganised bunch and move forwards, spinning their arms. They are a long way away, but I can see that some of them have generous bellies. After the class, each of them hugs each of the others. They squeeze tight. It takes a long time.

Andrea di Vanni d'Andrea's Virgin and Child: the blue, the blue, the blue

blackbird in the magnolia tree, pretending to be blossom

sitting with a client

it aches. it aches. it aches.

Morning prostrations

Each bow I make to the Buddha, Silver lifts up onto her tabby hind legs and rubs her furry forehead against mine.

Caught in headlights: that white farm cat (who terrorises our soft house cats) tearing strips from a flattened mess of crow.

Last night's sprouting broccoli left a countoured water map, sharpening to deep emerald at the edges. I could hardly bring myself to wipe it away.

She drives for more than an hour just to sit on my bench in the sun and eat chocolate brownies.

Tooly the owlet

His fluffiness fashioned from circles of metal, the vendor shows me a text just come through from the artist. He is asking for more work. He lives in Zimbabwe. His name is Toolate.

renegade daisies are starring the now-perfect lawn

we drive past as strangers on opposite sides of the road, we wave and grin, we are joyful-red-Fiat-500-sisters

two
swans
fly
over:
their
long
necks
stretched
straight
out

The sun paints perfect shadows by the poolside - straight-edged, solid, impermanently reassuring. The water on the blue pool cover ripples organically, the light shifts. A blackbird flutters from hedge to hedge.

a day of grieving, so I can clear the cobwebs from my eyes

Easter present

Erin gives me a beautiful drawing of a merman: I like it because his nipples look like boobies.

Stubbly Japanese passenger in a flat cap, his head nodding forwards through motorway torpor.

milk chocolate and hazelnut biscuits for breakfast - not such a brilliant idea after all

mud-mottled numberplate: R145 RHP