view from my window

never noticed before - that arch of garden gate, sage green, scrolled metal, leading to who knows where...

Whether today's tasks are finished or not the clouds bunch up, the day grows cold, light leaches out, like water splashed on earth.

evesham abbey

we step into the hallowed space. it is bitterly cold. candy-coloured light streams through the windows. the silence seeps up into us, through our vulnerable soles.

sometimes the ache of autumn is almost too much to bear

offering

incense stick crumbles into fragrant smoke

the view from here

greyed net curtains, mottled glass, a figure outside moves past like a goldfish under ice

having had my fill of talk, I stay inside the car and eat in silence

as I stop at the lights, a man standing on the pavement catches my eye and smiles. he isn't flirting. he doesn't want anything. I smile back.

I dream of death and destruction, of hiding under piles of clothes and hoping I wouldn't be seen. For breakfast I eat ivory goat's cheese spread onto golden toast, drink crimson cranberry juice.

Caroline buys mushrooms from Stroud farmer's market

A tangle of golden and cream, every one plucked (with care) from the mossy floors of the woods round here

Isobela cries from behind the walls

this cat has been sent to stand and purr beside my laptop, looking out of the window, rubbing her cheeks on the plastic corner of the screen, to remind me to look up, out, to notice the smoke rising from the chimney, to see that bird, to stop typing, to rub her fur, to hear her purr

late christmas present

gunpowder tea from fortnum and mason's in an embossed silver tin

Next door's shed

Two ladders leaning against the front, net curtains behind the glass. Two tangled bicycles. A collection of pots containing dead things on the porch. A white plastic paint pot. The inside left to my imagination. Moss taking over.

I sit and listen while the sky beckons to me from the window, flirting, showing off its clear blue shirt in the sun.

poinsettia lives past its sell-by date, its dragon-red leaves blazing through the days

mandolin player

he smiles down at his instrument as if it is a baby
making the most beautiful music he's ever heard

woodpigeon croons me a morning lovesong

getting out of puff climbing the hill

right here are the needle-sharp edges of my mortality

in somebody else's house

there is black behind the curtains. voices rumble elsewhere like water in the pipes. 'do you want my bathwater?' birds high voices. a door slams. later, crows wake me.

black plastic-wrapped hay-in-waiting, loose scarf ends flapping, the patient bales storing up sweetness

Walking back from St. Anne's Well

The tarmac path drops ahead of us like a water-chute. We trudge slowly, our knees holding our weight back. I imagine a body (my own, in forty years time) falling forwards. My skin suddenly the meniscus on milk, my bones matchsticks.

walking my body out into the blue evening reveals twists of angry tension between my shoulder-blades. with each shaking step and each lungful of cold air they lose a little of their bite.

The sun comes out

A crow swoops over the fallow field, holding something in his beak. Our soles squelch. As we walk through the orchard Kaspa says, 'they look like bones'.

mist-laden air slipping down from the sky to shake a grey-white sheet over the hills

when I sit with her, a blankness opens up
containing all the things I haven't said

mournful train-song slides into the music

journey

maroon and dull-brown hedges like an overgrown beard
black birds gather in the tops of the trees
a woman limps her way up the hill slowly, slowly

walking meditation between light

flickering candle in the hearth
steady flame on the shrine
yellow streetlamp in a dark morning sky
the shining golden cheek of the Buddha

I follow Silver out into the garden and across the lawn. The snow has sunk into the earth. There is new silver-furred green at the tips of the branches. I go back inside. Everything carries on growing without me.

huge shining orange globes hang and spin from the new year garden trees