Published in the Mayfield and District U3A anthology celebrating its 10th anniversary.

In the woods

there's the bed of a brook...

In disregard for shape and form,

it hangs before us...

A city of promenades and boulevards...

No mere Punch and Judy show, 

A child's heart beat deeper,...

You are afraid.

What do you expect?...

She bends slowly forward

and hesitantly...

I half awake in heavy black.

Cold black that scratches...

He slopes past

The cupboard each morning...

That trousseau nose

and auburn hair that curves...

Like a dying stream,

the notes and coins...

Under rocks,

in decaying vegetation,...

I must believe that death will not come this way,...

You say there’s nothing broken.

Nothing you can see...

Over enemy lines.

The time is here,...

You offered me this leaf

for fun...

​Feet appear and reappear beneath my knees,

inching forward through the pass...

You are under my skin

like a drug...

I lost my cat last night.

My dearest mate, who disappears for hours...

He stares from the page,

not at the viewer but beyond...

His head pounds, the walls dance.

Can he hear the felling of timbers?...

So this is what wisdom is for.

To know which things...

Sharks, dolphins and gannets are gathering.

The winter feast. Not long to wait...

With three hundred men

he took the country...

These people; they won’t recall

the gun grey skies, those steel covered...

The second time around

she is more than just a woman...

There is silence.

For a brief moment...

That cloak you’re wearing,

you think it keeps you warm...

The grit and grind of plough through soil,

the sweat and thud of horse and hoof,...

So now it’s over.

We sit with our wine...

Centuries live and die

but the gnarled oak stands...