Small Stone January 9th 2012

Strand

Grey cobble from an Irish strand
Perfectly fits my hand. He gave it to me.
Incidental music: the herring gulls and
sussurration of the undertow.

    -" look, the children are skimming stones".

Small Stone January 8th 2012

Sunday Tango

They practice the tango walk
Leandro calls "Forward,  right foot first...
Backward,  right foot first"

The milonga starts. Off the dance floor, behind the chairs
an old couple dance, hesitant, tender.

Small Stone January 7th 2012

Tiny cups
white porcelain, translucent
gold rim, painted gentians
the wedding present
She kept for best.
On my table,
coffee in cup, paint in saucer.

Small Stone January 6th 2012

Piccadilly line, rattling along, we're all checking our phones,
messages captive while we hurtle underground.
 At the doors, the girl turns: Vermeer face, the
 Shock of her red lips.

Small Stone January 5th 2012

The New Yorker Magazine 1968 - 1990


The font is so characteristic, redolent of 
The Sixties, childhood in the big house, woodsmoke, draughts.
The old pages are yellowing now: fragile unneeded messengers.
  
... the app has every story, poem, cartoon; ads for J.Jill and Saks Fifth Avenue 
And the font-madeleine.

Small Stone January 4th 2012

Cotes de Ventoux
Vanilla oak perfumes the kitchen floor 

Cotes de Ventoux

Mistral-pierced alleyway
I would fetch my letters from the postman
in the cafe, 
Cotes de Ventoux...

January 4th 2012

Small Stone January 3rd 2012

My neighbours' bamboo flails the sky,
dustbin lids hit the fence
         My blue Spanish plate bangs on the terrace wall,
the sky's in trouble.

Small stone January 2nd 2012

Dennis Severs house, Spitalfields

Three hundred years, the palimpsest of  lives, voices off...
A thimble glass  glows  in the candlelight,
Amber in the chased vine leaves.