January 23rd 2012

Straw hat on top of my bookshelf.
no,not straw. That's what donkeys wear in Spain
ears stuck through.  It's plaited Panama, though not, I think
superfino. It kept the sun off his head, until September
when he no longer needed it.

22nd January 2012

Queen Anne's Lace

Starbursts of dry flower heads
firework from the glass, such
casual elegance.

January 21st 2012

Found: a silver Christmas tree bauble lying in the grass
reflecting an arc of joined branches
and another sky.

20th January 2012

Ain't ya got no rhymes for me?



Today the interviewer says, "You're bright and creative, did you not want
A different career?"
I am nonplussed. What other life
Than my life? It would be another life.

And I walk down Kingsway, and think, but my life, my loves,
my voice,
Here in the sound of my footsteps and softness of my gloves.

19th January 2012

Driving back from the coast
 the sky melting in three levels of cloud
On the horizon, a striped pink curtain hangs then
Layers of washes, bleeding and running upwards where
high cumulo nimbus, Payne's Grey, almost
solid, dark overhead. Yet the land is illuminated.

Oxford Castle taken by Niamh

18th January 2012

Japanese Garden

Leaves collected in the fall
and put into a press, the better to keep the crimson and orange
of the Japanese maples; and the yellow gold ginkgo fans.
I got them out today
the fall's embers in winter 
and  the bamboo spears still spring green.

17th January 2012

Le debris d'un poete

Le poete
ramasse ses feuilles

 en reprend une
une autre

les poemes

des plumes qui tombent
en l'air

forme d'effraie.




image:  http://www.doeni.gov.uk/niea/biodiversity/sap_uk/key_species_barn_owl.htm