I was trying to explain the lives of things 

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How all brief bodies have their season, even 

mine. It's flying ant day, maybe the alates 

will illustrate what is aleatory and what is 

designed, their music unspooling in a single 

nuptial flight. But I'm an atheist — I can't 

 

contemplate the divine, only admire the way it  

decides, with a gentle tug, which threads 

remain taut, and which are slackened beyond 

repair. I tell you, nothing that exists is there 

for our benefit. But when you were little,  

 

we cared for caterpillars from a kit — played 

God for fourteen days, deities with pipettes — 

fed them nectar, worried over crumpled 

wings, their struggles to dust off the debris 

of their former selves. You think they are 

 

out there, where we set them free. Seconds 

must get less elastic with time — it's hard to 

explain otherwise, how you still hear the thrum 

of their colours in the ribboning heartbeats 

of all the fleeting creatures you see.  

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An old friend 

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More lichen than stone — mason bones 

rubbed thin, where a hand  

in need of hope would slow — 

the careful art 

of riffling left to love, and time,  

at last. 

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We used to leaf-tickle her chin 

by way of greeting, 

saw her a lot 

in lockdown when the gentle rot 

of the long-dead was considered  

a safer bet. And then  

we stopped. I wonder 

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if at 5pm, the light 

still dips behind her wings  

just so,  

if we could still be forgiven  

for thinking  

we had the answer 

to where they go.  

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By the Nene 

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Spring, an aimless scruffiness that hung its mothballed overcoats on the line to air,  

and the rain pummelling from us every conceivable shade of green, leaving a bedlam 

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of giant hogweed slowly blistering the arm of the embankment; thought-bubbles of 

midges dilly-dallying in unison. We traced the slack cut of river through the bulrushes,  

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stepping over slugs on the white-washed path. Viewed from above, like black bears 

in freshly fallen snow. Summers we forage here, ritually Edward-Scissorhanded 

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by protective thickets; returning home seamed with burrs and cottongrass, stuffed with 

fat silence and lulled by the August heat, the miniscule bramble rhythms of pluck and  

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twist. It whistles our throats, gargling chickweed and thistle as we toss and turn in soupy  

sleep; still tasting the evaporation from the millpond, sour-sweet, and the slapped rebuke 

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of all the nettles we pushed through. In the morning, the tinny crunch of tiny insect 

bodies under us, as we find stains and bits of crushed limbs all over our sheets. 

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On walks  

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We spend a lot of time examining  

trees, although already not quite as much 

as when you were even smaller — and I 

wonder, not for the first time, if we have  

passed peak tree. But look — here’s  

an interesting one, I say to you: it’s like  

congealed porridge. And here we are, 

hands on bark again, spooning the insects 

out of their hiding places. A jigsaw piece  

of wood comes loose, and I hold it 

in my palm for you to see. I have an idea, 

I say, and I break it in two. Now it’s  

two pieces that fit together: one for me, 

one for you. We hold our pieces 

in grubby fingers, bringing them close 

and apart, then shove them in coat 

pockets, where yours gets lost in a jumble 

of other nature detritus. If I could just keep  

subdividing the pieces, smaller and 

smaller, there would always be a way 

of slotting back together, when you need to.  

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Bramblewatch 

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August arrives and I'm on edge, not to miss 

the point at which the blackberries turn. 

My runs become harvest reconnaissance, 

 

but the long rains have confused things, 

drupelets still green and tightly sprung; 

plump bitter pillows. The cows are still massed 

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at the wrong end of the field, 

offering their silent prayers to pylons. 

I cross to the lake and see the heron 

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hunched gargoyle-like in a mess of algae. 

Every car over the bridge is a thud-thud 

through me as I pass under, and I imagine 

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it falling on me as I always do. 

Last year we picked too early, seduced 

by too much sun and the idea of juice  

 

on our chins. I still remember your surprised  

bark, when I handed you one, tasting 

sourness when I'd promised sweet. 

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at breakfast  

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there was this moment when morning 

flicked its wrists, sent a darting light  

around the room; some reflective  

 

acrobatics from a spoon or other  

shiny thing. it rested on the ceiling awhile, 

a non-reclusive spider caught in the act  

 

of transfiguration. you watched  

the shapes it made — haphazardly revealing 

the hidden soft spots in the world 

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and I watched you, how you sought  

to dance your fingers in its wake, trailing  

them like a thread to coax it down. 

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Uprooting  

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They tell me it falls deep 

when you arrive. If that is true,  

my mind is sheeted over 

with the new, singular thought 

of keeping you alive. I am  

ecstatic, snowblind 

with it. Night sweats  

through me, sap- 

sticky under hospital 

lights that needle my hot, 

tired eyes. In this white- 

roomed delirium, I half- 

dream that you are a tree,  

deracinated from my womb,  

and that I must adorn you 

with the threadbare decorations 

this stupid love provides. 

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My evergreen — you are 

a smashed star 

and I pull you out of me,  

in bright, burning  

smithereens. 

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The sign says there are lapwings 

 

Although I've come to believe the important thing  

is not the existence or not of lapwings, but  

whether they want to be found. We are skirting anti- 

clockwise around the Flood Storage Reservoir, 

which like the lapwing it has its other names: 

the Lakes, the Washlands. We keep the dyke  

to our right, a way to ward off the deceit 

of weather. Today for the first time, I notice  

a track leading to nowhere; its stubbed toe  

of tarmac kicking a lanky stand of trees.  

Across the landscape, other trees, but mostly  

to serve as a reminder that we all have a hand 

in the alluvial, however slight. The day sheds wind,  

tussles us with shade and light in turn. I am  

learning to stay in place to understand change.  

How the grass has already antiqued, its gold  

rubbed grey and green with age. As summer 

retreats, the waters will advance again, expand. 

I will mark their outline with each return 

I make, scan for lapwings, knowing that if I  

find them, it will not be on my terms.

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To my son, aged seven and a half  

 

You have been learning about fractions, confidently stating 

that your favourite is the one represented by another number  

over four. Quarters, you say — and once again, I am caught off-guard 

by the internal subdivision of your thoughts, the elegance  

of expression as you branch from one topic to the next.  

Every fresh idea is tested, subjected to this same instinctive 

assay. You like us to engage in increasingly outlandish  

What Ifs, our imaginations flexing to outbid each other — but mine 

has become rigid, finite with age. What if all the atoms of the universe  

re-arranged in such a way that we were never home to each other? I know  

you would still do great things. In the same way that there is always  

another number between any two given numbers, the essence 

you possess is immeasurable, boundless. No fixed  

definition can hold you in. 

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At Bedford Bus Station 

 

Something clicks. The soul is a shirker,  

doesn't want to do the heavy lifting 

required of it. Who would? Easier to hood  

up, repel inclement weather with a 

shrug. This fucking drizzle. Buildings fistula  

into themselves, and out again. The fiction 

of misery as things not getting better,  

when we've never had it so good, not even 

relatively speaking. Try telling that to the scold 

of faces, eyes fixed on deliverance via the 68 

to Kempston. What would compel me  

to shin up these flagpoles, slay their tatty  

emblems? Every time someone says the word 

respect I shrink a little, when I should be 

making myself bigger.  

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Pieds Poudres  

 

Of course we want to stay  — we are in love  

with the woods and how they make us young again, 

and gentle. We will learn to live like deer; stepping 

nimbly and afraid only of the things we need to be, not  

everything. We will come to know each sweetness 

on the air and what it signifies; where the streams go 

when they run out of sight. And when the light dims 

we will dance through dusk with dusty feet; emptied 

of grievances, aware of nothing of our former selves.  

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The poet contemplates the ageing process  

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For a start, rumours of my demise 

have not been proven — or are, at least 

greatly exaggerated. But it is a question,  

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nonetheless, of response-stimuli. I'm  

slower than I'd like to be. Viscid, 

the tap sputtering iron in the bathroom, 

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cupboardfuls of suspensions, unlabelled 

tinctures. Anything to ward against 

the supposed unclevering that hits  

 

at this age. Give me some of that brain 

syrup, by which I mean — let me discover  

again the hidden languages of raindrops, 

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the drip-drip-drip of sign-signifier- 

signified. There is a silt of words clogging 

the basin. By which I mean, let me write. 

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Passing through Kings Cross 

 

I wonder if God has somehow lost 

their purpose in these great big swallows  

of regurgitated light — the dip and soar  

and dip of architecture as performance, 

infrastructure shock and awe. No time  

for a slow reveal — we're funnelled in  

through what appears to be the narthex 

door before a metaphoric kneel 

at the altar of timetables; the slow rotation  

of station names on the board, a pixelated 

rosary. They call these places cathedrals.  

That only works if you choose to believe  

that people cannot be their own engines —  

that they must be hectored, herded, compelled  

by the disembodied prayers of lonely  

tannoy voices. Even the name of this method  

of address is a genericization. I believe  

in the concept of self only as a series  

of temporary way-stops. When we arrive 

we immediately prepare to leave; by the time  

we leave, we are already reminiscing  

about the previous destination.  

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Yeast 

 

The summer when you were seven and we stayed a week in the cottage where I plucked slugs / from the bathroom tiles at 2am, / awake while you slept noisily under holiday-heavy covers, / you were a cub in your temporary sett, rising / each morning from that yeasty burrow to look for deer outside / 

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I hadn't begun the night sweats yet, but your limbs were nearly as long as mine / and that was something / Things were always staying the same and changing / by degrees / in a way that was hard to keep current with / You'd started to say things I could not entirely predict / There was a desperation that came and went – a suppressed owl  

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shriek of motherly clichés / that would not be rationalised / I could not keep your smell close enough, wanted to knead it into the folds of me / while I still had the time / Time was proving you / into a separate being / and soon, I would be seeking glimpses of you in the dense woodland of your own distant life

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Costae Fluctuantes 

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(Hungerford Bridge) 

 

I think of all the times I'd stand  

inside London's ribcage —this fussy 

span of white that carapaced  

my longing, kept it safe til night  

strobed its spokes with smiles;  

all that hot, bright hope exposed,  

strung up, among the vertebrae. Fifty  

six blinks exactly to the place, 

dead centre, where my heart  

was mislaid, and sometimes found   

and somehow lost again. You can breathe 

inside a cavity, for a long  

time, by rationing the in and  

out, but eventually the capacity  

for love shrinks, as the air dissipates, 

is replaced with doubt.  

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Brace 

 

Here again, fingering reedmace. Yellow water irises  

curl around their small dreams. This life,  

with its inconceivable delicacy. I brace against  

the airborne seeds of future sadnesses, which even now  

may have launched themselves adrift. 

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Nearshore  

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These are littoral times 

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We harvest a scurf of ripe ash keys,  

magnolia buds, guilloched leaves —  

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sit, admiring them on the back step,  

faces unmanned by their inner light 

 

We are all things, governed  

by the tides of weather, seasons  

 

When we love, it is with our hands 

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Northampton to London Euston Out of Body Experience 

 

For some thirty seconds, we are twins  

hurtling synchronously towards the city  

 

 

                                                                             along our separate tracks. The people in the  

                                                                             alternate carriage look up, briefly, and I make 

 

eye contact with a woman, this doppelganger  

of circumstance, who smiles, then drops  

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                                                                            her eyes back to whatever digital or analogue  

                                                                            mystery beguiles her. Only I, alone, am still 

 

grimly transfixed by the way we seem to be  

moving unnervingly close together - like our  

 

 

                                                                           lives had prefigured this meeting at this  

                                                                           specific time; like parallel is actually a trick  

 

of perspective, not an unerring fact.