monday verse: soracte

Snow’s on the fellside, look! How deep; our wood’s staggering under its weight. The burns will be tonguetied while frost lasts. But we’ll thaw out. Logs, logs for the hearth; and don’t spare my good whisky. No water, please. Forget the weather. Elm and ash will stop signalling when this gale drops. Why reckon? Why …

monday verse: snowdrop

Now is the globe shrunk tight Round the mouse's dulled wintering heart Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass, Move through an outer darkness Not in their right minds, With the other deaths. She, too, pursues her ends, Brutal as the stars of this month, Her pale head heavy as metal. Snowdrop by Ted …

monday verse: auguries of innocence

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour from Auguries of Innocence by William Blake I know, I know, I'm no longer doing Monday Verse. Yet it's Monday, and here I am again. It seems …

monday verse: in the bleak midwinter

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, long ago. from In The Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti A wintry landscape for my last Monday Verse. We had a couple of really cold, …

a year of monday verse

There is only one Monday remaining in 2015, and I have a poem and photograph ready to post, which means that I have completed the challenge I set myself in January. Every Monday, I have shared some poetry, illustrated with a photograph, usually one of my own, but with a couple by guest photographers. I've …

monday verse: derelict

Christmas is a place I speed through now, a crumbling downtown celebrated only as Once Upon a Time before the founding fathers ran for the suburbs leaving us nothing but plaster figurines, a fake beard, ruins of safety and certainty, of a day when the ritual unwrapping of presents could seem a prophecy of what …

monday verse: autumn journal

  A week to Christmas, cards of snow and holly, Gimcracks in the shops, Wishes and memories wrapped in tissue paper, Trinkets, gadgets and lollipops And as if through coloured glasses We remember our childhood’s thrill Waking in the morning to the rustling of paper, The eiderdown heaped in a hill Of dogs and bears …

monday verse: autumn journal

It is December now, the trees are naked As the three crosses on the hill; Through the white fog the face of the orange sun is cryptic Like a lawyer making the year’s will. The year has little to show, will leave a heavy overdraft to its heir. from Autumn Journal (XVIII) by Louis MacNeice

monday verse: pigeons

On shallow slates the pigeons shift together, Backing against a thin rain from the west Blown across each sunk head and settled feather. from Pigeons by Philip Larkin We came across these pigeons in Paris, one freezing cold February. Seriously, I don't think I've ever been so cold. They were huddled on this grate, taking …

monday verse: annus mirabilis

Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) - Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles' first LP. Up to then there'd only been A sort of bargaining, A wrangle for the ring, A shame that started at sixteen And spread to everything. Then all at once the …