Poems

Cuckoo oats and woodcock hay makes a farmer run away — old Cornish proverb Sugars peak at midsummer then fall as the nights draw in and for the third year in a row we’re entering August with the hay-barn empty but for some bought-in straw and your motorbike wedged in a corner stall. We lose …

We were drinking Icebreakers and Jungle Joes at Nero’s in the meatpacking district, not knowing this was the end of an era. News came in that Boudicca, the British bitch, was dead, wedged in a gorge somewhere on Watling Street, her lines of retreat blocked by her own wagons, her barbarian troops barrel-shot, her bright …

Pushing my trolley today I have Ingomar the barbarian. He is my shopping buddy. He strides through the fresh meat section advising me on barbarian cuisine in the nineteenth century. He is unimpressed by shrink-wrap and buy-one-get-one-free, in fact the whole concept of payment is alien; shopping as raid. I have learned that he likes …

Today I am using a system of triage to allocate – on the basis of need or likely benefit – myself. From trier, to sort. There are those who are likely to live, whatever care they receive, those who are likely to die, whatever care they receive, and those who, with care, might live, and …

i.m. Ronald Lee Herrick 1934-2010 Hats off to Ronald Lee Herrick, the older, more serious one whose twin brother Richard was dying of kidney disease, who said “I had heard of such things, but it seemed in the realm of science fiction,” who was prepared to undergo a “mutilation procedure”, who spent five and a …

The Mud Man looks like Ben Nevis — as high as ten St Paul’s but without the convenience of a staircase. The popular tourist path requires modest scrambling ability and a head for heights. I choose the hard way to learn the meanings of words: saddle, col, arrête, spike. Barn-dooring on a ‘schrund, I understand …