Milk - by
Your custom often
/ when the house was still
/
/ to brew milky coffee
/ and reminisce.
/
/ Child care experts would have frowned
/ on my late hours,
/
/ The bitter…
poems on postcards
from A hyakuin renga in summer - by
shrivelled little figs
/ that never made it
/ to the table
/
/ swirling a late cup of milky tea
/ what she’d like…
A Child’s Calendar of Feasts - by
September
/ Peel some hazelnuts while they’re still green. Our grapes can hang another day.
/
/ October
/ Take these walnuts next door. Tell them we…
The Picnic - by
In a little rainy mist of white and grey
we sat under an old tree,
drank tea toasts to the powdery mountain,
undrunk got merry, played catch
with the empty flask
Grandpa’s Soup - by
No one makes soup like my Grandpa’s,
/ with its diced carrots the perfect size
/ and its diced potatoes the perfect size
/ and its…
Clone Machine - by
What if we could make clones of ourselves?
/ You wouldn’t have to go to school
/ You could just send your clone
/ All you’d…
Pushing forty - by
Just before winter
we see the trees show
their true colours:
the mad yellow of chestnuts
two maples like blood sisters
the orange beech
braver than lipstick
in hospital - by
I like seeing nurse frieda knitting
/ as I like watching my wife knitting
/ as I liked watching my mother knitting
/ though she was…
The Voyage - by
And if or when the people’s surge subsides
/ to tourist trickles from this present spate,
/ do not relax or quietly desiccate,
/ do not…
Charlotte - by
C is like an egg cracked in half for a cake
/ H is like a ladder climbing up to a fire…
Grandmother - by
carries the guid Scots tongue in her heid
/ all the way to London
/
/ where it becomes like the kitchen china
/ worn and cracked…
A Man’s a Man for a’ That - by
Is there for honest Poverty
/ That hings his head, an’ a’ that;
/ The coward-slave, we pass him by,
/ We dare be poor for…