Morning finds her curled like a prawn Around a stuffed blue Pegasus, or the smallest Prawn-pink lion. Or else she’s barging Into my room, and leaning in close so It’s her hair I wake to — that coarse, dark Heaven of knots and purple fluff. … She wants a movie, or maybe Just the tussle […]
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Do you remember how great summer holidays were as a kid? A seemingly endless expanse of time when the daily routine of school-homework-weekends was suspended in a glut of play. I don’t remember the specifics of summer holidays but I do remember the rhythms. Cricket, of course […]
islands parting tides as meteors burn the air. Oysters powder to chalk in my hands. – from ‘The River’ by Robert Adamson It’s been raining for days.* Heavy rains that leave the air humid and cloying. A sky washed in bruised shades of grey. It makes the spring greens look impossibly greener, the overhead leaves […]
I bend to it willingly, this patch of earth and its green things, in their own world (though I hold the title to it) hungry for life…” – from ‘After’ by David Malouf We planted daffodil bulbs yesterday, the kids and I. Fingers in dirt, carefully. Now we water, and wait for them to bloom, […]
Something woke me, something feathered up against me in a dream. Perhaps its soft tip of wing skipped across my face…” – from ‘Butterfly Kisses’, Ian McBryde We have a Saturday morning family ritual. We wake up early, the kids tumbling into our bed for cuddles and giggles, burrowing deep under the blankets to ward […]
The beetroot is in my roots, borscht in my bloodline. My great grandmother was Ukrainian. The story goes that during a pogrom in the early 1900s she stabbed a Russian solder who was attempting to rape her, then escaped with nothing but a pair of brass candlesticks. I can’t vouch for the truth of this […]
Spoon of everyone. Spoon of the belly. Spoon of the empty belly. Spoon of the full one. Spoon of no one hungry. Spoon for everyone. — from ‘Spoon Ode’ by Sharon Olds I’m writing this sitting at our wooden kitchen table, early on a Friday afternoon. The big window above the bench is overlooking a grey […]
“But then the dark skin of night would peel off and there would be a fresh day waiting for us, glossy and colourful as a child’s transfer and tinged with the same sense of unreality.” – from My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell Pre-dawn on Monday morning T and I boarded our train home. I had no […]
If you’re not interested in a quick side of politics with your panzanella, scroll down now. If you are, though, let’s take just the briefest of moments to celebrate the solidarity, where around the world millions of women stood up against racism and hate-mongering, stood up for the rights of the marginalised. Critique and reservations […]
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub, Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; – from ‘Romeo & Juliet’, Shakespeare First up, an apology. Things have been sporadic and rather […]
