Photo: Michael Regan I drove to Brighton: four degrees below. The motorways were salty, grinding, slow My windscreen wash was frozen. Would not come. The murky shroud of winter pushed me on. We met at Trevor’s Café. Half past three. Two full breakfasts and then two cups of tea. Like lovers, sliding eggs around our … Continue reading Brighton Subzero

It’s the start of her shift and she hands me a tea, With half a sugar. In the day room, like a regular. A too-familiar welcome for a place we want to leave. While somewhere three floors below A registrar, half my age, is cutting up my perfectly-shaped boy. As the theatre curtain falls Electric-yellow … Continue reading Christmas at the Gloucester Royal

Sharp-angled sunshine catches up with us On Hay Bluff, racing over bracken bent By showers stacking up against the dark And brooding layers of the Black Mountains. My boy and I we laugh along the ridge, Gaze across the peak of Lord Hereford’s Knob, And giggle at the future insults we will trade. We slide … Continue reading ‘Lord Hereford’s Knob’ – The Black Mountains

Winter Solstice December 21. Shortest day. All walled in, I watch the windows And the leaking sky, waiting for the last light Of the waning year. Deep, all-day dark. Racing clouds and bedroom weather A dark and hopeless time. Finally the dog and I brave the cold And hopscotch the spaces Between farm-track puddles. Nut-brown and … Continue reading Winter Solstice

Leaving home Judging by your expression, as we sat side-by-side on the edge of the just-made bed You needed us to stay, just a touch longer than the other parents Who with a cool wave through car windows bless nonchalant offspring Before crunching down the gravel track to empty nests. Precariously balanced, we toy with … Continue reading Leaving home