NEW ENQUIRIES DAILY 2026

 

In order of composition, newest at the top. 

Photographs from Ashurst, New Forest unless indicated otherwise

Judging by the guide

to its wildlife in winter

even the hardest of the park’s inhabitants

will start to feel the cold.

                

 

The Big Van has gone

I don’t remember it having a tail,

but it seems to have wagged it

on the way out. 

File under

‘I can't believe

they're not leaves’

while knowing you can believe it easily enough.

(Kensington, London)

Do they sell buzzes and bangs

or is the shop called Onamatopia

because that was the least

onomatopoeic word they could conjure?

(Lyndhurst)

 

There's the whistle!

Have they just begun

or was that the sale’s

concluding Phweeeeep!!! ?

(Marylebone, London)

I know I’m not much

of a completer-finisher

but I do OK

when it comes to books and sex and Twix.

 

The moss caterpillar

is crossing the woodland floor.

Its butterflies are rather rare,

I wonder what we're in for?

   

From where

would you like

your bricks knocked out?

This wall seems to know.

(Totton)

    

Brett the window cleaner is a helpful chap

but he’s left our hosepipe out on the lawn.

Does he not realise that, under Stephian law,

that’s very close to a capital offence?

Here's a house

that failed the test

of reading the seasonally altered

waste collection schedule.

Having spent a summer

without occlusion

I’m happy enough to see, if imprecisely,

matters getting vague.

 

 

That's what I call

a thorough felling:

I'll found a tree religion

if it rises from that!

 

        

 

Supposing the shadow

of wood on wood

were an illusion,

where would we be?  

 

 

Time again to monitor

how the paint is chipping

in the pedestrian underpass

that runs beneath the A 326.

 

The sun is winning

the tunnel’s light contest

despite the handicap

of 93 million miles.

Here may be where not to live

Right up against the railway line

at just the point where trains must hoot

to warn any pedestrians on the upcoming crossing.

 

(3 Foxhill Close, Ashurst)

 

A fridge

in the forest?

That

is not cool.

 

If I had a parking spot

as convenient as this

I, too, might be

exceptionally reluctant to leave it.

(Southampton)

 These chafer grubs

appearing to grin at each other,

might both be looking to say:

‘It’s no good grinning when you’re dead’.

Has anybody seen a dog

without a blue lead?

It was being taken for a walk

by a woman with a matching lack.

 

The Forest Edge retirement flats

are three miles from any plausible forest,

leading me to wonder

just how big an edge can be…

(Totton)