In order of composition, newest at the bottom.
Photographs from Ashurst, New Forest unless indicated otherwise.
If a plastic bag picks a fight with a tree
there may only be one winner -
but if three billion bags a day
are up against trees as a whole…
(Totton)
Roadworks in rural parts
come with
their risks:
what if
the signs point nowhere
and the barriers
go feral?
Hounsdown Close?
We’re bloody in it!
It’s not as if it's big enough
to make us wonder whether we still are…
Hounsdown, Hampshire is a small area within Totton that is sufficiently
cut off by major roads to feel like a separate place. It’s unusual in
containing Hounsdown Avenue and Hounsdown Close – usually such roads lead to
the place referred to rather than being in it, or are named after somewhere else.
The walls have eyes
Or at least this wall has one,
though I
assume
monocular
walls can’t see too well.
(Southampton)
The differences
from either
end of a well-lit see-through
don’t amount
to tunnel vision
so much as
matters of perspective.
(tunnel between Ashurst and Totton)
Fancy a koff?
What the fuck, yes,
especially as Fuckoffee
is close enough.
(Bethnal Green, London Рthe Fuckoffee chain of caf̩s has branches at 215 and 249 Bethnal Green Road - slogan 'Come happy Leave edgy')
Where phone directories may once have nestled
I plan to
patent
the tele-kiosk
storage system
for
roadwork signs.
(Pall Mall, London)
I can imagine
his wife’s
frustration:
‘I do
wish you wouldn't
bring
your work home with you!’
(Totton)
Plenty of police…
If a gang
of seven bank raiders
are
planning to scatter
they
might get a surprise.
(Oxford Circus, London)
We have a pile
in the country, yes –
well, in the New Forest
just inside the National Park.
Under new planning laws
Every
shop must rhyme with its neighbour,
with half
rhymes allowed every third premise
to make
sure of some transitional variety.
(Finchley Road, London)
Look no further
for the winner of the
‘Ignore This
Message’
Superfluous Signage
Prize 2022.
(Penge, London)
Has your food faded
into an unsavoury purple-pink?
Time to sell it in bulk
to a specialist 'off grocery'.
(Penge, London)
The God of Small Things
can find infinity -
not once, but twice -
where we would hardly look.
(Charing Cross, London)
My fear
is that the home of the retrohas now been consigned to the permanent past:
maybe old is not so kool as it used to be.
(Leek, Staffs)
I think I’ll be a rogue
The gentlemen ahead of me
can wait their turn, and if they don’t
I’ll barge them out of the way.
(Leek, Staffs)
Our goal
is to score lots of goals
so we need lots of goals
and try not to worry that they are our own.
(Leek, Staffs)
The linesman is important
He waves his flag and everyone stops.
Or he waves his flag and no-one stops:
the linesman is not important.
(Leek Town 2 City of Liverpool 2 - 5 Feb 2022)
The Lord of Round Here
knows where to stand
to confirm his rights
with maximum assurance.
(Southampton)
We have the latest
security
measures.
If anyone
steals this farm
I'll be
surprised.
There were fears that JFK
despite being long dead
and reduced to a head
might
yet make good his escape.
Those
fears are now allayed.
(Great
Portland Street, London)
A bronze
bust by Jacques Lipchitz was unveiled in this location in May 1965, 17 months after
Kennedy was shot. The plinth reads 'The John F. Kennedy Memorial has ben moved for security reasons: please visit the new location inside International House, just around the corner.'
The Art Hotel
offers
you a chance to sleep beside Degas.
Not the
original, I concede.
Nor do
you get a bed.
(Pimlico
Underground Station, near Tate Britain)
Just how many letters
and must-be-slim parcels
has this post box had to eat / eaten
to get so fat?
(Bermondsey, London)
Valentine
Pick yourself up!
We all have dreams.
When they’re trampled underfoot, move on!
(Victoria, London)
Wolverhampton
has lost its sparkle
And there doesn't seem much
the police can do.
(Wolverhampton)
I suspect
this horse would never catch up
even were it going
in the right direction.
(Sculptor Kevin Atherton has placed 12 life-size steel horses alongside the railway line between Wolverhampton and Birmingham.)
It's no go
the Ho Ho Ho!
Don't spend Christmas
in Wolverhampton.
(Wolverhampton)
It's good
to see
that the Post Office has gone green:
whether they'll deliver all letters by horse
remains to be seen.
(Southampton)
Is it true
that a flash of net
arouses more than a patch of bare leg?
Or are such questions merely gross?
(District Line, London)
How else would you expect
a garage to hold its roof in place?
I know, I know:
that doesn’t explain the trolley.
(Deptford)
Unless it isn't OK
to be OK, which makes little sense,
everything must be OK -
which might as well be nothing.
(Southampton Parkway)
The pink car
pines
for
its personalised garage...
Who or what has seized its space?
(Notting
Hill, London)
Why do we clean things?
Simply to make them dirty again.
You can see the state to which
pure logic might deliver us…
Is it time
this street came out
into the fully spelled assertion
of its Pride?
(Praed Street, Paddington, London)
'When I said ‘backwards’
what I meant was ‘forwards’.
I should have thought
that much was obvious.'
How many times have I run
past here
and wondered how often the owner gets called out
by people who’ve lost the will to music?
I've never seen the van not there.
(Southampton)
If you reckon
blooms are brief
you’ve little experience
of petal-florescence.
(below a flowering tree in Totton)
Is this what you say
when there’s nothing left to say
except ‘there’s nothing left to say’
and even that’s been said?
(Salisbury Cathedral)
What does sand do?
Leak or overflow?
Either way, what does it want to be,
water?
(Marble Arch, London)
Was this train on time?
The guard announced it was ‘five minutes early’ -
meaning we'd 'have to wait for a platform’.
We waited ten minutes.
(Euston, London)
Is it ‘better dead then red’
or ‘better red than dead’
or doesn't it much matter
to a nettle?
(Red dead-nettle - Lamium purpureum)
That's a very
yellow
set of greens.
Are the daffodils out,
and the laburnum?
(Green Park Underground, March)
Off-season Santa
curses
his luck.
He only
took the job
to get
the summers off.
(Shoreditch)
Progress
may be limited
but that won't stop us
digging.
(Fitzrovia, London)
As a tuber
I object
strenuously
to the automatic assumption that natural is best.
(Walthamstow, London)
I have a thing
for notices.
This one roused me to such a pitch
I struggled to look away…
(Victoria Line, London)
Cycle
Clouds are made by blossom
floating clear of trees
that rains back down as petals…
(Walthamstow)
I could cope with a
sky spa...
Lounging on a cloud,
too high to sense the world’s stresses
while an angel rubs my feet.
(Bloomsbury,
London)
David Hume 2022
Covid, inflation, climate crisis,
Brexit fall-out, inequality, war…
And now my shoulder’s feeling stiff again.
‘It is not contrary to
reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my
finger’ - David Hume, A Treatise upon
Human Nature (1739). Not that Hume was endorsing such a view: the statement was a means of dramatising the point that moral obligations arise from the feelings and cannot be derived from a mere awareness of facts.
A mattress
requires a big bin...
bigger than you'd need
to sleep in.
(Belgravia, London)
I hadn't thought
to use a
chainsaw
but now I
feel the constraint.
How about
explosives?
(Roker
Beach, Sunderland – in fact, there is a rationale: extensive amounts of
driftwood wash up on this beach, making it tempting to bring a chainsaw to
enable the removal of manageable amounts)
As you'd imagine
even the shadier reaches
of Sunny Side Road
are hardly in the dark.
(Ealing, London)
I concede
that
there's a queue
with
seven orders in preparation.
Nevertheless...
(King’s Cross, London)
Suffering from pain or anxiety?
Never mind what lies between:
Something Extraordinary
Is About to Happen to You.
(Spam
messages, March 2022)
If you toss and turn at night
this may be the mattress you need:
pre-twisted into the shape of your movements,
always the one shift ahead.
(Penge, London)
Should trees be allowed
To strip off in public?
Maybe, in the depths of the forest.
But surely not here, so close to a playground.
Wall doctors
were the first to crack heart transplants.
Their secret?
Different, yet sympathetic, brick.
Marchwood
If this is not the light of God -
and I
guess it isn’t,
as he
doesn’t exist -
it does
feel as close as an atheist will get.
(Saint John the Apostle Parish Church, Marchwood)
So many generations
have dried
their washing
on this
group of trees
that the
trees have begun to evolve.
Marchwood
What a negative
to be positive!
And not to know
when the positive negative will come…
(at home, unsurprisingly, after confirming I had Covid-19 for a second time...)
Now I see!
I’d always wondered
which way up
the Post Office Tower should go.
Actually it’s now officially called ‘The BT Tower’, following
on from an imaginative range of previous names: ‘The GPO Tower’, ‘The Post
Office Tower’ and ‘The British Telecom Tower’. At 177 metres, it was London’s
tallest building 1964-80, coinciding with the period when it was open to the
public – it was closed for security reasons in 1981. The revolving restaurant on
the 36th floor remains famous, but was only operative 1966-71.
If you egg-speckle rain
in the
lap of the harbour,
you're
not taking wetness
sufficiently
seriously.
(Cowes,
Isle of Wight)
Newspapers?
No.
This may
be That Shop but that isn't this shop.
Sorry
about that.
(Cowes,
Isle of Wight)
This is an ethical barber's
There are no
executions here
unless the hair is guilty.
(Southampton)
It’s entertaining
to travel by train,
especially when they tell me
to mind the gap.
(According to a gull at Bristol Temple Meads Station)
It's all very well
to discourage parking on this plinth
but Neptune’s been here over seventy years
and shows no sign of giving up the space.
(Bristol: according to the inscription the statue was produced
by Joseph Rendall Fouonder in 1723, and moved to this – its fifth site, in
1949. It’s close to the empty plinth /
parking space from which a statue of Edward Colston was famously pulled off in
2020)
Water flows up
Water flows down
How come we never see
the flowing up?
(fountain steps, Bristol)
Dandelion
or salt
bin?
A curious
choice
of
similarities.
(Bristol)
Now that the police
so rarely sport tall helmets,
traffic islands score the most points
under the standard rules of 'Cap The Post'.
(Whitechapel, London)
Perhaps they were
dire
or hard or pure -
though more probably dry.
Whatever: they r Cleaners no more.
(Spitalfields, London)
One cherry
through another…
Surely things are going
To get better.
(St James’ Square, London. I say that at a time of war in Europe, rising inflation and Covid19 against a backdrop of
climate crisis…)
Can we assume
that this
is the grave of a tree
even while
knowing that its soul needs no burial,
already
being largely underground?
(Islington, London)
Would this be the junction at which
the
sophistication of drink
tips
into the
by-the-gallon crassnesses of booze?
(Shirley,
Southampton)
Cherry Awards?
You don’t want a wall or a fence or a crop or cables or posts or other
trees
let alone roadworks
to undermine the sweep.
When pavements die
their
ghosts
are so
substantial, they could pass
for tombstones.
(Fitzrovia,
London)
There’ll be a whole lot
of
kissing
come Christmas
in Southampton.
Perhaps I
should consider moving back.
(A tree with an unusual amount of mistletoe in
Shirley, Southampton. Of course, I never noticed it - let alone kissed beneath
it - when I lived there)
I see the case for the back garden -
space,
security, convenience…
But I
guess the fence
would
sooner they’d parked on the road.
(Shirley,
Southampton)
The mystery of the mystery moon
Is not what its phases represent -
circles painted on a railway platform -
but what their purpose might have been.
(West Brompton Station, London. The further these circles are from the platform entrance, the less they are worn away and so the fuller the moons)
‘Surely you can't think it worthwhile
to write about something as trivial
as a transition in leaf colour?’
Of course not, as you say...
(Totton)
I realise a white horse
is known as a gray,
but what does that leave us
to call a true gray?
(Actually it isn't so simple, as there is a
difference between a white horse, which will have light skin, and a gray (or grey), which
is a darker horse characterised by progressive depigmentation such that white
hairs replace the birth colour, but the underlying skin remains dark. My horse-woman wife tells me that my photo is of a young roan, the term for a mixture of dark and light hair over the same darkness-under, but that the only term for a gray horse with no tendency to turn white is… grey / gray. A little confusing. Maybe there's a chance to distinguish 'gray' from 'grey'...
Just when I thought
that Brussels was super-solidly backing Ukraine
I realised
that the city shares its colours.
(Brussels)
I'll show you my garden
now that you’ve
shown me yours.
Then you'll
understand
that size
is quite a lot.
(Brussels)
I was glad
to see this
because I've never had much patience
with things that don't exist.
(Brussels)
So much of the city
is being dug up,
they’ve marked out some places
for workers to lie down and rest.
(Brussels)
The Brussels
windsock
may be crude
but it does its job
with the added virtue of recycling.
(Brussels)
If
we came
together
we’d sweep
into power.
Then we
could clean up for sure.
(Brussels - this two parts of the same broom were 20 metres away from each other)
Aspiration
can only get you so far.
Who, if they’re perfect, is thrown out on the
street -
and twice?
(Brussels)
You have to hand
it
to glove in glove:
how could a poet
not express their love?
(Harlesden, London)
Would you want to be tattooed
by
needles so krazie
they can't
even spell?
I think it’s
closed, you may not be alone...
(Harlesden, London)
The sort of people who stand on travellators
will never get anywhere -
well, anywhere fast.
I know because I was one, taking this.
(Heathrow Airport)
I am concerned
that
their business model relies on me
when I could
so easily
not have
come to Norway.
(Oslo)
Norwegian pole dancing
is unspectacularly safety-first -
surprising, when you consider
the national tradition in the ski jump.
(Oslo)
They love the sun
here
Even the statues
can’t get enough
of the chance to get naked.
(Oslo)
Norwegian pansies
look pretty-much like the British variety,
and, of course,
they speak excellent English.
(Oslo)
This being Norway
one can assume that shattered glass
is a
deliberate effect,
playing on the thrill of that not being so.
(Oslo)
How much must she eat
to catch
up with a statue
that
hasn't eaten anything
for decades?
(sculpture
by Per Horum outside the Nobel Peace Centre, Oslo)
The Historical Museum
is relocating.
And first they need to funnel out
the air of times past.
(Historisk Museum, Oslo)
The car in the blossom spot
does manage to keep still –
but is trembling inside
at the prospect of envelopment in soft pink fall.
(Oslo)
Ah!Another grey balloon day
for the annual joint conference of
the Society of Actuaries and the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters.
(Oslo - assuming they have such bodies in Norway)
Did you remember to post the shoes?
Of course I did!
Though maybe not 100%
correctly wrapped, and stamped, and
placed.
(Earl’s Court, London)
Or should that be
‘in quaking times’ –
and aren’t we quaking now? – ‘be turbulent’ –
for quiet pleading won’t achieve much impact.
(Euston, London)
Can petals be dead?
Or are they,
in the fullest sense,
never really alive?
(AKA ‘the limits of synecdoche’)
O no
no O
I guess
all bets are Off?
(Lymington)
Does buttercuptopia
appeal to
cows?
No way
moo way,
noo way
at all.
(Totton – buttercups are toxic for all forms of
livestock)
My suspicion is
that
you'd need to be remarkably patient
to see
out the wait
for
treatment here....
(Whitechapel, London)
The function
of the
horizontal fence
can be
compared quite sensibly
with that
of the vertical bed.
(Colbury cemetery)
If you could be
young and old
simultaneously
wouldn't you want it?
(Nipplewort, Southampton)
Having been spotted
after just a word
of ‘Piss Off Boris!’
he left us no more than a colour description.
(Barbican, London)
In this town
they take royal security extremely
seriously:
even Edward VII
is cordoned off against
republicans.
(Reading)
You won't have to be plastic
to live in the development
that they’re advertising here,
but I doubt it would harm your
chances.
(hoarding outside ‘The Domain’, Reading)
How Your Horse Thinks
Grass!
Grass! Grass! Grass!
What the
fuck’s that?
Grass!
Grass! Grass! Grass!
(It turned out that the headline for this article
in my wife’s magazine was a little misleading: it was about how horses blink, which
might be a clue to when they are thinking, but threw no light on what they
might be thinking about. But it seems from what I’ve seen that eating, flight
and occasionally sex are the full range, and that the ratios are such that eating
fully deserves two lines against one line to cover the other two matters)
A fate
I’m pleased to be spared
is that
of a claustrophobic
conifer
leaf.
(Hiller’s Arboretum, Braishfield, Hampshire)
Gelly’s favourite fish
is a colour morph not bred until
2009
but now as popular as chips -
though rarely with them.
(Gelly is my aquarium-owning sister-in-law.
Irrelevant fact: like all chiclids, the electric blue ram (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi) has an extra set of teeth in its throat.)
This is the tasteful side
of the Platinum Jubilee.
You should see the royal messes
most have preferred.
(Lyndhurst, 2 June 2022)
Anything goes
in construction site hoopla.
Mostly we're just grateful
that it isn't hula hoop.
(Lyndhurst)
‘I don’t think I’ve
ever seen
something I would say
is an abnormal labia’.
‘I think you’ll find that is a rose.’
(The first quote is from Mary Jane Minkin, M.D., a clinical
professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Yale Medical School)
Not many traffic
cones
make it to old age.
Maybe the few should be venerated,
the years of pointless blocking-off forgiven.
(Saint Louis, France)
How can you tell a
devil from a saint?
By how their thoughts
rainbow or darken
the surrounding space.
(Basel Cathedral)
I know the French are
partial to horse
but how likely is a foreigner
to persuade the Germans
to consume their cats?
(Freiburg, Germany)
Will six layers
suffice?
Flowers - fence - grass –
trees - ivy – wall?
Then make it seven: sky
(Saint Louis, France)
The lion is fierce
but I am brave,
my manliness buoyed
by its lack of legs.
(Basel, Switzerland)
When a lion plays football
Does
using the front paws count as handball?
And if it
doesn’t,
what more
is the keeper allowed to do?
(Stuttgart, Germany)
The Love Lion's roar
is said to be worse than his lick.
All the same,
I'd rather steer clear of that mouth.
(lion with pink heart, Oslo)
We all have dreams
Though whether we remember them
let alone achieve them
may be for the sky to know…
(Stuttgart)
Statue-voyeur!
Is that a known thing?
And, if it is,
would it be wrong to be one?
(Copy from 1850 of Antonio Canova’s ‘The Three Graces’ on Stuttgart State Gallery’s central terrace)
An hour in Rottweil
due to a cancelled train.
I saw a tower shorter than a lamppost
but no dogs.
(Rottweil, the oldest town in
Baden-Württemberg, Germany, gives its name to the Rottweiler breed,
originally a butcher’s dog in the region).
You laugh
but these stilettos have built-in drills,
capable of piercing any pavement
as easily as a body or a heart.
(Guido Nassbaum: from ’20 Variationem
eines Gassenhauers, Basler Variation’, 1994 – Basel)
Do I play the piano?
From time
to time...
Only I've
been out of time
for quite
a while now, quite some time...
(Arundel)
Are you sitting
comfortably?
Of course:
I have no nerves.
(SET studios, Woolwich)
What is normal?
This is only abnormal
if it's midnight
and it isn’t in Norway.
(Oslo airport, midnight, 24 June 2022
Elvis has been spotted in Oslo
He's
spent 45 years
learning
the accordion
and still
isn’t all that good.
(Oslo)
So I said to the gull
‘shit on
my tits if you must,
but
please don't shit in my eyes!’
It just
screeched.
(Oslo)
Isn't it more logical
and
closer to the bath’s ideal
to bathe
in rain
rather than sun?
(Oslo)
Above us only this?
Hardly: there is no ‘above’
and probably no ‘only’
in the infinite beyond…
There is little in the world
that cannot be valued.
Look at the care with which this soil
has been cordoned and protected.
It's good to see
that
people are still taking
the
trouble to create employment opportunities
by
dropping litter.
Sweep up the
broom
the time has come at which
infirmity vies with logic
to tell us why it hasn't swept itself.
(Cambridge Heath, London)
I used to be
indecisive
about everything.
Now, I’m not so sure.
(Southampton)
Looking down
at its future
the tree can't like
what it sees…
(Surrey Quays, London)
The queue
is considerable
considering
that the café won't open for another ten hours.
(Soho, London)
All that is sweet
is bound to shrivel.
But then
so is all that is not.
(Sweet Peas from Ros & Julian's garden)
I rather like
seeing all that
wrinkle-free high maintenance perfection
so creased up.
(Poster of Beyoncé, Mayfair, London)
Am I
giving the flowers
the right amount of water?
All I can say is:
they've made no complaints.
Why would you advertise food
with the claim
that it will make you
burp it up?
(Berlin)
Don't get ahead of yourself
I warned. You may be
a dominant presence,
but yours is a very small world.
(Berlin - did you ever see more flowers in a pot?)
In between the railway and the power,
speed blurs the trees,
I move with earth and train
and yet sit still...
(outskirts of Berlin)
'Once you've cracked time'
explained the sage
'then you've cracked life '
But is it that simple?
(Newham, London)
No-one denies
the right of a tree
to outgrow its bag
but shouldn’t the bag then be removed?
(Kassel, Germany)
Net curtains
must be what remains
once their gross companions
have been pulled aside.
(St Helier, Jersey)
It is no
coincidence
that flutter meets glitter:
the breeze that sparks the sparkle
furls the flags.
(Mont Orgueil, Gorey, Jersey)
Let me get my teeth -
the ones
I've still got –
into this
conundrum...
How can
an absence hear your farewell?
(BUPA Advert 'Say Goodbye to Missing Teeth', Harley Street, London)
Despite the march
of global
warming
banana
trees are rare round here
and don’t
look set to reproduce in numbers.
(Kensington,
London)
Surely some
mistake
as they say in the -
unfeatured -
Private Eye.
(Advert for dubious reading material at Woking Station)
I find it hard to
believe
that such a skateboard would do much
to improve a cow’s
muddy-field movement.
(The Lightbox,
Woking. Or should I spell that ‘moo-vement?)
The trouble
with invisible roadworks
is how to know
when they’ve been done…
That’s a big
number!
Much bigger than 74 or 76
or any of the numerous numerals
to be found along this road…
The thing about van
Gogh is
you pay £100m
and the blooms are past their best.
These, for a fiver, are perfect…
Location
may be everything
but my new house still needs a little work
and I'm not even sure it's in the right place.
(Netley Marsh)
Much as I admire
the way that some plants grow through fences
I can't help feeling
this phormium has it too easy.
Faced by death
the autumn trees
give mutual succour,
one giving rest to another's leaves.
Good evening primroseI trust you're enjoying –
I only wish I had one, too –
your special time of day.
(The Evening Primrose, Oenothera biennis, is named for typically opening its flowers most between something like 16.00 - 10.00)
Sorry Liz
but missing you lying in state
was due to me lying in a state of my own
when I’d hoped it would be a republican gesture.
(I was too ill to contemplate queueing overnight to see the Queen’s coffin following her death on 8 Sept 2022)
I spent 17 Sept - 11 October 2022 in hospital with sepsis, followed by a diagnosis of bowel and liver cancer, leading to initial surgery on 5 October...
Doctor, doctor!
There’s a corpse in my room.
In fact there are fifty.
Am I not entitled to be spooked?
(overhead light, Southampton General Hospital - leads on to the separate series of photopoems 'The Death Suite', which formed my main hospital writing)
Yes, yes
but who was Armitage? What does shanking
actually involve? And how come I saw his name around
long before tagging became a rebellious thing?
(Southampton General Hospital: it may be that the – presumably accidental - portmanteau of ‘shags’ and ‘wanks’ lies behind this speculation on Armitage)
I can see this is no shelf
but as an impromptu bar
for my most-necessarily health-conscious drinks
it seems to be just right.
(Southampton General Hospital)
Aha!
So you can get through here!
How good of them
to tell us!
(Southampton General Hospital)
GROUNDED
On emerging from hospital after major surgery in
October 2022 I was restricted to the house and vicinity for a while. My main exercise
was walking slowly around the neighbourhood - no jogging allowed. I found the
reduction in pace made me more aware of the ground...
Acorn time
is here again.
Why can’t I be a squirrel
or a pig?
Would you rather
be
cradled or stung
when you
drift to the end of your glide?
Really? Perhaps
you're an oak leaf.
When leaves lie
down with stones
the delicacy of tones
has a mottled continuity
defying the contrast of weights.
You will not find
a more natural grout
than moss. Although, I concede,
that does leave the question of effectiveness.
The sunset leaf
may never set
but it will turn – I guess I should say turn again -
to mulch.
Does toadstool beauty
correlate with deadliness?
I may defer
that particular piece of research.
If cones
are evolving the means to fly
that little bit further from parental shade
then this may be a prototype.
Considering
that it has no roots
moss is pretty hard to pull -
not up I suppose, but away.
In the contest of thorns
there's only one winner.
Please let me land - though this isn't a request -
in a prickle of bramble.
The good things about
this pot
are the cubist perspective
and not having to worry
about it getting broken.
When a falling leaflands on a log
there’s a logic to its flutter
into doubly sad sense.
To give early
mornings
their due, everything looks
as fresh as a geranium –
pending a daisy coming along.
The birds seems to
manage
but even the collected feathers
from a stroll around the park
won’t be enough to get me airborne.
I sometimes wonder
If it isn’t the leaves
that fall to the ground
but only their ghosts.
Surely it’s ageist
to call them blackberries
when they spend as long
as redberries or green.
I don’t know whySlidey
the Slug
is
crossing the Alps of our garden steps.
The
scavenging’s no better on the other side.
Five to six
by leaf clock:
another day has almost passed
staring up from the down of the ground.
It’s not as grassy
as it seems
when berries land
in Berryland
because the contrast ratchets up the green.
You may call it
a pavement concatenation.
I call it more a disconnect
that tells of failed coordination.
That’s the spirit
I admire:
a plant that gets right on with being
up against the wall.
From floor to
ground
Is almost seamless,
especially if some leaves
have been blown in.
Some joker
must have popped a feather
into the top of this cone.
Maybe it was me.
This jewelled leaf
would be worth a fortune
if only it could be fixed as is
and turned into a brooch.
What’s the point
of cracks in the road
if water doesn’t use them
to drain away?
At least a hundred
mushrooms
in a clump:
hardly worth a mention
up against the full extent of what we cannot see.
Do they remember
the air, the breeze, the sense of community,
how being wet was just a staging post to dryness?
You’re going to tell me not…
Commerce and climate
keep getting earlier:
it's scarcely October and already the trees
are revelling in Christmas decorations.
How boring
bracken is in summer
only becomes apparent
in the autumn.
Cut grass meets blown leaves?
Seems
wrong to me...
I do wish
the seasons
would make
up their minds!
My theory is
that all roadworks strive for the ideal state
in which there is nothing to be done -
meaning no finish can ever occur.
The tragedy is
that a leaf
can drown
in almost no
water
like a
person stunned in their bath.
Just how primitive can you get?
Never mind Conan after ten pints,
the horse tail’s type was at its most prevalent
500m years ago.
(Equisetum is a 'living fossil', the only living genus of the entire subclass Equisetidae, which for over 100 million years was much more diverse and dominated the understorey of late Paleozoic forests)
This must be
an important puddle:
few are judged of sufficient note
to be pointed out by their very own arrow.
X marks the spot
of a tarmac cross-out
that hints at the other way
out of the hospital.
So what
if I'll grow back?
Would you like your limbs
to be cropped like hair?
Of course I'm astonished
that simply by driving over the pavement
the sum of cars can replicate
the network of local roads.
(the leaves represent the parish church (upper left), the shops (right) and the primary school (lower left))
Seen from
above
this dark leather glove
says nothing of love
though it may hint at darker things you can’t expect to rhyme.
Now raise your head...
We need a word
Brigs?
for the atrophied and twig-like
lower branches of the Scots Pine.
The train is coming!
It's too late to wave
let alone cross…
How come it hasn’t moved?
Is this a still
life
vegetating on a tabletop
with no flowers or containers or objects or fruit –
or just a pair of squashed together squashes?
It is time to be
concrete
about mushrooms:
oyster puffball edible dried cartoon magic cloud-shaped…
concrete.
(Shirley Warren,
Southampton)
Who’d have guessed
that the answer is 42?
If not to the Ultimate Question
of Life, the Universe, and Everything,
then at least to the number of this house.
(Shirley Warren,
Southampton)
Roger has only just
retired
and already he isn't the GOAT around here.
If only he’d played - like me, yet not too like -
his tennis in Southampton.
(Southampton:
Roger Federer retired from professional tennis in September 2022, after a
career which arguably made him the Greatest Of All Time, or GOAT).
When spelling
I'm inclined to add –
in the absence of P’s –
mind your Q’s and use both U’s.
(Redbridge,
Southampton)
You must
feel lucky…
While ivy’s inveigling is very much usual,
the poke-through of berries
is exceedingly rare.
(Of
course, the pyracantha berry poke-through is not literally possible - the stems must have grown through before the berries grew in situ.)
I guess everyone
wonders
how many accidents occur each year
in the convenience of the hospital car park.
So I 'm uninclined to ask...
(Southampton General
Hospital Car Park)
You know the
weather’s wet
when the trees begin to liquify
but not as wet
as when they float away…
(through windscreen on M271, near Nursling)
Here's where I take
issue
(at least beyond the summer that's no more)
with prioritising flowers
in the lexicon of colour.
I'm not so easily
deceived
by a vandalistic spray of paint –
unless, of course, that previous photo
shows exactly that.
(Totton)
Is there a patron
saint
of stopping? If not, the Vatican
should seek a candidate for canonisation:
it’s so crucial to know when.
Pansies
must be
the politest of plants:
they pay me unblinking attention and never –
even if I’m saying nothing – seek to interrupt.
Is it me?
Of course it is, but nonetheless…
Is climate change making
the zinnias sunnier?
The death
of the sun
will certainly deal
with global warming -
though not for five billion years or so.
(Sunnyfields Farm, Southampton)
If only
I could use my teeth
to scratch my back
I don't think I'd be any better off.
(Charing Cross,
London)
What’s the right time
to photograph a lamp-post?
Here’s my case
for 5.15 in mid-November.
If you
believe
that these birds have
gathered for the end,
then things are far worse than I’d thought –
whether with you or the world…
I would
say
‘spot the squirrel’ but
- No, wait! – Yes, there! – Oh no.
I think it may have gone.
Unlike, perhaps, the
squirrel
the magpie is there top left,
hiding its red-eyed stare
behind a branch.
All very different…
theory and practice, request and compliance
justice and vengeance, loss and adjustment,
footsteps and tyre tracks, sausage and mash...
How nice
to be launched by nature,
descend without effort
and land with no hint of a crash!
White on white?
The man who made
the Cannon Street sign
has probably been fired.
(Lymington)
If I were a window
I wouldn't want
to be stuck down there
as if I were a dresser or a drain.
(Lymington)
Trees have
rings
not fingerprints -
but whatever used to hug this wall
would be hard-pressed to deny it.
(Lymington)
Why do people
make such a fuss?
All you need to be happy
is grass and a little sunlight.
(Lyndhurst)
Never mind
the slew of low level
prohibitions.
Can you shoot them?
(Lyndhurst)
When the diamond's
done
your love concludes,
just as it was launched,
but in reverse.
(Lyndhurst - the black diamond on yellow indicates an emergency diversion route, so that's what's ending. There again, I suppose some relationships are emergency diversions.)
Bricks aren’t
orange
Same
as hearts aren’t red
and
moods aren’t blue.
Pyrocantha is orange.
(Lymington)
The seasons persist
in the ancient ritual
of draining the leaves
from the trees.
‘Leave it out!’
I want to say, ‘why take my bench
when I’m not even sure
what it means for you to sit down?’
The acorns
are ready
to hop into their cups,
so spring must be coming –
though not for a while…
There are
no cars
on the forest
So what is the function
of traffic lights?
It took
bloody hours
to arrange these leaves
into such a natural formation.
In Roman times
IV ivy leaves
were considered a portent of sufficient power
to offset the fact that I just made it up.
(Though ivy does play a part in Ancient Roman myth, being associated with Bacchus, god of wine and sex, who used the former to inebriate to acceptance, the latter to bind for the longer term)
This is as straight as it gets
for twigs
trying to stay on the right side
of the laws of nature.
Who'd have thought
leaves
apparently so driven by whim,
would take any notice
of the markings on the road?
I’m no doctor
but I’m fairly sure
that shitting cones
must mean you’re very ill.
How many hours
does a leaf-clock have?
In autumn, at least,
it doesn’t appear to be twelve.
(Camberwell, London)
Lichen snow
is here again
its mystery quickened
by how rarely I’ve seen it fall.
I like it that nature
is full of surprises
how often do you see this:
brown leaves and berries?
(Southampton)
On the question of worms
all I can say is
I don’t have the answer,
and neither – by the looks of it – do they.
You'd have to be
blind
not to see that it's wet
and then
you wouldn't see the notice…
(Southampton Railway Station)
That's more like it!
A wet floor so admirably dry
I wouldn't have spotted it
without the notice.
(Waterloo Railway Station, London)
Call
themselves Estate Agents?
They didn’t put the sign up. They never answer
the phone. I’ve had no enquiries.
I’m not sure anyone works there at all…
Is this a
case
of cause and effect?
Not that these
bottles hit the glass,
but that those hitting the bottle may have done so.
(Holborn, London)
The moon
of the playground
rises in the east
with a halo of grass.
(rubberised playground surface to cushion falls)
Why would you
re-lay the road
but board up the windows?
Maybe the image’s triangle corners can tell us...
(South Bermondsey, London)
Is this a bicycle?
Or does a bike by
definition
have to have wheels?
In which case,
did the wheel thief
steal the bike?
(Waterloo, London)
I doubt this is parked here
It must be for sale -
in which case what I'd suggest
is giving it a polish.
(Marchwood)
What a shame
that the rarity of transparent leaves
should be diminished
by so much breakage.
(Marchwood)
Proper puddles
should be muddy.
If only they were big enough
I'd like to call the clear ones 'pools'.
When two leaves from different trees
dance as one in the unifying breeze
I like to think that all their companions
are rustling in approval.
The gardeners of Rushington
have no truck
with the old way of plants.
They take a more material approach.
Sitting in the garden
is far from the point.
The gardeners of Rushington
are brutal to the core.
(considering that Rushington is just a few streets in West Totton, the proportion
of gardens given over to construction was remarkably high as of December 2022)
Fee-fi-fo-fum
something articulated
this way came.
It must have been a giant!
I know very little
about trunk to knot ratios
but suspect that the square root of some arboreal proportion or other
must be a limiting factor.
(Islington)
Natural,
donated and gold…
Having three types of leaf
should be enough for any potted bush
to move towards the status of a tree.
(PostROOM, Islington)
If you
found a hedgehog glove
where would you display it
to maximise the owner’s chance
of picking it up through prickle-affinity?
(Dibden Purlieu)
Fifty-odd
Inuit words for snow?
We only need two,
and the other one’s slush.
(Charing Cross, London)
Can someone please explain
how the minamalist
and maximalist
spiders catch their prey?
Frost
reveals
to my surprise
how many spiders reckon flies
are likely to travel by bus.
This is
the sign
that our local Co-Op
Is one of a chain owned by one man,
Meaning it isn’t a Co-Op.
Co-Op franchises
are actually run (by agreement, of course) by the Costcutter supermarket group,
not the Co-Op. The Co-Op, I suppose, is selling the feel-good factor associated
with the non-capitalist nature of its brand. That feels wrong, somehow, though
as the Co-Op gets income out of that, you could argue that the shops are
indirectly supporting the Co-Op and its values.
If all grass were
metal
JCBs would take the place of cows,
summer parks would be untenably hot
and Wimbledon would go thwack-clang-thwack.
Out with the old entrenched assumptions
Snow White was 60 when she woke
Santa Claus may well be Simian
If God existed she would be a mother…
Here’s a
space!
If only
I were parking
a boat.
This being a December
spring
the plants are popping impolitely
up before the leaves
have had a proper chance to rot.
The winter sun is low
and bright
upon the eye
but oddly shy
before the camera’s glare.
I like the idea
of hanging the garden
wardrobe-style. Here, however,
something has gone wrong.
(Camden, London)
It's one thing
to exhibit a sculptural installation in the street,
another to make sure the artist picks it up
should it fail to sell.
(Finchley Road, London)
Is it rude
to sit on a swan?
Nobody seems to...
perhaps they're afraid they'll fly off.
(Piccadilly, London)
Was George IV a bird
brain?
I wouldn’t rule it out in person
and it’s certainly true
of his statue.
(Trafalgar Square, London - George IV 1762 – 1830 was known for
dissolution and extravagance rather than the metal health issues affecting his
father, but his apparent failure to understand how matters would look is compatible
with fairly low level of intelligence)
Christmas
is coming
The calendar yields us
no meaningful choice:
it’s tinsel all the way.
I don't
want a practicing dentist
I want one who's fully qualified,
one who’s backed by years of learning
in how best to cash in on my pain.
(Baker Street, London)
It’s bad
enough
that polar bears are running out of ice.
Now it seems
their garden cousins are suffering, too.
Just think
How high a horse could hop
were you to teach it
the Fosbury Flop.
(The world record for clearing the Puissance wall is held by Germany’s Franke Sloothaak, who cleared 2.40m at Chaudfontaine in Belgium in 1991 riding Optiebeurs Golo. The world record human jump using the straddle style is by Vladimir Yashchenko (Soviet Union) at 2.34m in 1978. The world record using the Fosbury Flop is 2.45 metres by Javier Sotomayor (Cuba) in 1993, a 5% improvement. By implication Optiebeurs Golo could have cleared 2.52m using the flop. So horses do have the potential to jump higher than people, even with the disadvantage of carrying a rider. The image shows Guy Williams on the Dutch Warmblood grey ‘Mr Blue Sky UK’, joint winner of the Olympia 2022 puissance, as watched on TV.)
Here are the headlines
Footpath flooded in Ashurst
while bombs fall on Kiev
and the planet heats up.
Santa hats off
to seasonal hardiness:
not every tree is capable
of growing on a wall.
(Totton)
Is this an
image
about which there’s nothing to say
that wouldn’t be maudlin -
unless you count this?
The underbridge is
everything
a pigeon could desire:
shelter, nest sites and perches to shit from…
So why are more not gathered in its comforts?
(Southwark, London)
She has
many yards to trudge
through rain and all and gates and all
and all without
her trousers or her skirt.
(Bankside Yards
development, London)
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