stone #28

i am moving house tomorrow, and my dreams
have become infested with moving and packing.

i strip the willow of its leaves and pack them
carefully into a box, hoover and bag up the clouds,
collect the birds from the sky and bubblewrap the sun.

stone #27

Drinking camomile tea from a bone china mug, and watching next door's bonfire throw its white smoke for the wind to chase.

stone #26

between naps in the sun,
a little beetle visited me.
his tizer coloured head
orchestrated his black antennae,
like disco dancing limbs.

he sat on my hand, a tiny blessing,
with the light illuminating the veins in the
stained glass of his green-red wings.

stone #25

With a strange tenderness the cat presents a vole to me.  The vole lies still, completely inert.  The cat starts rumbling and mewing, rolling, bathing in his joy.  The vole suddenly springs up, heading for a dark space by the radiator.  The cat loves this game, the chasing, the catching, the teasing; but I do not.

I separate the vole and cat. 

The vole buzzes around at high speed, his tiny feet a blur.  Eventually I trap him in a container, freeing him outside.  He pauses, whiskers spinning, not yet ready for his freedom, not understanding how it has ended this way.

stone #24

outside the back door there is a hedgehog,
head half turned towards me, 
his liquorice black nose sniffing the air.

we watch each other carefully
until he trundles off up the path,
his toffee-coloured spines wiggling
like some prehistoric creature.

stone #23

gently falling sun,
talking to the old willow,
its light rippling the sleeping cat.

stone #22

following brakelights down a busy road -
wildflowers on the uncut verge,
ablaze with colour &
drenched with summer.

stone #21

waning gibbous moon -
nothing ever stays still,
we have to move on.

stone #20

mewing buzzards float on the thermals,
their white and brown undercarriage
mapping the earth and the clouds.

like the slow heavy swing of incense
in Catholic thuribles, their sedate circles
are saturated with grace.

stone #19

a helicopter scours the sky, carving layers of sound
that form in my garden like crumbling monuments.

it does one, two, three circuits,
then gradually disappears into a black dot amid the clouds,
trailing ripples of noise like smoke.

stone #18

there is an ungainly pigeon
who approaches with haphazard velocity
towards the office window by my desk,
then with a clap of his wings settles in the eaves.
every time he does this, he makes me jump. 
he peers in, and I peer out, 
watching each other with disdain.

stone #17

all day the rain falls.
i lie supine on the floor with the cat. 
outside the air smells like the sea
that gathers in spray in car park puddles,
like the salt that collects on your skin,
and in the wind that blows inland,
thick with seagulls and sand.

stone #15

a red admiral butterfly warms itself on a scrap of binliner in a field.   somewhere nearby, a blackbird is stuck on red alert,
his monotonous clang-clang streaming through the hedgerow.

stone #16

the reptile green arms of corn
have burst from the earth.

they fawn under the sun,
shaken by the chapped hands of the wind.

with their shaking whispers,
they flutter and flail like drowning swimmers,
clutching for things that are not there.

stone #14

full moon ~
I need to see it reflected in a lake,
dimpled by the wind,
so I can try to understand its strange language.

stone #13

cows amble slowly when you are late,
nibbling plants, sniffing the air.
so I turn off my car's engine
listen to the birds,
feel the warm sun on my skin.

stone #12

on the grass verge of a dual carriageway, there are tiny rabbits eating.
oblivious to the cars thundering past,
they just keep eating, not yet knowing
that there is such a fine line between being and not being.

stone #11

pink has stained the clouds in low thin streaks.
the colour fades with a whisper, making way for the bats
to daub their own dark shapes across the deepening blue sky,
darkening like deep water, their shadows folding into themselves.

stone #10

downstairs I hear regular sneezing.
each time my wife sneezes,
i shout "bless you" and she replies "thank you",
our voices echoing through the house,
the walls familiar with the stories of our marriage.

stone #9

On a windowsill by an open window
my cat sits, his head darting from side to side.
He watches the birds that fly past,
too high, too fast, too far away.
Then he murmurs a soft noise of frustration
and jumps up at the window,
then looks around as if to say,
I knew I couldn't get that one,
I was only practising.