Tag: poems
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Watching Hands
They speak without sound: the small grammar of fingers,nouns folded into palms, verbs scored along knuckles.A thumb hesitates like a question; a wrist flick is punctuation.Hands remember how to mend; they know the route to a bandage. I watch the map of someone’s day traced in flour and ink and keys,the quiet economy of a…
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Don’t Trust Poets
Don’t trust poets.They’ll swear they’re only describinga perfectly ordinary scene-a field, a street, a quiet afternoon-and you’ll believe themright up until the momentthe ground starts whispering. They’ll tell you the sky is bluewhile nudging you in the ribsas if to say,but is it? really? They’ll insist the strange thing you sawwasn’t strange at all,and the…
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The Parade of Polished Shoes
They polished the shoes and bent down to praise,they hung clever posters and learned all the plays.A drum got louder, a march found a beat,and neighbours began nodding in tidy, clean rows in the street. They offered neat answers with ribbons and bows,promised order, clean lists, and fewer of those.But maps made of rules leave…
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Decommissioning Caithness
Dounreay dismantled, piece by piece,reactors hushed, the glow at peace.Steel and concrete, stripped with care,a future planned in thinning air. And in the town, the same routine:doors shut quiet, streets go lean.Not radiation, but resignation,a slow embrace of ruination. They decommission shops like rods,pubs like turbines, hopes like gods.Every closure signed and stamped,as if decline…
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February, Lightheaded
February wakes up earlyand forgets its shoes.It tiptoes across the calendarin mismatched socks of drizzle and sun. The days are small animals,skittering out from under the bed,blinking at the sudden light. Clouds practice new shapes:a teapot, a startled goose,something that might be a dragonif you squint with conviction. Rain falls in polite applause,as if congratulating…
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Salt, Stone, Signal
We wear the weather like a cardigan here;salt on the collar, wind in the seams, Caithness sky stretched like an exam paper you can’t quite fold right.The bus leaves before the light finishes waking; I tuck my keys into the same pocket that remembers first-day nerves.My classroom is a cottage of cushions and careful rules,…
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A Field Of Zebras
People kept gathering at the fence,not because anything unusual was happening,but because the horses were doingwhat horses always do;standing there, undeniable. Then the officials arrivedwith clipboards and confident smiles.They pointed at the herdand announced that the animalshad grown stripes overnight. A murmur went through the crowd.Someone laughed.Someone squinted.Someone said they’d been here yesterdayand the horses…
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Minneapolis Lullaby
(for a city trying to sleep) Hush now, Minneapolis,the night is cold and deep.The streets are filled with footstepswhen they ought to be asleep. A man was lost this morning,and questions fill the air;voices asking softlyfor truth that’s clear and fair. The winter wind is blowing,but people gather still,holding candles in the darknesson every frosted…
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ICE
Ice begins as a simple thing: a hardening of water, a pause in the world’s pulse. It slicks the roads, glazes the troughs, draws white lines across the morning. Children test it with their heels. Farmers curse it. The river wears it like a tight, bright mask. Ice is just weather, you tell yourself;a temporary…
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A Polite Haunting
Some days, a tiny creature wakes up inside my chest, a moth‑sized doubt with button eyes and too much interest. It flutters through my ribcage with a soft, persistent bluff, whispering in a velvet voice, what if you’re not enough? It’s polite about its haunting, it never claws or makes a scene;just rearranges furniture in…