05 Martin Porter

05 Martin Porter

Martin Porter was born and brought up in St Helier, Jersey. He started writing verse while in primary school and developed a love of poetry during his secondary school years. His interest in science took him across the English Channel to study at the Universities of...
Short Dull Days

Short Dull Days

SHORT DULL DAYS When the Christmas lights are stowed away secure for the summering months ahead we traverse the counties’ winding lanes greasy in their dankest, darkest bed. Verges blurred and drawn by dragging rain tramp their liquid mud for miles ahead. Distance is...
Declining December

Declining December

DECLINING DECEMBER In the declining days of December the brevity of daylight is deeply drawn.On clear, bright mornings there is the hour of golden splendour,horizontal shafts gilding all in radiating wakefulnesswhile achingly long shadows draw and cling to the...
The Hedge-Layer’s Season

The Hedge-Layer’s Season

The Hedge-layer’s Season The season’s vagaries have run their course.Dusty April gave way to muddy May.Blossoms, free from nipping frosts yielded their fruitrampant with juice from a sodden summer.Fruit ripened in the long-shadowed daysof late summer and its...

To Become A Nightingale

To Become A Nightingale            Struck dumb by Universal Credit I entered the hedge-school of charity shops, prised apart jackets of  musty spinneys on the men’s rail dense with tweed, leather, rayon, polyester looking for subfusc/olive – found two brown...

Listen

Listen Exmoor Almanac                                                       The dipper that afternoon by the Exe threaded a high necklace of song above the river’s onrush.   Dived in and re-emerged, shaking its wings clear of the water, sang once more, blink of...
Slow Worm

Slow Worm

Slow worm Heat me and I live again. feel the blood move over the bones edge, where limbs raise me off the sand and now remain a vestigial display. Fear me for a moment, an elemental demon in tall, swaying grass but, when my eyelids drop, ‘that which is not a...