Beckford Packhorse BridgeHistory is written in the soil.Hands, hearts and lives devoted to toil.A tale of labours sold far and wideLike fossils, the detritus of historylie abandoned, neglected and lost.Skeletal buildings, ghostly stone relicsthat whisper from the...
Sunday – the empty square the locked bar three fishing boats tethered at the pier a portacabin bank open once a week an empty road between level barley-fields fulmar on its nest in the ruins of a church a meadow of yellow iris where sheep and gravestones sleep shimmer...
the passage is three feet high on your knees in the seething dark you enter in the corbelled chamber’s space you uncoil and stand earthfast at the centre silence hisses in your ears on an inch of paper you write the three runes of your name, bind it with hair and hide...
in all weathers I’ve travelled this route across the levels and never known a bus to stop at Hartlake Bridge after much rain Hartlake River and the Twelve-foot Rhyne spill over their banks and flood the fields but today the fields are dry the sky clear with clouds...
The Homeless Man Thinks of Ancient Egypt I pray to the sun on these temple walls, the shifting angles and blaze of it, the way it melts the pavement ice mid-morning near the cashpoint. I imagine them as merchants, astronomers and viziers sitting at the...
Ignition I put on a suit of light in the ovum, entered the long tide saw the faces of my mum and dad become mine, each wave carrying ancestors with it sending a flash down each sleeve of...
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...
A Flying Visit I see shiny-bald thick-necked Mr Metcalfe blowing smoke-rings in his braces and white singlet resting arms on the dining room table as...
THE CHARTERHOUSE MINES. Blood washed and slate, the sky presided over one hour’s walk to mark the mines. the mist formed veils in fading light as shadows slid from shafts and a banshee of an owl claimed the night. long headed shepherds, moor and...
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