A collection of poems written between 2023 & 2025 whilst I was living in an off grid cabin

Bats

dressed

in the last curtains

of loose light.

Only half graspable

to my fumbling sight.

Night palm thickening 

hushing eyes to patience.

Then!

stop motion glimmer

twilight moving,

Sudden close cold memory

of wing on skin.

I wait for you.

for the space between us 

to be as close to nothing without hurting

Wanting to be in your world

skin stretched hands

pulling me up

into other life.

–

Moths

Last night

in before sleep.

I heard you all

winging at my walls.

Restlessly tracing

the edges of your confinement.

By morning

you’ve each found your crevice.

Day gaps 

in which night is slow to leave.

This evening

I can see you.

The deepening blue permitting

you to crawl slowly

into the world.

I cup my hand around you

dozily walking in my palm cave.

Outside

tiny feet slowly toe

half moon hanging.

I feel you 

comprehending wider world.

Then, humm alive

into air

into wings

to fall in love

to drink petal

swimming to the moon

that shines you moth.

–

Animal

Squeezing

myself, then

my washing

then my bike

                    through hedgerow holes

Roe Deer passage ways

between barbed boundaries.

Hunched

scratched

and a little lost, but

              with clean sheets and pants.

A creature on the bridleway

one handling the bike bar,

one handling my washing.

Wobbling

along mud sunken footsteps.

Wincing thoughts

of thorn’d wires and

                                    falling necks.

Home.

Immediately needing a shit.

Faithful inadequate spoon

                 our partnership continues.

Scraping hard earth,

                        bending cheap spoon.

Creature in the hedgerows

Neither completely modern

                              nor completely not.

An awkward animal with cutlery 

and clothes.

–

The Beauty is Coming Back to Me

I made a space for it

and it weed’d through the crack.

I’m amazed again.

Softness of almost nothing light,

a view i’ve seen hundreds of times.

Thousands of moons by now

tonight I see it.

Two swifts flew so close to me I could hear their wings.

Closed mouth smile, effortless.

It’s hard to know whats changed for me to see you again.

–

Their Wild Place

Tucked

behind hedgerow only

a shadow from strangers.

Sun kissed smiles,

the warmth of shared spins

round our star.

On mud

and thorn

quietly.

Familiar hands holding.

Breath

calls skin to lay

in dirt

and pleasure happily.

Gloss welcomes silk soft 

hospitality

enter enter

gladly.

Mouse tip toe silence

limbing love

into being.

Reaching edges

find reaching edges

Outlines

big enough for the both of them.

Holding

Helding

toes bent against mud

slipping.

Hosting Heaven

in ditch and slope.

In absence of ceiling

nuthatches cling to the body space above.

Completely at ease

with the lovers in the muck,

they grant them their wild place

among deer, 

hills and streams.

Absorbed in the making

in the meddle of being.

–

Owl

called me out

into her night.

Made me glad

for the permeability

of my walls.

Part of me 

always outside

ajar to the air.

I could hear where owl was

loud, barn

screeching rather than twooing.

I wanted to see her

I thought of torch.

I thought of what I might loose.

Trying to creep inside

caught on door handle.

Held

but not unhookable,

like my torch.

Into night

my brightness intruded

Eye

searching for hers.

I saw her

flying

silent

away.

Sterilised to silence

I turned my torch off.

I might have sat for an hour.

In her intimate sonic

dark drenched presence. 

We were together.

I didn’t need to see that.

–

Rhossili’s Dolphin

The day was indistinct

each edge bleeding 

in the smear of sky hung wet.

Perpetual nowhere falling

to sodden flat sands.

From a distance

illuminated unsentimental.

I thought you were a seal.

Placed and lifted and rolled

among the flotsam.

Waves called to elsewhere,

leaving you

exposed and unusual.

Closer,

the sheer size of you heaves seal 

away from recognition.

Tuna rolls forth

seeking

shark slumps heavy

each fumbling for their position

on the podium of real.

Meters away

you, dolphin

lie at my feet.

Angel tragic, from world known

not inhabited.

eye missing

hole through jaw.

Inscribed in gouges 

whilst limp in swell.

You’re six foot.

I want to see what you feel like.

but my position in the realm of the living

keeps me from yours.

Your teeth are immaculate. 

The gate to you which no fish exits.

I wonder how long you’ll remain.

Theres a you here now.

How many weeks until there are bones and skin?