Monday 28 February 2011

Shift

She shifts from foot to foot, her hair, hands, smile all aflutter. But her eyes are deep and dark and steady.

Sunday 27 February 2011

Only the rain

The only sound, only sensation, is rain beating on rooftops, windows, umbrellas and on the first daffodils, palely bobbing, their heads more bowed than usual.

Saturday 26 February 2011

A brilliant dusk

At dusk, the sky briefly flashes pink, orange, yellow against the weeks-old, glowering grey.

Friday 25 February 2011

Puffy

The small girl in the lilac-coloured puffy jacket tips back her head and spreads her arms: a Spring flower opening.

Thursday 24 February 2011

Slow motion

They all walk so slowly, today on the bridge. Or am I walking faster and faster?

Wednesday 23 February 2011

Author event

The famous writer has all the austere charm, the steady, dusty vivacity, of his books.

Tuesday 22 February 2011

Reading on the bus

Much like the bus, the poem jerks and sways around its own axis as it moves forward on the page.

Monday 21 February 2011

Flutter

A ribbon of dirty plastic flutters in a bare tree: I am lost and tainted.

Sunday 20 February 2011

Bells

Church bells peal, each note deepened and hollowed by this Sunday morning's thick, damp air.

Saturday 19 February 2011

Cambridge to Ely

Rain on the Fenlands. A huge, muddy sky leaks endlessly onto the black fields and tiny trees.

Friday 18 February 2011

Crane

A crane so high I squint to see the top, and stumble backwards.

Thursday 17 February 2011

Tower

The heights of the new tower block are lost in the mist. As we come closer, there it is again, hard and overbearing.

Wednesday 16 February 2011

My shadow

Morning, 7.30. My shadow, faintly, on the footpath. When did she last leave the house with me so early?

Tuesday 15 February 2011

A single wing

She steps fast. The white canvas bag on her shoulder billows, away from her body and back - a single wing.

Monday 14 February 2011

Pale sunrise

Intensifying white light, then suddenly, at its centre, a frosted-glass Christmas tree bauble.

Sunday 13 February 2011

Sunday

Necessary Sunday nothingness. As if the week, set stiff with activity, requires the admixture of empty to regain a malleable consistency.

Saturday 12 February 2011

Black dog

A black dog ambles past - heavy, porcine, rather sinister. Poor old guy. He didn't ask to be a metaphor.

Friday 11 February 2011

Weather

The rain taps my face. The cold taps my fingers, my elbows, and crawls up the back of my legs.

Thursday 10 February 2011

Two

In the rainy pavement, the reflections of two orange umbrellas like big, wet, bobbing flowers - the people are the stems.

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Evidence

Along the road, a zigzag pattern of half a dozen fallen coathangers. Someone grabbed an armful of clothes from the wardrobe and ran?

Tuesday 8 February 2011

Niño

Throughout the showing of the film about the Zapatistas, the baby coos and sucks and, over his mother's shoulder, surveys the room with quiet composure.

Monday 7 February 2011

New moon

A tiny, perfect crescent moon, straight from the pages of a children's picture book, rocks gently above the multitude of glaring sodium street-lamps.

Sunday 6 February 2011

Mean and dirty

A mean wind slaps the house and whips a mass of dirty clouds across the sky.

Saturday 5 February 2011

Mayfair carpet shops

Behind the plate-glass windows of the Eastern carpet shops, the soft, dusty weight of woven gardens in the subtlest of colours.

Friday 4 February 2011

No harm in trying?

Outside at lunchtime, I try hard to notice something. A great big glutinous globule of effortfulness floats before my eyes.

Thursday 3 February 2011

Dazzle

Dazzling light from high above the city-centre skyline slants off the sharp, stretched-out shadows on the pavement. It's an unfamiliar contrast after all these weeks of grey opacity.

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Sycamore island

Inside the front door, a huge sycamore leaf has come to rest: pale-brown and brittle in my hands like an intricate cut-out from an aged parchment map.

(I wonder if I should ban metaphors and similes here, like in strict-form haiku?)

Tuesday 1 February 2011

Space

A small space, like an empty matchbox, to be filled each day with words: light them carefully, one by one.