About the poet

Two of Us

You won’t give up – ‘which song do you like best?’

Your man’s McCartney – Get Back, Hey Jude.  Me –

I’m still hooked on the startling energy

of the early years, till Rubber Soul, the rest

(it’s true, a disappointment then suppressed . . .)

lacking that pastless spontaneity

which meant being young, and seeming to break free

of all the grey, dead rules.  I was obsessed,

buying every disc the moment it came out,

listening to it time and time again,

adding it to the story – while for you

right from the start there’s been both Twist and Shout

and Two of Us, the loss of Penny Lane

already in Paul’s voice on Love Me Do.

Published in HQ Poetry Magazine Number 57, 2021

Notes from the Underground

The first time someone offered me a seat

on the Underground, it was a Hoodie who

if I’d met him on a darkened, empty street

I’d have crossed to the other side as he came into view,

worrying about being mugged. And number two

happened today, when a young punk female face –

plus studs – looked up when I got on, and smiled.

I couldn’t think why, till she half-rose from her place.

Clumsily, I said no. Had she been my child

I’d have wondered what I’d done wrong, that she’d so defiled

her fresh good looks. But it isn’t that which sticks,

or the jolt of suddenly seeing myself in their

green eyes, or the body blow to my politics

(Spectator preconceptions . . .). It’s wondering where

such acts are catalogued, and if they share

the folder in the Cloud once labelled Prayer.

Published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Spring 2015, under title ‘Underground’.

Service

I stopped believing many years ago

even in non-belief, so why sit here

this winter morning, listening

to Sunday Worship on the radio

from St Martin-in-the-Fields? And to a choir

not so much singing as inheriting

the chanted fables generations pass

each to the next, as though they were handrails

into the future and could guide

us through a lifetime in which nothing lasts

except their solace – a thought which both appals

and fascinates, for what if such well-tried

harmonies say something tuned and true

about the way we can atone with age,

how we should be with one another,

how I both could and should have been with you,

and could still be even at this settled stage

of our long discord? What if this chance encounter

is not mere chance, but one of those rare moments

which offer insight into how the world

is more than all we see or hear

or touch – some inner, outer, spiritual endowment,

an unexpected cadence overheard,

which everyone, and everywhere, could share?

So let the old words comfort if they can –

they’ve done good service down the troubled years

helping us to come to terms

with what usually seems not just absurd, unplanned,

but a void our shocked imagination fears

and that unsung language only silence learns.

Published in The Spectator, 15 April 2017

Maiden Aunts

When I grew up

the world was full

of maiden aunts –

all brave old birds

(my mother’s phrase).

Mine lived in Plymouth,

one in France:

Gladys, Mildred,

Eugenie –

names from the Nineteenth

Century.

Our visits seemed

to make them happy –

they’d bake sponge cake

for us, for tea.

Kind smiles disguising

iron willpower.

Grandfather clocks

chimed on the hour.

Sometimes they mentioned

men who’d died

during the war.

They never cried.

Their houses shone,

polished each day

as though the past

were on display.  

I remember the sweet

old woman’s smell

when we were taken

to say farewell –

heaven, I think,

must have a mansion

where maiden aunts

on meagre pensions

dine on left-

overs from luncheon.

Published in Snakeskin 292, January 2022