The too bright polyanthus on your step, the rusting wrought-iron gate, a chip paper blown along the sand. In the distance the steel works idle, stark against the sky. A boy collecting sea-coal, a cricket match through the arch of your old school, a lad with red hair, running, running.   And then the pram-faced […]

Horizons keep soliciting. Time’s imperceptible: a shift of lines dividing inky shadow from hot brilliance, or bells rinsing the hills at evening, the sign for villagers to follow donkeys down steep terraces before the land sinks under a sea of stars. But we must leave, pining on paths that funnel us to ever blander roads, […]

We pretend it’s a game – moving boxes and things. When my sons play- fold me into cardboard, I feel strangely safe, like a snail that knows home is always there on its back.   Then they lift the flap.

Dad dilly-dallies, consummates the garage, and Mum shilly-shallies inside sieved clouds   while Son self-raises, pulls massive wheelies, as weeds gather along snapdragon alleys. On Sundays   Dad fathoms Mum’s new-fangled gizmo and Mum levels Dad’s spirit, holds the pencil   while Son checks out nobody going down the slide, sees a see-saw horizontal. On […]

The pressure never alters in our house: he taps the glass each morning to remind the golfer in mid-swing to get on with it, the pink buds posing on the branch be done with blossoming, falling leaves, swept up and binned; as for the umbrella, open wide and be of some use or better still […]