In the taxi from the airport I tried to say my friends are there already. I tried to say I’ll need to get back again somehow. In the restaurant we remained English, suitcases at our feet. He stopped for a wild boar dead in the road. I arranged my face for tragedy, but he treated […]

One bird from fence to grass to fence to holly tree to wall to grass to holly tree brown flicker, lick of red a second still an eye. Crows come and go two magpies chacker, flap. I spy on holly – branches, sprigs. No splotch of knotted shreds. Daybreak till late whirr swoop from seat […]

from behind hoardings when you’re not looking, trying to live up to the artist’s impression. Down one-way streets the wrong way they slip to the tune of infill and quotas and backhanders. They’re coming to a field or a muddy ditch near you, seeking out scout huts to flatten or a football pitch to excavate, […]

Knew it was my mother’s last day. In hospital, asleep. Peacefully, not in any distress. The nurses said she had some time yet. Suddenly felt I must go up the hill, that winding lane through the woods. Emerged into sunlight at the top. There it was nestling in its small valley, the old stone farmhouse […]

After days spent high on the route she carries down sanitary pads to burn on a base-camp fire. The circle of men falls silent. Here in the Karakoram – Black Gravel in Turkic – she walks off their maps    into whiteness