The sea must whisper, hiss or roar. It strews the sand with hollow bones. It nudges cliffs, invades the shore and swallows homes.   The waters pulse like rolling wheels on yellow fish that gleam as brass. Black flowers by the broken creels are dripping glass.   In mist the gulls shrill, mew and taunt […]

You shocked me, at first. Stone soot-black, still to be sand-blasted back, with your red-brick back-to-backs, outside lavs, washing strung out across the streets of Leeds.   Our own terraces looped along each valley, linking towns and names – Wattstown, Tylerstown, Tonyrefail.   But not on this scale. More people within forty miles than half […]

how               deary               tea too loud              cleary               me you sou’               feary                 see you mou’             teary                 tae you please           kittiwake          wee wee wee breeze           ticker tape       tea tea tea wheesht        trick of fate     free free free wheeze          bit o cake         caw caw canny

We went to Huddersfield, a town of stone settled like a wasp-nest on the hills. Broad streets preened their glossy trees. The ring-road clambered up the hill’s backbone.   We strode the empty streets, their pavements worn by wry-faced Yorkshiremen; admired the railway station, pillared like a palace; saw the George Hotel where Rugby League […]

nirvana’s neighbour, withdrawn nervous: whereupon wanderlust-navigated, wings   Westward (towards the sun, widdershins)   wayfaring stranger, wretched star-crossed, wrenched soulless, wandering   Southerly (with the wind soughing)   sibilant, soul-searching emotion seeking eden’s enigmatic, sun-rinsed equinox   East (mysterious, ancient, heathen)   ethereal, not earthly nothingness emerging nearer, nearing empyrean   Northwards … (higher as […]

The heather is turning brown and the air is chill beneath low banks of threatening cloud.   Mother made her last walk here, revisiting her girlhood, a few unsteady steps around the watershed of Wharfe and Washburn rivers, with the glint of Fewston down below, and green shoots of heather showing.   Then father came […]