The mind is a vestry door with a bishop's name. Knock, you will get no answer but enter and sing a hymn. It may help you sleep lest you...

Here in this quiet house all sleep, And I give time to memory, Hang a sepia photo on a wall, Pull sketches on brown paper From a drawer....

An oily smear on a still pool. A friend obliquely watching Drew close and said: How beautiful! Perceive the rainbow pattern On the...

Speracedes Easter '91 Seeking a quiet grave In the evening light We took the lower road Where the old lavoirs stand And the stream still...

Ice-pick gone, feet first, face down, Malory slid, clawed at the scree, Skewed to a halt, humped miles up, Like a cuttle bone on a beach,...

Two figures stood waving goodbye, The man, my father, one foot in the gutter, Watery blue eyes more apt to fix on nothing But fixing now...

The large and paunchy man, with straddled legs and slippered feet, paddling across a hotel floor to sit because he cannot stand, evokes...

The clock of his life had a slow tick And a large surprised white face, Which was seldom seen, Since it went better Face downward. It...

A late letter for Margaret So you have slipped away, Margaret, bequeathing us warm memories which will last our days (you had a rough...

Father found a letter to my mother from a soldier who had been at home when Father was away. Mother quite denied that more than...

for Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth The echoes of a gift thought lost haunt the approach of age as a forgotten page...

If you regret you did not open the many doors you knocked on, reproach yourself for that regret, some doors are mere illusion. Life's...

Looking at you now, light falling, wondering what you are thinking, bent forward in profile, old, yes, but somehow beautiful, although...

How does it feel to be a golden oldie? Jeremy asked John at ninety. No X, no Y, no Larry? One feels very lonely Don't take that road said...

Like a copper coin the sun shone through the mist, withdrew to re-emerge a yellow moon, then hid as vapour thickened and there was only...

Gaunt arms and grey gloves direct the hearse, direct us all to park in spaces under names upon tablets on a wall. Soft music plays. We...

It has gone fast, life, And your children now travel As you, too, have travelled To a world long beyond us To which I was stranger. But...

I missed your birth - the only one of the four I did not see. The celebration of your infancy was overlaid with care, so now there are...

The day after your uncle turned three, The world changed. Standing on Euston Station, Another uncle in your grandma’s arms, A siren’s...

When Butch and Sun Dance shot from their corner, Firing from the hip with each hot cylinder, Then froze into a sepia still, the movie...