The Irwell - a river poem Rock-solid ground loosens,    shifts to liquid,    slips fast away beneath my feet.      The water dreams of boats, of willow banks,    not a foul stream of refuse    but a seam alive with freshwater shrimp,    roach, and brown trout.      A mallard halts —    strums his feathers,    beats the air into rhythm,    poised to rise above this stretch,    this blue-lined artery    we call the River Irwell.

Yesterday, before the snow, three old horses munched wet grass as I walked through the relics of an abandoned colliery, which on...

The moon appeared to float on a skein of black water and a wind sang a high pitch B, 246.94 Hertz. And something else – a distant police...

To live this hour beneath a cold Pennines sun requires the dead hills to flow behind us. To see the mighty crow and not look back means...

So, descend the steep hill   Slowly, go on   Go past the lunch cart   — Scolding tea, coffee   Hotdogs, burgers   Fried...

Not the growing stem or the leaf blowing in the wind; not the opening bud or the emerging radicle; not the fourfold root yearning for water.

In the Beginning Was Strange to think I am the universe and everything in it too. I call out. No voice returns other than my echo. So...

We see the visible world as somehow inevitable, with all its ratios of movement & rest, its manifold shapes & ecstatic forms, not...

It was at this point I stopped dreaming and looked at the sky and saw what seemed to me a mirage reflecting upon itself what it mirrored...

A Marvellous Garden the garden is a luscious lover crushed wine on lips the dark-eyed junco's throat full of whistles and trills the...

A twisted tree from sapling green to creek-brown god, nature's will has bent its back, perversed its proper shape: Roots that will not...

God's Entropy (short version)

After the birds and mammals lost their speech (the serpent's tongue having already turned to ash) and Heaven swayed and fell to within...

Sailing to Bermuda (with Andrew Marvell) Selected images stand as themselves: not in a living but in an enamelled world -- Raymond...

the air is raspberry sweet it swarms with wings

"A fisherman fingers a long-handled blade, rolls a cigarette, chops herbs and garlic by a charcoal fire ..."