The North Is Rain strikes terraces stacked in brown brick And wind blows through the underpass. Two fat-breasted pigeons Fly over York Minster; a single seagull Squats in Speke. I’m out there burying neolithic arrowheads On Kersal Moor & freshwater shrimping In the Irwell, or I’m cruising Upriver, crazy as a Lune & sauntering A Sunday Through Morecambe Bay, my bat-black cape Flapping all the way to Whitby Abbey. Of note is tonight’s Full fr

A Twisted Tree 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 hold, leaves that cannot bud, encircled by the serpent snake -- a canker in the lifemilk's sap, and in the viper's blood.

Death on the Pennines 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 the death of something strange. We twist and turn. Shadows drape over us – ugly cloaks of lies that suit nobody. We are mired in bloody hearts. The crow comes, picks at the pieces. I am that crow, that symbol of death. I am the one that turns over corpses and flies away.

Time and Rust Fog swirls, curls around vans, cars, slips ghostlike through bare branches. A neighbour snorts into a handkerchief made (he says) from Greengate cotton. “Yesterday, before the snow, three old horses munched wet grass as I walked through the relics of the Wet Earth Colliery, which on reflection, were beautiful objects of time and rust.”

Relics Yesterday, before the snow, three old horses munched wet grass as I walked through the relics of an abandoned colliery, which on reflection, were beautiful objects of time and rust.

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.

the air is raspberry sweet it swarms with wings

Confronting the Dead So, descend the steep hill Slowly, go on Go past the lunch cart — Scolding tea, coffee Hotdogs, burgers Fried onions, ketchup — — Succulent dark odours — Smells so foody — Mingling With exhaust of traffic — That they foment in your gut A hunger you didn’t know you had. Go ahead, under The railway bridge, turn right, Allotments to your left — Carrots, beans, raspberries Basil, rosemary, parsley Marigolds,

A mallard stops, strums His feathers, beats his wings, Ready to fly over this stretch Of blue-lined water

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 walnut tree’s throbbing roots and flower-tipped branches spice beds the scent of jasmine on stone ‘it is the purest of humane pleasures’ the windchime’s tinkling brass the honeyed bees’ amaranthine drone amorous perfumes in a bloodhot sun venus fly waspish purring hum avian shrieks carnivorous triffids dart out as you pass, a lashing sting

Sailing to Bermuda (with Andrew Marvell) Selected images stand as themselves: not in a living but in an enamelled world -- Raymond Williams A godly remnant in an English boat on a mazy sea row to the new world with the old one in their laps. They sing songs of Eden replanted, of prelapsarian nights and greener days, of a milk and honeyed land where eternal spring enamels everything and the shores are slick with amber. Where lacquered melons fall at our feet, an

Aquarius So, the routes of the city, all its paths, arteries and overflows – the scummy run-offs from sewers and roads – end or start on the muddy banks of the sallow-tree river. Water does what it knows: It coils and uncoils like a gut over decades-old millstone grit, between the crumbling, rumbling jaws of Anglo-Saxon stone; Sneaks and snakes under willow trees; runs past hospitals, factories, back-to-back slums, picking up brand new stories and the gho

The Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline Project And again: the thud of executions echoes in the green ear of Maboula, Cameroon. The tremendous squeak of the assassin's blow and the axe cleaves the trunk: the first bite travels down the core like electricity through bone. The wood rings out dull music, a drowsy monotone. A loud creak and the sky topples; a tearing tumult of raindrops, leaves and twigs. Upper kingdoms are disturbed: birds disperse and disappear with the passing clou

Sunfall Late October Afternoon: A Weak Watery Sun -- Not What it Was But Not Dead Yet.