The lilies are about to scream.
It will be clear, strident like the call
of white exotic birds who trail
green tails in still, still waters.

Their lips are curled
but florists’ scissors snipped
their stamens out so all the guests
in pristine suits can brush
against them without risk.

The lilies are about to scream.
Their mouths yawn; tongueless
all the fire is gone. Permitted
lilies scented to no end. Like
yolkless eggs, tall candles
without wicks. Satin will shrivel
now the bells are mute.

Originally published in Orbis No.118 (Autumn 2000) and appears in the collection In the Dangerous Cloakroom

That wouldn’t be your style.
But the glint of a camera lens

in your favourite shop window
seems a little too bright on a day

when the sun is a broken promise.
And sometimes when I can’t sleep

I could swear that Sirius winks.
Tonight in a January tantrum

you are the steady blur
of headlights through the rain.

And were I on the coast you would
- as time is nothing now -

be shining as the eye of Souter Point
before its beam was stilled.

Originally published in Fourteen Magazine Issue 12 (2011) and appears in the collection Taking Flight

… and when your fingers interlock with mine,
I think of the hidden nests of harvest mice
in fields rife with cocksfoot or tufted hair grass,
or maybe somewhere on a brambled slope,
where shredded leaves are woven to a ball
with living ones pulled in, keeping the structure
taut; an inside cosy, lined with thistledown;
and when the little creatures come or go
they close the gap so there’s no sign
that they were ever there, all summer long
between the flowering stems.

Originally published in Interpreter’s House 48 (2011) and appears in the collection Taking Flight

Maybe a house doesn’t shed its memories,
walls absorbing shreds from conversations
which reach a certain pitch.
Plaster might, when silence acquiesces,
like a shell held to a willing ear,
unloose its powdery secrets, voice on faint echoing voice
repeating what was said this hour
a year or many more ago.

Maybe the shiny surfaces in rooms
store moments of intensity –
freeze frames. If you stand
in a place when the light’s right
on anniversaries, they’ll ghost across the gloss paint,
white on white. And sometimes images
will overlay each other.

Maybe floorboards hold the agitation
of those who cross them
but of bare feet only. Should you trace
the looping grain with a receptive palm
you get a sense of footfalls
from the past – but nothing more.

It may be just the passing cries of birds
or shadowy games played by the sun or moon.

Or a shift when the chimney exhales phantom smoke,
the hearth at the heart of the house
remembering flame.

Originally published in Orbis 167 (2014) and appears in the collection A Book of Follies