Guernsey Poets

See the wren, resplendent: her clever eye, her sweet essence. Deep, let her sleep be deep; there, let the green hedge be her perfect b...

Outside the parish church, we pause, exchange the old banalities we flee to, at such times, because we cannot face finality, then nod, a...

That day in 1953 my family watched it on TV, an innovation in our house. I sat, as timid as a mouse, enchanted by the pageantry, ...

We thought the war was far away and spoiling someone else’s day but suddenly things took a turn: on telly we saw rockets burn across t...

Another day, another mall, another shooting to appall the world, astonished, that looks on and, once again, the ghastly spawn of fronti...

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world W B Yeats   Beware. Down in the woods today the Ted...

we meet on a sunlit bridge                  in an ancient city in spring and our shadows merge                        we meet like eager l...

With catapult, once school was finished, I went to hunt in woodland, high above Belfast, in summer light and heard, among leafed branche...

Young Nicolai was made to fight. He didn’t think that it was right but sometimes men just have to do what men are told and march on cue...

As, with this gas-mask I thee wed, Zed-missiles whistle overhead. Machine-gun fire to left and right reminds us of our parlous plight. ...

Along the entry he would come caterwauling, striking bin-lids with his stick, through the backyard knocking over milk bottles. Up th...

He dreamed of oceans as a child; would run away to sea when grown; might sail the chill Atlantic, wild, or broad Pacific, tempest blown...

This is a tree, he said and pointed to a tree. We have seen images, they said. There are many trees, he said. This tree is cedar. We ha...

On a yellowed flyleaf, half a century ago, my mother wrote to say Birthday Wishes and Mum, that name that buries self away. I was her fi...

I am falling from high but they do not notice. The air, through wings that promised much, keens like a mourner. Creeping ants below ...

All scattered to the winds and ways, like blushing cherry blossom blown, the friends, he knew when not full-grown, have vanished from hi...

Perhaps there is an explanation, dear, but you’re not here to set my mind at rest. Death puts a stop to questions, so I fear this one mu...

In a green lane in St Peter’s near midnight, under a full moon, a pale owl flew across my path, silently, then low over dark fields to...

Springtime in Bluebell Wood: trees stand like galleons. Sunlight illuminates their leafy masts and rigging. They rest, becalmed, as bre...

We watched a small boat on the lake: oars dipped and rose, oars dipped and rose, and strollers, happy, I suppose, went by, each blind t...