Life does not always give you answers, and these poems find a narrator who struggles in a life they don’t understand. Accompany them as they walk through churchyards, visit old wells, and move through the seasons, wondering how their life might’ve been different. Can they move on from loss? Perhaps the lesson is in the stars...
Published 18th June 2026
From the tree behind your song I can tell
it’s spring again. Leaves, lime-green,
sprout from a body of twigs. An abundance of living
you can’t get away from. And in your song
I can hear the sorrow that makes you sing it.
Each year when blossom casts its stars
around this bough, how many constellations
do you see looking back in may time?
Just one? Of course, there is only ever one
you see up there on this anniversary—
someone who lived like blossom,
just long enough to be named.
My favourite weather is now,
when the storm clouds beyond the waterfront
build and build and fill the sky
while here there is still somehow the sunlight
that strikes the brickwork on houses
and quayside inns. Such a contrast
between the ground and the sky,
between what is here and what is coming.
Let’s stay and savour this a little while longer,
pretend that life is always made of a light
that lingers on roof tiles and gutters.
Perhaps no storm will break open this evening
and we can walk home, touch the bricks
and say this still feels warm.
First published in Finished Creatures