From the Northern kingdom,
Born in high standing
Yet resolved to walk low
He was pulled humbly south
Over a score of years;
Sired in Aidan’s flock,
Soon the gentle shepherd
Would battle the Mercians –
In faith, in peace, in reverence –
And there, on a site of butchery –
A field of the dead –
A stained Lych Field,
Where Romans had slaughtered
He raised a church
On blood and bones;
Where once was hell,
In time, an angel would peer
Through dirt and stones;
And there,
Where he rested,
Where he was despoiled,
Three slender fingers
Renewed from the cannons
Pierce the sky, a canon
A call, to his Trinity.
Month: December 2025
Mast Year
So many fell this year
They formed a levee
Down the road crown;
Skittish squirrels
Drunk on the urgency
Of boundless foraging
Bound and leap
In arching acrobatics
Over bark, along leaf,
Forcing the fruit into freefall
Dropping like stones
Tropical rain
Brushed off surprised shoulders.
And as the wind whips
Whorling through the laden canopy
Boots below crush and crunch them
Kicking up a bow wave
Of desiccated oak fruit
Before
Caught in cleat,
Lodged in a turn-up
Tramped down the path,
They turn up far away;
Dropped off-handedly
Between a rusty tango can
And a lost, sodden mitten,
To rise, rise anew.
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