This is a poem inspired by the last three rewilding suggestions of Paul Brookes’ December challenge. You can see them on Paul’s blog here.

Sacred circles

Curled about her cubs,
every furred mother-sun
radiates love-warmth,

lake water gathers up in gentle hands,
broad wings, long necks, flecked and flocked
with bird-drift, gives them back to the sky,

worm tunnels clear through earth-mould,
the composted death of years past,
breathing air and life into the passage graves

of leaves, field maple, oak,
and the sifted bones and shells
of wild ossuaries.

All things curl, bow, bend,
the cycle re-cycled, reforming and recurring,
sun, moon, stars reflecting lifetimes.

This week I was happy to see what I’m calling my ‘experimental pantoums’ appear in One Hand Clapping. The magazine is one of those online gems, fully of interesting stuff. This is all down to the editorial choices – it’s elegantly curated and varied. I think journal and magazine choice quality is subjective, I tell mentees that they should submit work the magazines and journals they respect and who feature work that they themselves like to read over where they think their work should appear, but there is definitely a difference in quality between a hastily thrown together online magazine and something like this one in which thought has gone into the aesthetics, the curation, the identity of the magazine. Putting together a magazine is a labour of love that takes many more hours of time that perhaps is imagined. I strongly suggest…

I can think of no better way to end this year of drop ins and reviews than by sharing with you my response to Paul Waring’s exceptional, Muckle Anima (Hybriddreich, 2022). I have had the privilege of reviewing a number of wonderful collections this year, but this is equal to the very best and I have been bursting at the seams to write about it!

I believe that ‘anima’ means in layman’s terms ‘the inner or true self’. Whilst some say that all poetry, and indeed art, regardless of the subject matter is ultimately an expression of the artist, I believe that this choice of title reminds us of this viewpoint and signals to the reader that we can expect insights into the world and experiences that has made the man behind the writing. Adding the vernacular ‘muckle’, meaning ‘much’, to the formal noun ‘anima’, indicates, perhaps, that the…

The end of it
by Andy MacGregor

Nothing in the end of it
prepared me for the beginning:

not the fire in the street
or the unexpected calm

as your last reproachful glance
sent me back to that first time

on the bus going north
when you laid your head

on my shoulder and I felt
that thrill, a vibration,

not knowing if it was you
or me, or just the miles

vanishing beneath us
into the unseen distance.

Then there was that night
when, out of nowhere,

you went on and on
obscurely about the past

being always present—
how every moment

is that one original
instant of creation

still unfolding endlessly,
but showing a different face.

I listened dutifully of course
while my tea grew cold

and the evening yawned
blackly outside the window.

No doubt it’s as true now
as it was all that time ago:

there…

For Paul Brookes’ challenge, still thinking in iambs. A sonnet with erratic rhyme (non)scheme.

Bee-dreaming

When winter settles cold across the fields,
and even roses fail to open buds,
when petals pink and blue are long since brown
and damp-dead, jays hop now where once they bloomed.
When sky is hid behind grey mists of cloud
and falling rain, its patter dull on leaves,
a sodden carpet specked with acorn cups,
the house seems sad despite the glowing stove,
and even mouse scratch, ash sigh echo loud,
I watch the pheasants in their gaudy plumes,
uncaring of the rain, the lack of light,
knowing only that the cage was sprung,
the broad day full of life and dark the night.
I listen for the ghosts of summer done,
bee-hum that fills these rooms with scents of sun.