Flint voiced geese flying

through blue air, sparkling and rare,

unstrung like my heart.

Mr Jessop’s Housekeeper Surveys

It’s an art or that’s what he always told me,

an inch or less out and all would be lost.

I’d dust his strange measuring devices,

tidy his plans. That was my job. While he

balanced the weight of water against earth,

calculated where the fault lay. Back then

he held me, his spirit level, in his hand.

I could tell you how tenderly he

cracked open the passage between seas,

with dressed stone fingers made the cut.

These days I still clean round him as he spouts

bellyfuls of spite at nature’s progress,

leaves him drowning, clawing at my hips. No!

I’ll no longer heave words of love for him.

William Jessop was consulting engineer on the Caledonian Canal, completed in 1822.

The Meaning of Wolves

Everybody knows the story -

the harmless little girl,

the harmless old granny -

but everyone knows: adults lie.

And grandma grew

her snout and fine set of gnashers

out of her own mouth

for the wolf always lived in her tummy,

and the more she denied his burping,

the more persistent he became,

until, well, she even gobbled her own granddaughter up.

And you can weigh down your wolf's skin

with as many stones as you like

but that won't stop it

rising to the surface again.

Visiting Hilda

Whitby Abbey, July 2005

Will you stand here a moment with me,

high above the turmoil of the town,

the clatter, the chatter,

the rank consumption, the fetid waters?

Will you take a moment

in your home of carved honey stone,

buffeted by winds,

sucked dry by night flying things?

The audio guide tells me all I need to know,

of a saintly goodness

that's hard to comprehend.

So here I am bolstered by facts,

treading on splintered pearls

unwarmed by our garish sun

of fool's gold.

And yet, and yet, will you only

rest here a moment with me

and accept my gifts?

Those I myself cannot see?