Taking off

The towplane’s rolling slowly into place
and heat haze ripples through the runway’s end
as I watch how the rope uncoils itself
across the waiting surface, stretches tight,
and starts to haul my sailplane into life.
But it’s as clumsy as a seal on sand
until the airflow’s fast enough to grant
authority in yaw and pitch and roll,
then flying speed. Now – though the tug is still
committed to the blurred and rushing ground –
the long-winged sailplane’s quivering to leave
and with one small shrug, like a breath released,
we lift from two dimensions into three.

First published in The Broadsheet

Fledging

The wren on the jetty
has nested in a tangle
of rolled-up fencing wire
and turquoise plastic netting

slung in an open skip. Her calls,
echoed by just one chick,
tick metallically
between its rusty walls.

The young cat stretches,
scratches the weathered softwood
of the pallet he’s lying on,
and listens, and watches.

First published in Obsessed with Pipework

That angel hovering

in the choirstalls’ airspace
is clutching a hand-carved book
for all those children who want
to live in a different world,
who read in doorways
or perched on fire escapes,
who wield illicit light inside
the tent of their bedclothes.

She might look silvery
and demure, but that isn’t
a hymnbook she’s holding.
Who knows what she’s reading,
slipped between those
plain wooden covers.

Joint winner, Manchester Cathedral 600 Poetry Competition

Grace

And some days you find yourself moving
the way a sailplane races along an into-wind mountain ridge

curving around each angular crag
chasing its own shadow across the snowline

on that limitless energy you can feel
only by flying it.

Title poem of Only by Flying, HappenStance Press