Three new poems, recently shared on Twitter as part of Black Bough Poetry’s #toptweettuesday

Brussels to Bruges 

Considered through train carriage windows, 
agitated rooks and solitary horses twist necks 
to eye them. They’re everywhere. Squatting
by ditch and stream, in tight organic knots 
– coppiced willows. Stools tracing lines across 
flat lands. Borders, vertical as much as horizontal. 
A coiled army of writhing, wrinkled wood – 
not marching, waiting. 

Escaping into oil, at times, to manifest 
in museum Breughels, as ancient warning signs. 
Before returning to the fields. Territorial signatures 
scrawled in tree. Low places marked as topographic 
junctions, at the point where earth greets water. 
Age-old interventions, striving to keep ground 
breathing, whenever surfaces are tempted 
to slip beneath the ever probing wet. 

Political Donations

A Brixton throng is voting 
with its arms. Filling rows 
of chairs, inside the old town 
hall. High vaulted ceiling, 

resplendent in municipal cream 
paint. Off-set by darker wooden 
panels on the walls. People wait, 
staring into phones, or vacant 

space. Others sit propped up on 
avocado-vinyl covered seats. 
Hot red faith pumped into plastic 
bags. Drawn in through 

fat-needled puncture holes. Policies 
of giving met with the confidence 
of silence. No one tries 
to second-guess how this will go 

down with the public. Simply 
taking turns to share a living gift. 
Before a drink, a snack, then going 
back to ordinary business.

No smoke

Baleful green eye blazing,
the smoke-alarm shrieks
for back-up batteries. 

Relentless in its rage,
until a fuse-wire fingered
errant knight arrives.

Blue boiler suit – 
the faded cotton armour 
of an electrician.

On a quest to silence 
a shrill creature’s awful need. 
Relief soon turns to anti-climax,

as I’m condemned to seek 
another source of dread, 
to reassure me I’m alive.