2026

• A Psalmist’s SonnetMy tongue is the pen of a ready writer said the psalmist.
• Jane Dodgson †20.09.2026How can I write a poem about you that isn’t also a poem about me?
• SmokeSmoke ascends vertically until it loses motivation
• Acrostic Sonnet for Jane DodgsonJane, whatever I say can’t capture the length And depth of what you’ve meant to me.
• KairosThey say that love is like a beautiful box – / When you open it for someone a dragon comes out / and dances in…
• Spring SonnetThe lanes are lined with may as ne’er before. / What further proof is needed of rebirth? / The scents of sprin…
• Don’t be afraidDon’t be afraid – and don’t look down. / Hold your focus – win the crown. / All that is required of yóu
• Seek your HighestSeek your highest, know your lowest: / God go with thee where thou goest. / Be your kindest, own your cruelest…
• Pœm in two hearts conjoinedHow my dark heart labours under the weight of grief / For what I’ve marred, the sins from which I seek relief…
• Since you askImmerse yourself in your summer garden. / Follow the path your heart’s dictating. / You are maturing to fill t…
• Obedience (sonnet)Obedience is a path sometimes barely discernible, yet sensed by the intuitive.
• Pilgrimage – the healing journeyThese things are given to you / Inalienably. / No one can take them away:
• Letter in the form of a pœmIn my mind a heap of ideas. For me / thought is parallel not sequential. / On this day of seductive warmth I l…
• De ProfundisIn my mind, pure feeling / (beyond vocabulary) – / held in perfect balance,
• Jewel in the DarkAll I am is faith / All else fades; / This alone is jewel-bright.
• LordLord is a word that cannot be defined. / Peace is a space that cannot be confined, / Requiring that we alone b…
• SonnetinaNow, I’ll never tear the skies asunder, / Nor disperse the morning fog with sun: / My chance to snatch the age…
• Apologies to WS (& Thomas Morley)It was a lover and his lass, With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonny no,
• WhatsAppI couldn’t send a WhatsApp message. / The universe has spoken. / My message was wrong /mistimed /offensive /ir…
• Light & Shade give FormWho bathes in words / Bathes in water … / Who bathes in music
• Crack in the MonolithA crack within the monolith of thought / Produces new vistas – which seem at first alarming. / We’re so held b…
• An Old Man’s Ode to SleepSleep is like a file that won’t download. Sometimes it gives you hours to write an ode
• AI? As If!My phone has had a new upgrade, I wish it applied to me.
• Hope in DarknessWriting about hope / Matters supremely in the darkness. / Writing about love

2025

• RemorseIt takes you suddenly by surprise, / A fleeting long-forgotten thought, / Memories once dismissed as naught
• EchoesWe flew together, gaily as birds; / We danced together as if we heard / One secret music. We lay together
• Acrostic Sonnet for SefaSometimes there are no words but only music.
• Acrostic Sonnet for SuziSo beautifully grown to who are, Unlike any woman else I’ve known.
• HaikuIs there any point in defining yourself?
• PantoumlyIn a dark and dreary wood / All alone a woodman stood. / How long he’d been there noone knew,
• OtherOtherness is what we find when projecting love
• GriefShould the grief pour out of me / It would flow like a waterfall – forever. / A cataract carving its way throu…
• The SkyLift me to the skies; / Let my perspective rise / Till I see the things of earth
• French ComposersEdouard Lalo / Was a friendly fellow: / Quand on dit ’ello
• GrailThey are vanishing before our eyes, / Once cherished splendours; / Even things that once we prized
• JoyJoy is such a fragile thing, / No sooner lands than it takes wing. / Lighter than breathless clouds it floats;
• Turning StillPure fount of love flowing from the world’s wound / Bathe us in light. / Sublime waterfall of endless height

2020

• Pœms from NowhereThirst / Another day I awake thirsting for something I cannot define. I walk out into the first light in hope…

2013

• Hawk in the AirA high wide arc the buzzard made / above the down, swooping & turning / ceaselessly, its wings outsplayed

2011

• Creative Season/sSo great to have the gift of words return! / For like virility, it comes unearned,| / indeed if sought more li…

2010

• CaliforniaSo… / We are the sum total of all the experiences / that brought us to this point –

2009

• Blazing BaptismThe priest withdrew to the chancel, attended by acolytes / and followed by worshippers – straggling throu the…
• Golden MelodyCould I but spin a golden melody / from myself as a spider draws / her silken web, whose very flaws
• Drifting AwayAs you go over the rim of the sea / into the dark ocean / I wave and wave
• Celebrating NatureBe at one with nature. / Let its balance heal you – / nothing hurried, nothing wasted –

2008

• MeditationThe intense quality of silence as we sit, / sun streaming over the frosty lawn / into our cave-like room, is l…
• To My Younger Self (Dorset Doublet)Easter Saturday / Never in a day has sun-death seemed so sad, / A perfection of transparencies that promist et…

2007

• Requiescat1 / My mother waits in the great ante-chamber / When I kissed my mother for the last time, she was no longer t…
• Quaker MeetingHere in this space I am made welcome. / There is something which allows me / to enter within some greater mind…

2006

• TheyThey do not require justification, / They are. / Their hearts beat lightly

2005

• OrganAt 60 I return to music I wrestled with at 16 – / as difficult now as it ever was to coordinate / feet and han…
• School Reunion1 / The Guest Book is offered with a biro-securing thumb. / ‘50 years – unbelievable!’ one comments.
• SlaveryI have the memory, the dread of that room, / the night spent there before embarkation. / Shackled, terrified…
• TimelessI noticed the time on her watch, five to three – / the windows drifted off into the forest, / and sun burnt th…

2004

• DiamondIn ageless earth the properties of matter / Transformed some dust in molten temperature / To a sparkling diamo…
• Easter DawnIt is that time of night / when the silence is alive with possibilities – / That time when solar tides turn

2003

• Four PoemsTwo of them / running golden throu the stubble, / camouflaged
• Dogs in AutumnTwo of them / running golden throu the stubble, / camouflaged
• GobstopperWe are many alternating realities, / like the layers of a sweet whose different / tastes we only experience as…
• The TempestI am the tempest / I am the shaken tree. / I am the echo of the wind

2002

• Oxford Sunday MorningIn this corner of Oxford it was always Sunday morning – / the silent chimneys once bustling with the kitchen s…
• Tears FlowTears flow where once flowed song. / In these darkened hours / I sit and muse on time long gone

2001

• SpringLike snow outlining fences, / wool from the downland sheep / creates a winter postcard
• Dream Prayer 2In darkness is the light. / In the unseen, the form of what is to be. / Love blooms in a stony wasteland just…

2000

• Into the flow of timeWhen the everyday miracle, love, strikes / all the resonant chords within us chime / and even the tawdry ruts…
• Sonnets to Orpheus1 (1.2) / Und fast ein Mädchen wars und ging hervor / The magic from his chorded lyre

1999

• Streams & DreamsStreams of imaginary rivers / Dreams of imaginary floods / Blood of imaginary sinners
• Decree NisiPivot of the turning year, / gathering energy, like the prayer / of one whose feeling focus

1998

• If the pure fire of prayerIf the pure fire of prayer engulfs us – are we / other than what we were moments before? / If the certainty of…
• LakshmeThis is how I want to remember you – / running close to the new-turned soil / of the high field, a silhouette

1993

• Dream Prayer 1Great God within me, whose final form I do not yet know, uphold and lead me to the fullness of this understand…

1987

• On meeting an old lover in Sainsbury’sIt was your familiar greeting. / But floating across the aisles in Sainsbury's / from a distance of four years

1986

• An Irish pub in the Waterloo RdAs we sat there / hearts bleeding distractedly into the empty noise / an improbable couple not far away

1981

• HaikusElectric City / & on my own / for whatever reason

1980

• For the man on the park bench listeningThe flowers I offer are anyone's to give, / but seemingly cash can make them acceptable; / Yet how can one sho…
• Easter Saturday (Dorset Doublet)Easter Saturday / Never in a day has sun-death seemed so sad, / A perfection of transparencies that promist et…

1979

• Round with VariationsThe warm car halts, its dials / glowing with consumer serenities. / Hand on key, the laughter
• Martinique LandscapeBattling with Questions of Honesty I encountered Gauguin / for the first time, today, in the Gallery. Viewed l…
• Two NationsThe tree, / distressful in the wind, bending stays upright, / but too easy (and asymmetric) to stimulate my te…

1969

• For SallyIn this dropt-leaf weather / the heart turns against itself, / never asking by whose justice

1967

• When the fog of griefWhen the fog of grief and dumb despair / roll in from desolate wastelands beyond / the mind's trench, vainly o…