The lock is stiff, the heavy wooden door
On rusted hinges creaks as I walk in.
Tonight I am to sleep here in this lighthouse.
It’s twenty years since last its scything beam
...
Swimming in its world of amber
The long-legged fly can still remember
The burning heat
...
Five miles high
in our chartered jet
we fly in Fairyland,
all shining light, the
...
It was a lovely day,
The hawthorn hedge
Was coming into bloom
And on the lawn
...
In a little family group they stood
Aggrieved on the petshop floor.
“It bit me and me mam and our Gladys,
And ‘im, that boy by the door”.
...
from a news item reporting an assault on a Japanese tourist
who had unwittingly insulted a person by using a phrasebook
deliberately mistranslated by an ex-employee of the Japanese Tourist
Board bearing a grudge against his former employers
...
Sometimes in life
it makes good sense
to close your eyes
and jump that fence
...
This is our yuletide wish for you—
May you find light in winter’s skies
May you have peace in the midst of strife
May you have joy where sadness lies
...
She was a kind soft-hearted girl
but as a child, she said, she kept
some stick insects in a tank as pets,
and every morning with a spoon
...
Trichocaulon cactiforme*
Slow in growth but rather rare
Year on year it’s never altered
Candle shaped and coloured grey,
...