You are my North:
Quayside steps
and Grey Street’s curve,
you are the bells
of St Nicholas
sounding from their lantern tower,
you are the Swing Bridge turning,
unlocking the Tyne,
the blast of the breeze along Broadchare.
After the long climb up Whickham Bank,
you are the feeling
of coming home.
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recoil
dumbfounded
by what the west wind brings,
plunging down from burnt moors
and over the bright plains
to trees that tilt backwards
recoiling
dumbfounded
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Let me dream of her again…
Often my unconscious obliges.
I meet my memories so completely
that on waking
I sense your presence
like an inrush of coastal air
and for hours
it feels as though we walked in step again.
Perhaps the dream is merely
a middle-aged, sentimental vision,
an ideal, mind-moulded version
bearing little relation
to the contemporary you.
Would we meet now as strangers, parted
by the woodland of intervening years?
Or, after stumbling efforts,
wrong turnings, dead ends,
would I clear a track through the trees
and find there
the unchanging,
still centre of you?
Read the full sequence here.
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She could see her insomnia
everywhere,
she could follow its trail
through the pages
like the prints of spiders’ feet
or wizards’ fingers.
Leaning on a railing,
watching the workings
of the printing press,
she could see her sleeplessness
like a length of silk
coiled around the cogs.
When at last she found sleep,
it was as heavy
as the wump, wump, wump
of the printing press,
the rhythms
of a loom factory.
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A loved one’s familiar phrase
escapes across my tongue
stops mid-air, mid-sentence,
staring back as surprised as I am.
High above the stone houses,
a simple green-painted bench
is wrapped about with the silk
of my grandmother’s thoughts.
Sometimes, I rise from the chair
and walk to the window, drawn
by the knowledge of a story,
the story of a Pennine family,
a story that penetrates my body
like an x-ray – I turn away,
avert my gaze from the hills
that deceive us all with their silence.
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To which do you incline?
To streets and houses
armour-plating the hills,
rows of sloping roofs open to egg-shell sky,
a church spire pointing:
Plato’s finger in Raphael’s painting?
Or deep emptiness?
A filthy patch of snow lingering
like the body of a dead wolf,
wind-driven silence and low threat
in the throats of hidden cattle?
To which do you incline?
Or do your thoughts decline towards the grey sea,
a wave collapsing thinly
like a shipwrecked sailor
onto the hard sand?
—————————–
At midday in Micklegate I clock you,
stepping lightly from a bus to the shining street.
In Fossgate I find you, cross-legged, head-bowed,
raindrops dripping from the end of your nose.
In Grape Lane, you pour wine from a carafe.
In Navigation Road, you keep your eyes on your map.
A shot of mercury, your presence moves through me,
until you return to the shape of a shopper,
a student, a beggar, a thief. Like one bereaved,
I confront your likeness in every street.
Read the full sequence here.
—————————–
An angel
is burning.
Thin flames feather
the black bones
of its wrecked wings.
A blank eye is moving
over cratered cities
as wings fly up in soot
and descent begins,
the dead-drop over Dresden,
Kabul, Sarajevo,
over the gates of Dachau –
an artist’s palette
collides with concrete,
turns to kindling
at survivors’ feet.
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Let your illness
leak into me
and leave you.
Contaminate me, darling.
Let heavy thoughts lift,
balloons
from a child’s fingers.
Rise from the bed,
resume
your look of old.
Let me descend.
Let my shape adapt
to the contours left
by your body
in the bed
and let me change.
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A suitcase lies by the door
like a dying animal.
We do not go near it.
I sit with my head in a book.
I delight in facts.
I pick them over with relish.
I am aware of movements within the house
but I do not concern myself with them.
When you enter the room,
I cannot bear to look at you:
if one thought should lift
a stray ember
and attach itself to you
I know I am lost
and if I should begin to tune in
to your footfall,
to your comings and goings,
I know I am finished,
it would make this leaving impossible.
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James R Kilner Writer 