Hungry for beautiful words, the fox comes rooting around in the hedge, almost too close to the fire. He reads my mind with one glance and is gone. All my poetry is now trotting around the bushes inside him, maybe some day to be partly eaten or left to rot. He understands being alive for as long as he can be, and does not worry about why, or what might happen afterwards.

from the prose poem "The Universe Thrums on regardless" in my book SPAN.We are almost nothing in the night. Reduced to warm blobs and the sound of breathing. There is comfort in that.

Dancing to the sounds of trees and stones and slow minutes ticking in our hearts and bones.

Mist lies over the river like the icy breath of winter angels. Darkness gathers round... and it is beautiful.Thank you for this life, this death, whatever it is you arethat makes us finally see.

The children walk away from me, flick flickety off at a tangent between thin blotched beech trunks, then turn like yo-yos at the end of their strings and come back to me" from the poem "In a BishopsWood Clearing