March 4, 2017
Stir the curry pot warming on the stove while passing to get wood. Torch in hand, stars are familiar. Arms full, into the warm. Building the fire, small bits first, a mite crawls on kindling. Lift one piece out. Everything’s already burning.
February 28, 2017
I’ve written a poem in response to a zen koan. The Moon Thief will be published in the forthcoming spring issue of Urthona. “‘The Moon Thief ’ came out of an encounter with the koan in the poem’s epigraph: the great Zen poet Ryokan, meditating in a mountain hermitage, offers his clothes to a thief but cannot […]
February 15, 2017
Breath hisses like a burning log. The cracked black wood burns red, smouldering in a deep iron heart. Too much air, it flares and flickers out. Too little, it starves and we get cold ash. But when the grate is open well enough it breathes hot and constant. Sometimes a blister, a spark, a crack. […]
February 12, 2017
Full use was made of the firelighters. Not so much the rest of it. Matthieu Ricard’s book would have given me much happiness in the form of blessed heat but it didn’t come to that. The burner was one of those US Boxwood stoves. They look quite iconic and can fit a lot of wood inside. […]
January 30, 2017
Deceased: Love is not made here. There is no air, nor bread, nor beer. It is doubly dark, which is to say that it has no colour. It is doubly deep, having no need of a beginning. It is doubly quiet, because I can hear myself. You have brought me to a place that does […]
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