Author Archives: colinhopkirk

The oxen know how furrows follow the curve of the hill The man knows how using his weight just so slips plough through earth Only the plough knows why

My wife hates spiders My daughter hates spiders They find them alarming (it’s all about the legs) But I don’t mind them Spiders are ok Spiders are useful creatures keeping down the flies What scares me? Snakes and Crocodiles Snakes and Crocodiles and Komodo Dragons Snakes and Crocodiles and Komodo Dragons and Great White SharksContinue reading “What are you afraid of?”

A rusty musket can still kill you or the shooter It’s a fifty-fifty chance A hole in the chest A face full of shrapnel

West African pirates still sidle up to tankers armed to the teeth with spears and Kalashnikovs

If they could fly they would as high as mountains above fields and forests villages and towns swooping down from time to time to take a better look marvelling at some sights weeping at others wondering if God is somewhere else playing football going to the shops getting drunk with priests

They put up her statue quietly without much fuss and not at Westminster lined her up one morning, early lowered her onto the bolts lowered her from a red crane suspended by the neck

of the elderly couple in their town clothes trying to make it down Steep Hill clinging to the walls clinging to each other alternately slipping then righting themselves suddenly aware that they have gone too far

I have been watching the pylon Peregrines their perfect stoops their oblique ascents

I know almost nothingof the rich and varied livesof my mother’s familya deserter fatherfeckless and cruelBackstreet povertyher flame haired sisterwho married ‘Mick the Gyp’because he looked like Elvisa ghost half-brotherno one really knewa burned out farmcomplete with mad uncleand Victorian great auntsI met one oncein Teeside Generala tiny woman in a bedpin sharp and brightwithContinue reading “Our Walter fired the lot”

Sometimes on waking discovered by birdsong a window opens