Author Archives: colinhopkirk

A single kazoo sounds  lonely  and faintly absurd. Imagine the sound of  a hundred kazoos. Now imagine ten thousand.

When I got back from the supermarket,  quite soon after the unpacking and the putting away, they pinged me a survey. They asked if anything ‘in branch’ had  surprised or delighted me today. I told them (in 35 words or less) In branch today I was surprised,  and delighted, by seven blue tits, several lazyContinue reading “In Branch”

It is light earlier now, after a long wet winter  that may have killed the vine. Skies bright for days, the ground warms by degrees, slowed by first frosts, Russian wind. No matter, the world turns, days lengthen, the sun’s arc rises. The starlings in the roof tell me it is coming.

A detonation  of Fieldfares bursts from the tree surprising the sky.

Outside today, brightest sunshine and an east wind, perfect for repairing garden furniture. Each spring I take great care, take time, prepare by sanding,  brush deep into the joints with Danish Oil. See how the rain always finds a way? Electric green moulds have found footholds in the splits. Beautiful enough to make me  hesitate.

One summer, in metalwork, we made shurikens, Chinese Death Stars we had seen in Bruce Lee films. At home we made our own nunchucks, from cut down broom handles and door chains, practiced for hours, bruising elbows and heads, getting nowhere, but trying hard. How do you do the one-inch punch? We bought Kung FuContinue reading “Kung Fu Summer”

Pink gum slab, smelling of sugar and something unreal,  came in a cheap cartoon wrapper, all the way from America!  Sometimes the printing was so off you couldn’t see the joke. Maybe the printers were high that day, on kaleidoscopic ink, or Warhol had wandered in to the wrong factory. And what’s with the eyepatch?Continue reading “Bazooka Joe”

Strange days indeed. The book is inevitably delayed, but we will get there. For now, my poetry compadres and I have decided to each write a poem, every day. This feels a little scary, but good-scary I think. Released from the pressure of only showing the best you can do, this instead is a sharingContinue reading “A poem every day”

Back in the colonial 30s, his mother called him Jew Boy, one of her jibes, careless and commonplace. When he reached six she began his emptying, carefully replacing what she had taken. This was the way they made men. A pound of dust packed tight where the heart had been, a set of bellows, aContinue reading “Punchinello”

We lift cyclone fencing, break in where we always do, watching for White-Caps. Each time it’s different, but there is always treasure. Today it’s helmets: scuffed flashes, cracked visors, nicknames, scorch marks. We give them our stories,  speculate, outbid each other  with dogfights and ejections, trade made-up hero uncles, animate their exploits with swooping handsContinue reading “Helmets”