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The Source

Ode to a Nearly Beloved

"As though through tracing paper, I etch your features onto faces of strangers I’ll never know."

Pink Tulips

"I want our story to be one of fields of flowers and quiet sunsets. I do not wish for violence."

Tangerine

"Picking apart the peel of the ripest fruit, prying open its flesh."

The Saintly Lives of Students

"There, there(‘s) a graveyard in the college where drunk students in funeral suits smile through tombstone teeth."

Diffidence

"non est, ut putas, virtus, pater, timere vitam, sed malis ingentibus obstare nec se vertere ac retro dare."

The Solidified People

"The people have solidified since the summer. Seized up in the cold. No longer fluid Melting and melding together in the sun They can be discerned as individuals now. Separate entities two metres apart."

Still

"Even as you float on panicked waves find the caress of a thousand petals softening you still."

Earthly Pleasures

"The sun hangs low in the sky like a ripe apple as my bicycle zig-zags over the thick paint-stripe shadows cast by the trees."

A Worm on What If

"A delicate chain bobs around his neck (his neck being the whole length of his body, which is just one long neck really); he bought it after watching Normal Worms. Maybe if he looked like worm-Connell, he imagines, things would have been different. Maybe worm-Sharon wouldn’t have left him for worm-Darren."

Benchmark

"The pattern starts from you to there And, breathless, starts again with me."

You’ll See Him

"Rain cracks its whip Against the windows. The wielder: autumn. From the cottage in the cleft of the foothills You can see a flickering light, just out of sight And it stains the blackest night."

Soil: On Digging a Hole

"A worm has beaten me to the hole I’m digging; when I pull apart the soil, I find a slender punctuation mark in the mud. Its pink body threads through the dark clay."

A Vision of Autumn

"It was uncommonly sultry and dark when I arrived at the Winchester water meadows. The scene was a near stereotype, and it reminded me of those decrepit - far too embellished - landscapes you see in many royal palaces."

Petrichor

"in a quiet hollow on the far side of this field rain patters through the leaves like twinkling glass"

The Lord is a Warrior

"Now, God’s people are soon to flee, Into the wilderness and coarser sands He takes them, they at last are free, But I, loyal servant, loving wife, What is God’s plan for me?"

A Letter To Those Whom my Light Will Guide, In Honour Of Those Whose Light Has Guided Me

"What you are, is complicated. And I love you for that, Because you are complicated, Because you are raw, and soft, and broken."

Return to Oxford

"A peal of percussive raindrops tumble from towering heavens. A lonely leaf joins the fray in a willowing, whispering wash."

Verbalisation

"Then there is a sudden pull – my loose thoughts spill over the pebbly surface of the page. Images crashing and breaking against sobering stillness, propelling seafoam into the air, rumpling the Edenic crispness of the page."

Paying Attention

"I wrote that the world feels too much of everything, that I am so lucky to be in it."

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