Almost Composed

Meditation and curiosity

The Chalk Path – poetry PDF

July 24, 2016

My latest poetry pamphlet is now available as a free PDF. In The Chalk Path, Joe, Hugh, and myself turn our attention landward from the coast. The poems are drawn from walks over chalk downs, train rides beside white horses etched into hillsides and, in contrast, the bright red sandstone of my Mercian homelands. Read it online […]

categories: journeys, poems

Bad juju

April 1, 2016

While supposedly training for a half marathon, I went out for chocolate and crisps. As I’d been working at the computer for most of the day, I decided to loop around by the old cemetery. Though it was evening, the birds were still singing as I came to the grey stone wall. No doubt they were confused […]

categories: reflections

Of storms and night walking

September 20, 2015

There was a great piece in Tricycle recently, A Gleeful Foreboding, excerpted from Clark Strand’s book Waking Up To the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age. Strand describes what happened when his town near the Catskill mountains was bumped off the grid by a hurricane. “That the larger storms sometimes turn deadly does little to chasten […]

categories: essays, journeys, reflections