"All my life" by Sarah Broom

So we sat, and the waves
crashed in like gifts, or insults,
and the children played,
digging trenches to defend
against the sea, and then a head
bobbed up and down
in the waves, a bit too far out,
and an arm waved, and again,
and a friend walked the beach,
waving the head in, and we sat
and said to each other
do you know that Stevie Smith
poem, not waving but drowning �
yes, and why is it still

Lines for a New Year by Sam Hunt

I like the branch
I find myself on

a view over the garden
all the way down to the beach

the family below me
gathered in the garden

debating where I�ve gone.
My father�s got a theory.

I like the branch
I find myself on.

_____


You know how it is

to give up the piss
a week to the

day before Christmas

you know how it is

to fall over sober
safe in some spot,

come to later

Tuesday Poem: Nature Writing 101 by Catherine Owen

Our minds can turn anything romantic.
Is the problem.
The sewagy mud of the Fraser a quaint muslin & the spumes

pulsing out of chimneys at the Lafarge cement plant look,
at night, like two of Isadora Duncan�s scarves, pale, insouciant veils,
harmless. The trees are all gone but then aren�t our hearts

more similar to wastelands.
We can make it kin, this pollution, children one is