Poetry - February/March 2026

  

8th March, 2026

6th February, 2026

Holding dark dry earth

and the sudden stink of horse —

ashwagandha root.

7th February, 2026

The talkative steam

of cup warming to the task,

its mouth breathing ghosts.

10th March, 2026

Hungry old dog,

always hungry, always old. 

Spring takes its time.

*

In spring the cry 

of buzzards.

Blossom reaches

for the chanting sky.

Everything grows,

becomes mountain.

Old cairn

listens

to the fells breathe,

slow as the world turns

sure

as the ploughed earth.

Garden Poems

i.

Night rain.

I stamp on slugs.

ii.

Picking nettles,

I pray to become

more nettle.

iii.

Old rose, 

thorns hard as nails,

will still be here 

long after that fascist bastard's dead.

iv. 

Snowdrops

already melting away

quietly, without fuss,

so sure of their return.

The first lesson.

15th March, 2026

Snow on Blencathra fading with the snowdrops. A week of winds and rain. A day of sun breaking cloud. Then a day of rainbows. The Eden flowing into the sky. Valleys of the air. The stuff stones breathe. Blossoming geese. River of fields going north. Migration of worms. First bees.

18th March, 2026

Days of quiet birdsong

after March rain ends and still

my heart is broken.

*

My son runs home

from school the way birds fly home

for summer, singing.

20th March, 2026

I watched them fell trees,

waiting to see you for the

final time. Chainsaws 

sang: "Winter, cold and dark, is 

not as cold and dark as this."

*

The mind, it cannot

comprehend — that this may be

the last time it sees

this moment, this face, this love.

But the soul, it remembers.

*

Spring too has sadness –

in frozen winter I could

believe I had one

last chance to turn back time but

now blossoms grow, you are gone.

*

Silence, a canvas

blank as morning mist – it's you.

This peace. This fear.

*

I think the poem

a morning the rain fell like

a leaf a stone through

*

after rain breathing

*

I am not a poem

I am a child I see

every tiny world


24th March, 2026

Spring sunshine, spring rain,

and spring birdsong, even in 

the wet evening half-

light, light embryonic —

spring joy, it is joy, spring joy.

25th March, 2026

In the first cup's steam,

what do you see? Tealeaves breathe

depths of non-doing.

*

Scuttling – the hosepipe

across gravel, in the dark;

hungry, the frost, hunting.

*

Pine tree holding snow.

It does not balance or lift.

Effortlessly is.

*

Rain draws the road up.

Glistening, tarmacadam

swims in stars, gutters.


26th March, 2026

Living between two

motorway junctions, he sees

everything as traffic.

#poetry #micropoetry and #haiku first posted on johnnorthwrites.bsky.social