NaPoWriMo 30

Poem removed for copyright reasons

NaPoWriMo 27

Death Valley


Poem published in Every Day Poems 2013

NaPoWriMo 26

I want to design a meal, that will move,
startled and satisfied, from one course
to the next. I won’t trouble
with an amuse-bouche,
that pretentious pre-meal trinket,
but go straight in to starter,
fish, main, palate cleanser,
cheese and sweet.

Let’s look for an active balance.
I like soups but they can be
heavy going. I’m less than keen
on frothy cappuccino concoctions
chased with a sheen of truffle oil.
Paté’s out, too risky for my gout.
I lean towards a tasty miso,
fragrant with coriander,
spring onions and clams.

A creamy sauce with the fish course
would be good. Sole Veronique’s nice,
or Bonne Femme, but I favour
the simple, flaky goodness
of cod in parsley sauce.

The main is simpler – you see
where I’m going with this?
A venison steak, flame-grilled,
fondant potatoes, baby turnips,
sprouting broccoli, red wine jus.

Ah yes, the wines.
With the fish, a steely Riesling,

and a big Rhône with the meat,
a Vin Santo with the sweet. Perfect.

A slice each of mango and pineapple,
with minty sugar, follow that.

The cheeses? Stilton – I can’t see past it -
St Nectaire, Camembert.

Et pour le dessert, je propose
a simple Crème Caramel.

Then coffee and cognac
will take you to Heaven.

Colin Will
26/04/2013

NaPoWriMo 25

Poem removed for copyright reasons

NaPoWriMo 24

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NaPoWriMo 23

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NaPoWriMo 22

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NaPoWriMo 21

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NaPoWriMo 20

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NaPoWriMo 19

Poem removed for copyright reasons

NaPoWriMo 18

Ah-Ha! Car keys, so you thought
you could elude me again?
I know your sneaky tricks:
hiding in the pockets of jackets
I don’t remember wearing yesterday,
jumping up to hang from the hook
I put up specially for you,
and which I always forget to check,
slithering under papers on my desk.
You’re almost as bad as my mobile phone.
How many times have I had to call
its number to find out where that little bugger
is hiding? Lost count. Wish I could sync
my keys to my phone, make my key ring.

Colin Will
18/04/2013

NaPoWriMo 17

Poem removed for copyright reasons

NaPoWriMo 16

Poem published on Every Day Poems 2013

NaPoWriMo 15

Poem published 2013

NaPoWriMo 14

Poem removed for copyright reasons

NaPoWriMo 13

Poem removed for copyright reasons

NaPoWriMo 12

Poem removed for copyright reasons

NaPoWriMo 11

Camargue


It’s a land of water and marsh,
North Uist with warmth.

And how warm it is, 80s in September.
After Arles we start to see black cattle

in the fields, the occasional white horse
near the ditches. The Parc Naturel

is a landscape of lakes, islands,
wooden bridges, walkways, dusty paths.

My first sight of a hoopoe here,
an injured bird in a huge cage,

scratching in the dirt. Short-toed eagle perched,
glossy ibis, pond heron and stork on an island

squabbled with egrets, a night heron,
and in the lagoon flocks of flamingo,

pale pink. One lifted wings and ran over the water
took off and flapped round in a circuit,

but the rest stayed still, sieving the water.
Dragonflies and mosquitos patrolled the air

and we were glad of some shade, a cool breeze,
before the road to the coast, Saintes Maries de la Mer.

By the next month, I know, because it happens,
flamingos and hoopoes will be back in Africa,

and I’ll be back in Scotland.

Colin Will
11/04/2013

NaPoWriMo 10

Fimbulwinter

Winter turned to wan and weary winter,
seeds stayed stubborn in the stone-hard earth,
snow flakes fell in a foul and freezing air,
ice rimed ridge and rig and runnel, snow
packed hard in folds, fields and shadowlands,
and the mires of missing summers.

That was the start of it; my kin starved last year
so I sailed south, cut free of sea-ice,
and slipped down the long loch to leads
of open water, and the sea roads to lands
I hoped were warmer. Landfall on an island
my forefathers’ folk settled and tilled,
parks for the beasts, wheelhouses for shelter,
but friendship and kinship do not sustain.
No feasting, for famine had struck at the homes by the shore,
and most had moved on, as I would tomorrow.

Coastal sailing, by headland and bay, not lodestone nor stars,
and inland the sight of white hills, lands locked in ice-grip
of the Frost Giants. Sons of Ymir, daughters of Freyr,
send greetings to Thor, we need the hammer Mjöllnir
to break the glass of this cold and to strengthen poor Sol.

Colin Will
10/04/2013

NoPoWriMo 09

puffin breast in sand
left by the outgoing tide –
a little white heart

Colin Will
09/04/2013

NaPoWriMo 08

Difficult to know
what a horse thinks,
but sometimes it’s obvious,
like the stud stallion
that time in France,
caught a whiff of mare
and that huge schlong
came out, embarrassing
the ladies of the choir,
and some of the tenors,
when the phrase
hung like a horse
came to life.

Other times, in a cold field,
wearing a stiff canvas rug
and the rain driven by a gale,
they just stand there, nothing else
for it. For hours. You imagine
their thoughts run slower,
blink of an eyelash –
and don’t they have beautiful lashes –
another image of the same field,
the same fence, another blink,
the same. Slow thoughts,
the most stoic of beasts.

Watch them run, warm Spring day,
new pasture, good company,
for the horse is nothing if not
in a herd. Know horse joy.

Colin Will
08/04/2013

NaPoWriMo 07

There was a shortcut, avoiding
the jammed main streets of Sorrento.

It wound down the hillside
in sharp turns, passing
gardens and small plots
strung with vines and lemon trees,
fruit ripening in September sun.

In backstreets, steel-shuttered lockups
where lemon juice and sugar
were mixed with pure alcohol
to make Limoncello,
sold from roadside booths,
cafes and bars.

It tastes good here,
and each maker’s spirit different.

Back home, the commercial stuff’s bland,
too sweet, less lemony,
and the paler sunshine makes
the setting too far from Naples,
Oh, far too far from Naples.

Colin Will
07/04/2013

NaPoWriMo 06

Watch the instruction manual

To change the fingers:
• Hold down the bump in the wrist
below the thumb
and close your fingers.
Reopen, supinate.
• Press the palm twice
to display the line
where your home is.
• Use thumb or ring finger
to advance or retard.
• Press scaphoid bone again
to return to fixed hands.

To change the way your hands wave:
• Hold the pinkie firmly
and press the nail five times.
• Press the thumb against a table
until the nail is flushed and pink.
• Cross ring and index fingers
to move your whole hand
to the desired position.
• Check your pulse with the vein
of your inner wrist.
• Cross your palm with silver,
check the life and heart lines.

To become alarmed:
• Shake your left hand five times.
• Shake your right hand ten times.
• Hold the left hand in warm water,
your right hand in iced water.
• Toggle by switching hands
between basins until
the desired setting is achieved.

Colin Will
06/04/2013

NaPoWriMo 05

napowrimo_05

The Soothmoother borrows a scythe

Let the blade’s weight
do the work. If the edge is keen
the cut slices the sward,
folds it over into a flat parcel
of meadowgrass and herbs.
Keep whetstone and water
tied to your belt.

Grip the handles on the snath,
swipe low, twist from the waist,
keep arms locked and knees loose.
Skim, step forward, skim,
step forward, the rhythm
drives a flat swath
across the field. How you do it,
create a frame of forces, a focus
on the cut line moving on,
and the sweet smell
of mown hay.

Colin Will
05/04/2013

NaPoWriMo 04

On the road South
houses begin brick,
but climate dries
and poverty grows,
and we see it
in the homes
people build.

On the land’s
granite spine
an unseen boundary
is crossed.
Now it’s mud-brick
and thatched roofs.
Neat villages, houses
all aligned West-faced
to Indonesia,
ancestral homeland.

Now in Bara land
with the forests
burned off,
tin-shack territory.

Then, wood walls,
in the roadside dirt,
ever-present chickens.

Finally, the stretch
between Toliara
and Ifaty, poorest
windowless scraps
of boards and plastic,
dirt roads – black mud
in wet season,
strung-out huts
overlook the barrier
reef, and the blue
Indian Ocean.

Colin Will
04/04/2013

NoPoWriMo 03

The big airliner glided in on final approach
for a landing at Beijing. Windows showed nothing
but cloud. Drop-down displays
showed altitude falling, engine notes
fell to a whisper. Forward of the wings
we couldn’t hear the flaps, but we heard
the ‘thunk’ as landing gear deployed.
Fuselage swayed slightly, shook a bit.

Then the engines roared and we lurched back up.
The pilot’s calm voice said because of poor visibility
we would go around and come back
from the Northern approach, slightly clearer.

And that’s what happened; we landed,
shaken a bit, still very tired from the long flight.
Our introduction to Chinese smog,
a scary go-around, and the 5 Ups:
Power Up, Nose Up, Gear Up, Flaps Up, Speak Up.

Colin Will
03/03/2013

NaPoWriMo 02

Waterworld, the seas that surround

the lands of all the earth, are temporary.

They grow and shrink to fill the spaces

between the plates that dodgem

over the planet’s crust.

Iapetus washed Gondwana shores,

the Panthallasic covered half the globe.

Sediments in Tethys formed the Gulf’s oil

before Atlantic opened. Today’s oceans

form familiar blue patterns on maps,

but they too will change with time

and tectonics. Some day the Pacific will close,

as continents come together

in a new Pangaea.

I look out on a smaller sea

that’s swung from land to water

as sea levels changed. Mammoth bones

and tree stumps from Doggerland

are dredged up in nets, when Britain

was a part of the main.

I’ve dabbled in it, paddled in it,

confirmed it’s cold, even in summer,

in this latitude. But the waters

that ring us know no barriers,

pass unflagged from Europe

to America, Africa, India

and circle the chill land at the heart

of the Southern Ocean.

Colin Will

02/04/2013

Prompts for NaPoWriMo

I've given myself this list of words to act as prompts. If I get stuck on a prompt I'll go to the next one. The first one worked OK. It may not be a complete poem, but there's enough there to work on.



volcano
ocean
cataract (eyes)
scythe
lemon
birthday
choir
teeth
lemur
film
wold
program (computer)
plague
birth
red squirrel with blond tail
flames
Ifaty (Madagascar)
Provence
Camargue
horses
passing out
snails
water lilies
corvids
grandmothers
the go-round at Beijing airport (scary)
no heroes
stove
newspaper
weasel
bridge
wine
gout
shieling

NaPoWriMo_01

Under the volcano
little tremors signal
rock-melt rising.

Old fissures open,
pushed by gas front
ahead of liquid magma.

Around the vent pressure drops
and the ground rips apart,
rises, pulverised, into cloud.

Lightning flashes white
against black smoke,
against golden lava.

Red rockets lift off,
rain rock warheads
on the ash slopes.

This is no place
for life, killing fumes
fall from the sky.

Colin Will
01/04/2013