Bill Manhire

We tiptoed into the house. The neighbourhood was quiet as a mouse.

I felt very on edge. The money was in the oven, not the fridge.

*

I glanced at the note on the piano. Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh.

*

There’s always a point at which a routine enquiry turns into something else entirely.

I had to shoulder my way in. The bathtub was simply full of the victim.

I tried to work up a little poetry – ‘the ever-restless spirit of man’ – ‘the mysterious, awe-inspiring wilderness of ice’ – but it was no good; I suppose it was too early in the morning.

Roald Amundsen, The South Pole

‘What do you think? Shall we start?’ – ‘Yes, of course. Let’s be jogging on.’

So many dogs! And...

This is the street where they still make coffins: the little workshops, side by side. I pass them with my daughter on our walk to the river.

Are we seeking the bridge itself, or the famous, much-reported view?

A few planks and nails lie around, and each of the entrances seems to darken. Far back, out of sight, someone is whistling.

Yes, I suppose we do walk a little faster....

i.m. Charles Causley

Between the Tamar and the tarmac, Beneath a tangled sky, I saw the Cornish poet Walking by.

He went where wind and water Will not be overthrown, Where light and water meet Boscastle stone.

It was a day in deep November When the cold came. The cold sky squandered Inside his brain.

Who knocks at Cyprus Well? Who knocks again, again? ‘I think it is the visitor We must...

A cry comes again from the pavilion. I was that nurse and that civilian, I was the song in the carillon. She sat on a tree trunk; no, a boulder. I was the heart inside the soldier, that broken arm – that hand, that shoulder. Night which is moonless, melancholy. I was the man who was extraordinary. But who really knows the real Billy Connolly?

The...