M62 from Hull

Serried ranks of orange reeds,
alongside deep dark-shining ditch:
reflective.

Shortest day

And shorter still by dint of heavy cloud
and the fact of travelling to Europe later today
wherein we lose another hour,
but a bonus in that I can stride out
without fear of flipping over

Brown on white

Coffee granules,
jogged from a spoon
and falling onto a just-wiped surface,
speed into bloom.

Overturned tart?

Sky the colour of much-handled pastry,
pale apricot filling around the edge.

Socks

Stiff black U shapes
hung overnight
too close to the heat
from the boiler

Finely balanced books

Now my yet-to-be-read pile has reached fourteen
(plus three of the ten lent by my daughter,
at the end of last month)
I am beginning to panic, slightly.

From the bedroom window

A snow-flurry shower of gulls
darned by a single black crow

On my way to buy a morning paper #17

Heading east
puddles pale oases,
turned north
they blacken,
orange-rimed.

Seen in Suffolk from the A14

Polka-dotted seagulls
in a field of hutted, muddy pigs,
beside another field of stripes,
semi-sage and biscuit

change

That I could hear the plane this morning
told me the wind had died

Black versus white

Three dimensions of windy sky space
yet the crow and the seagull
cannot agree to share.

On my way to buy a morning paper #16

Difficult to tell in the dark
whether blackness of sky
is due to lack of the sun
or imminent pouring down rain

On my way to buy a morning paper #15

Turned a dark corner to be met with disaster
myriad blue flashing lights
a moment to realise it's not an emergency
but somebody's tree-full for christmas

On my way to buy a morning paper #14

Frowning to stay upright
I dissuade all morning greetings
and omit to post the letters
I diverted for

Neighbours

Next door's early morning
chopped back apple trees
revealed last night
an unexpected tableau
in a well-lit
uncurtained
hitherto unviewed
back bedroom

No obvious explanation

For ten days now,
a mattress and a divan
brand new, polythene-wrapped
left uncollected
at the side of the house next but one.

On my way to buy a morning paper #13

Fifty minutes late
and no-one says 'good morning'
- we have not the two years plus
of graduated nodding
in acknowledgement