Yesterday I went for a walk in the early morning wood-shining glades of Eccleshall in Sheffield. The sun-dappled Bluebells were just coming into flower creating that blue mistiness the area is famous for. Every year these flower-topped stems poke up through the leaf mold and
Spring has, for many years been my favourite season. As the ground, barren for so long begins to warm up and yield the first harbingers of change; the snowdrops, the crocuses and then the daffodils. We have just passed the vernal equinox and now can
'Ask yourself this question - before my life is rounded with a sleep what is my dream?'
So I turn again to my confused Monkey in his golden year, trusting those deep currents of wisdom still below the technocratic surface and wait for the way to find me once again.
On this - the feast of the Epiphany, held in the West to be the end of the Christmas festivities, I drive around Sheffield doing chores and peering through the ubiquitous fog. The word epiphany comes from the Greek, to show, to reveal, to manifest, the feast
Unfortunately a hangover that hits those who cannot drink it the hardest.
The true new beginning is to live stripped, willing and wilful at the starving edge of brightening days, where solstice endured yields to winter birthing spring.
I hope that whatever happens in the Labour leadership elections the spectres, or are they the angels of social concern, communal action, and a commitment to again slay the modern versions of the five giant evils, will visit us again.
What is it about these places that inspires a sense of awe. No wonder the first peoples named them as sacred.
I have just done an interview about my life as a poet and a broken-down human being on my local radio station