Writing and walking are well-known and much-studied bedfellows. I would not call myself a writer or a poet but there is something in the rhythm of a walk that seems to conjure words from somewhere inside. I composed a few poems around the exploratory walks and rides on Romney Marsh. My joy in a good hike can, I hope, be felt through these lines.

Fosters

Ultramarine glimpse, almost too late

Golden iris, flashed through dried mown lashes

Rein-in stride, recalibrated gait

Hopping to the right, avoiding crushes

Lesser-spotted, at length discarded

Mark of levity, but not brevity

A party spirit, long departed

Litter the twenty-seventh century

An eff in the eye, all became clear

A trespass, and no rightful nesting place

Question; Where do they sell these round here?

A can of Fosters, time slow to erase

Pillbox

There’s a lamb in the pillbox

Found you! I announce

She stops her bleating

She doesn’t know what to do

Mum sheep grumbles displeasure

Corrugated steel

A stupid human

Between her and her daughter

Lamb is unduly worried

I feel foolish now

Stooping, backing out

I leave the pillbox alone

Everyday Robots

I fall into my natural cadence

A familiar melody

Blusters through my hibernation

Germinating in my being again

Swift swagger pulses beyond subconscious

Smallest smile surprises my lip

A whistle seeps out unbidden

Cheerfully greeting my old acquaintance

Resurrected from the last banishment

Bacharach and David’s lovechild

Only one tune can exorcise

That sodding Como’s Magic Moments

The spell

Hexden, Caldecot, Swallowtail, Tore

Rainbow Petty, Wainway Wall

Snargate, Brenzett, Snave and Stone

Dengemarsh, Lower Wick, Kentpen, Appledore

Promises by grid-bound concoction

Suckered onto wide marshes

Footpath, byway, my way clear

Consuming deep draughts of the potion

Exploration is a funny thing

When the names are only that

Nodes, synapses, on a map

There’s no defence ‘gainst ordnance hexing

Sunrise

I used to wait for the rising sun

To detonate

behind Dungeness B

I fantasised the apocalypse

From a train seat

On my commute to London

In a moment the alignment passed

Our syzygy

My attention trundled on

Blockage

How do I open this gate

With the lever slick with shit

My hands completely exposed

Impossible to climb it

River too steep for washing

All of the sheep are watching

Grass covered in their doing

They just cannot stop pooing

So grin and bear it I must

Grasp the handle and then trust

That somewhere not too far on

Will be a tap I can draw from