Let's take a walk

around the park,

but please don't forget

that you have to bark.

No matter what you

want to say,

Just watch, think and bark,

okay?

Not many people in the park,

nobody near enough to hear me,

if I say a poem or two.

So I do.

From Things You Find in a Poet's Beard by A.F. Harrold

Trees are good at what they do,

at being oak or beech or yew.

Oh to be in Magherabeg

Where I was adult free

From sun up til head down,

Stomping through streams in worn out wellies,

Chasing rams down to the Swilly.

We're floating into the blue,
Me and my blue balloon.
Over the rooftops of the town,
The brown fields and the trees
And the Downs – we're floating,

Nobody can see my name on me.
My name is inside
and all over me, unseen
like other people also keep it.
Isn't my name magical?

Little toad little toad mind yourself
mind yourself let me plant my corn
plant my corn to feed my horse
feed my horse to run my race – the sea is full of more than I know

We watch them, hypnotized.
Pale and mysterious,
They rise and fall. Joe says
“They look like ghosts.”

The jellyfish
dances through the water
waving its frilly underwear.

We found one on the beach.

It had become a polythene bag
full of water.

They told me

you live in my roof,

jungle cat.

Fire-eyed

trick-tailed

sleep thief.

You rumble the night

with your claw dance,