Over thirty short prose pieces including ‘The Song of Yet to Come’, ‘My New Baby Sister’, ‘Summer in the Sickroom’, ‘The Coming of Lazily Watchful’ and ‘The House of Angles’

First 100 signed and numbered copies
£7.95 including post and packaging

(July 2006, 69pp, 9 illustrations)

the song of yet to come

this is the song of yet to come. sometimes it can be heard everywhere in the woods around my house, but most of the time it cannot be heard at all. that is not to say that it isn’t there, for its spindly instruments are always present. often it leaves the trees and rivers standing and reverberating like rested violins.

what does it sound like? it sounds like an unexpected breeze across sticky summer skin, it sounds like a knotted stomach within the queasy shadows of a bone dry track, but most of all it sounds like a promise that won’t be met. that sickly sweet melody, small eyed and desirous, attractive as a lie or a shameful kiss. to wake, to want, and to always be found wanting.

oh to hear the song is the easy part, to find where it comes from, now that’s when people have started to go wrong. they run down tapering paths and coyly discover it has drifted behind them. they take three steps back, but never in the same direction, and hear its faint echo far beyond. these foolish things never give up looking, wandering distant and hazy frontiers, stumbling as if they had their arms outstretched.

i know they will come back empty hearted. that is why i listen but don’t follow, for i’ve seen what you know, but know more than you’ve seen. listen, still it yearns for hollow company, the song of yet to come.