Charles Wilkinson


‘éphémère’

          sea unending         every wave signal
& its own event    distinct froth on a comber
                                         curling to vanish
coastal fringe
water unstitched  
                turns   to    lace
                frilling on sparks of sand

shadow of wing
      the next cloud wipes from the salt
imagine   the   thoughts    of    fish

              & the afternoon stones
so many greys
               sun & tide to re-colour

sky at evening   
                       wool cumuli
not woven with rain
                            sun pinked to redden   
un
     ravel
             ling
                  at 
                     dusk

flat beach   last stains on glass   sink to the mirror’s dark



‘rocambolesque’

     neither 
the hippogriff nor snow 
on fire, & not even the traveller 
     returning & taller, 
   to riff on the tale 
of the low mountains & higher valleys, 
   his every ant an 
     aardvark 

     never 
a new planet, topmost 
to the dark, its outlandish spin turning 
     truth to stagger, listing 
    its fake path round 
an absence of sun, its twisted orbits 
    skewed to astound by 
     moonquake

     rather 
the adventure of how 
each dawn phrases the light to shock anew, 
     all lunar shine erased, 
    & the stupendous 
speaking ordinary, made in colours 
    shaved sharp by the next
      sun’s blade      




Charles Wilkinson’s work includes The Pain Tree and Other Stories (London Magazine Editions). His 
poems have been in Poetry Wales, Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Shearsman, The Reader, New Walk, Magma, 
Under the Radar, Tears in the Fence, Scintilla, Envoi, Stand, The Warwick Review, Otoliths, Snow lit 
rev and other journals. A pamphlet, Ag & Au, came out from Flarestack Poets in 2013. He has two 
collections of weird fiction and strange tales, both from Egaeus Press: A Twist in the Eye (2016) and 
Splendid in Ash (2018). His full-length poetry collection, The Glazier’s Choice, appeared from Eyewear 
in 2019. He lives in Powys, Wales.
 
 

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