Julian Cason (November 2024)

Julian lives in Cardiff. His professional life has been mainly spent working with the terminally ill. Published in Envoi, Pulp Poets Press, Nine Muses, The Dawntreader, Black Bough Poetry, Bindweed, Full House (Featured Creator), Ink Drinkers, The Frogmore Papers, Sarasvati, Southlight, Dreich, Ninnau, Black Nore Review, Carmen Et Error, Dream Catcher and The Starbeck Orion. Long-listed for Cinnamon Press Literature Award 2022. Short-listed for Black Bough Pamphlet/ Collection Competition 2023.  Contributing Poet to The Oldest Music (Parthian Books 2023) and Thin Places, Sacred Spaces (Amethyst Press 2024). Black Bough New Simile Competition Joint Winner. Short-listed Cinnamon Pamphlet Award 2024. Find him on X @hool415

Scattered (near Fowey)

A simple rowing boat, 
oars crimping
the flatness
of a thoughtless sea
while only the sky's dwarfing 
prayerfulness
can upend or capsize,
you coddle those ashes,
warm and dark,
with hopeless urgency
as if a carried
bird,
and pouring out your sister-dust,
a pearly cloud of memory
is raining.

Speaking to my son, from Slebech

It was the day of far away things. 

Earlier, I had seen distant gulls
wheel over a plated estuary, 
like indecisive flecks of ash. 

Then later, facing that March night,
I telephoned you with the blind lasso of a poor signal. 

As we spoke a stained glass moon was mishandled,
slipping the grasp of incomplete lead branches. 

Never so close as in that call,
hearing the crinkled translation of your day,
and between each
breathy, considered pause,
all my love
was wrung out of me. 

I delayed afterwards on the cobbled yard,
watching shifting hefts of cloud; 
each one soundlessly
obeying stage directions
and readying themselves for as yet uncast
morning scenes. 

God, nearly

I find peace fleetingly
in all the places where I should:
those traps of Gothic masonry
and weeping coloured glass,
or on mottled mountain slopes half-lost; 
or isolated
above the rhythmic housekeeping of the sea
within the folding and re-folding
of her hush,
edging the loosening clifftop grass. 

Then, like my wetted finger
passing through a flame, 
I sense the focus of 
a presence so close
matching my naked skin, 
but I cannot catch these moments' grace
so must await
my craved-for-damage
from the unfelt
missing heat.

St. Govan’s Chapel and well

The hermitage
an over-sized mollusc,
is stuck on limestone
where starkness has taken hold
and sprouts like grass,
the sea, the wind and itinerant sun
conjoin in a seasonless pact
to scour and pare-back.

So prayer
becomes elemental too,
stripped of nuance or detail
without even the clutter of words,
the rough walls
cradle the buffeted stillness
as if a new-born flame.

This cleave of rock
disrupting the imperious cliff prises space,
St Govan’s Chapel
a pooling,
stalling the westward flow of time.

Scattered (near Fowey): exclusive first publication by East Ridge Review
Speaking to my son, from Slebech: first published by Envoi
God, nearly: first published by Southlight
St Govan’s Chapel and well: first published by Parthian Books