by James Roberts | Feb 5, 2022 | Journal
I remember an encyclopaedia of animals with a green cover, faded gold lettering, a loose spine cracked at each end, the pages bent at the corners and warped from damp. Not an old book but badly worn by the daily handling by my younger sister and I over six or seven...
by James Roberts | Jan 12, 2020 | Journal
Tonight the river is high. I don’t know what atmospheric conditions out in the Atlantic are driving this endless rain. Like all weather these days it doesn’t seem right. My headlights project two beams across the water, which boils and writhes downstream. Nothing...
by James Roberts | Sep 15, 2019 | Journal
Only the towers and walls of this island are shaped the way they’re meant to be. Out on the water, paddling around the cliffs, I get a feel for the place as it was and might be again, when we’re gone, which could be soon
by James Roberts | Jul 1, 2019 | Journal
Dusk approaches. The hill is windless and quiet. Moorhens carefully crosshatch the surface of the pool wrinkling the inverted images of squall-clouds that have been gathering for an hour. A faint curtain of rain closes across the mountains twenty miles away. I am...
by James Roberts | Jun 2, 2019 | Journal
How beautiful they areThe people brushing past meAs I stroll through GionTo the temple of KiyomizuOn this cherry blossom moonlit nightYosano Akiko There is a stretch of road over the border, not far from here, which rolls and curves between acres of orchards. In late...
by James Roberts | Apr 7, 2019 | Journal
Close to its surface a shallow river talks loudly. It’s as if the water is passing through many throats, being gulped, gargled and spluttered as it moves over pebbles and rocks, willow roots, rafts of dead vegetation piled against the bank. I propped the...
