Josh Geffin is a folk musician and writer from Dorset, based in London. He works as a guitar teacher, composer and performer. Josh’s often playful poems explore themes of mindfulness, memory and belonging. His poems have been published in The Rialto, Acumen, Allegro and The Friday Poem. ‘Shronedarragh, Co. Kerry’ won second prize in the Jack Clemo Poetry Competition 2023. He has also been commissioned to write poems for Montcalm Hotels.
Email: joshgeffin@gmail.com
Instagram: @joshgeffin
Trial and Error
Sitting cross-legged in a small room
opposite a Zen Master – no shit –
I say I’m not sure what I should be doing,
I don’t know what my calling is.
Smiling unconditionally,
he tells me a Japanese proverb:
a cat on ice extends a paw
to see if the ice will break or hold:
‘Hmm, seems okay, hmm’ –
he’s doing the cat padding around,
‘I think I’ll try my other paw…’
and so on and so forth like that.
Imagine it, snow-blown Japan,
a huge frozen lake
surrounded by a wilderness of cedars
and a house cat strayed
from some nearby monastery,
tiny and black in the vast white,
stretching out a paw to test the ice,
going who knows where, or turning back.
Norfolk Royal
This is how
they used to taste.
Look at this one:
imperfectly
formed – perfect,
weather-blasted
and rightly small.
A mountainous region
globed with red
and blemished towns,
lines of tiny altitude.
It reads my palm.
Shronedarragh, Co. Kerry
It was decided we should see ‘the turf’.
Our cousin Barry didn’t understand the fuss
but knew better than to ask more than once
and led us out the side door, past the barn
and milking sheds, the dogs watching us disappear,
to the rain-wet road, cottages, chimney smoke.
I asked about school – ‘tis grand – and football;
soccer, I corrected – he said he was keeper.
A gate opened to a churned track, unfurling
wide, wet land. Barry ran ahead
then waited, looking back at us lifting feet
around sky-filled puddles. Let’s run!
he said. I don’t know why but we did,
forgot the muck and ran, leaping potholes
and muddy pools, slush racing underneath.
Field to field, cattle ground, bog,
following the boy in a kind of pilgrimage.
Then he stopped. Piled in stacks, tufty
slabs of darkness: fresh turf, cut neat.
There. Now. So, he said. We regarded it.
Rows and columns of winter heat.
In the dug earth we saw the excavation
points: cuts, jabs, parcels of air
in the special dirt. Just as it was, I wondered,
when Mum as a girl delivered tea for the men.
The sky was turning pink, our breaths suspended
in vapour. Cows moved to grassier clumps.
A rising wind. We’ll be late for supper,
Barry said, so we turned around.
Zoom
Spring 2020
Instead, zoom in on this
ordinary pebble you found
by the ocean, turn it over
in fingers and thumb, skin reporting
stages of erosion, rough and smooth
darker shades fading to white,
almost a hole in the middle.
Take it with you, or give it back.
If you can’t find a pebble, a leaf,
find a twig, a tangerine.
Go outside to the apple flowers,
get up close, take a giant sniff –
make love to the blossom is what I’m trying to say.
Delight in the muscular excitement of dogs
in the park, as if nothing is different,
nothing is wrong
A Guide to Renting in London
For starters, take the term delightful as
a word for small. Make sure to steer away
from cosy – that just means it likely has
no place to put your things or even pray.
A huge and gorgeous room is medium size
while well-maintained denotes a certain lack
of charm and won’t be winning Best Home prize.
Super friendly’s code for watch your back.
And please avoid affordable single room –
you’ll have to fall or jump from door to bed
(no space to walk around the side). Assume
your rent will cost no less than half your bread.
For something nice you’ll need a partner to live with.
That or move to Hull – or Aberystwyth.