​

HOSPITAL GROUNDS

 

Across white-sheeted lawns

and the scattered ghosts

of maple leaves

frosted where they fell

 

the sun is stretching shadows

from skeletal trees,

bare but for the berries

the birds have left.

 

Winter thick in our lungs

we circle the grounds without speaking,

refuged in the silence of things frozen;

words as lost as we are.

 

Shaken by the shock of the expected 

we cling to the arm of routine

as if life depended on it,

watch the daily walk turn into swansong.

 

Stopping at the turned-off fountain

we stare at the stranded coins;

see how useless the currency of hope is:

thrown at what we cannot bear.

​

Shaun Barr

​

First published in Dream Catcher (Issue 51), Summer 2025 edition..

 

 

YOUR CATHEDRAL

 

I remember the first time you brought me here:

your roofless cathedral you called it,

 

showed me the way samphire gets washed in gold when

the sun falls over the mudflats of Morecambe Bay,

 

Lakeland mountains bruised violet by the sky they touch,

charcoal smudges across the water, huddled in evening haze.

 

Blind to the noise of the town, the Friday night bars and boy racers, 

this side of the sea wall is where you felt sense was stranded.

 

Low tide has left boats looking awkward, like forgotten orphans, while

black and white rows of oystercatchers push bright orange beaks into brine.

 

Cocooned in its own stillness a heron stands hunched, and beyond,

the bubbling call of a curlew, tragic as opera, unanswered. 

 

You waited for the liminal moments: where the edges of day and night bleed — 

for the slightest time barely one or the other, an in-between world

 

through which half-light was sifted, fleeting as life — and death. 

For you some meaning in the feel of time’s pulse; a faith of sorts.

 

You saw the lie of the linear the world has fallen for;

heard the tide tell a different story.

​

Shaun Barr

​

First published in The Manchester Review (Issue 27) – June 2025.

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​

LOST AND FOUND

 

I put you in a pocket with a hole in it,

left you in the lining of an overcoat

I knew I would never wear again.

 

I tucked you into a tiny crevice

at the back of the old church hall where

bats still dream their days away.

 

I tried to lose you in the blood and bones of me:

an empty room between head and heart,

with the curtains closed.

 

Then mine-shaft deep I dropped you,

at the bottom of St. Margaret’s well;

slab cold and thick with dark.

 

But waking from a dream in which I’m drowning 

in the dead of night you find me,

flailing limbs on soaking sheets.

 

Then the slow, slow drip of sleepless hours,

as shadows shift across the bedside table,

a sensation of static on skin. 

 

Sometimes I think I hear your voice 

and wonder if it might be the ghost of you —

or whether it’s just the grief talking.

​

Shaun Barr

​

First published in Dream Catcher (Issue 51), Summer 2025 edition.

 

 

FELL PONIES

 

It’s as if they have always been here,

hewn from the rock they rise from, 

heads bowed in some earnest prayer,

silhouetted hulks of gathered silence.

 

Rain slants sideways from Skiddaw

glossing wet flanks black; 

sunlight sheening them briefly,

before clouds regroup, break again.

 

Watching through tangled manes

flecked gold with bits of bracken

coal-dark eyes catch mine, pull me in

to the edges of their gentler world.

 

Ears tilt towards western fells where

the last of the light still lingers. 

Is it the ghosts of the gone-before 

they wait for? Nostrils scenting a wind

 

that shapes the hunchbacked hawthorns,

its horse-musk smell and sweet, warm breath,

the hoof-print history it might carry:

equine echoes of Viking, Roman, Celt.

 

Horses free to roam more distant hills,

run wild, unbridled and unbroken, 

yet held within this boundless landscape;

tied by memory, tethered by kin.

​

Shaun Barr

​

First published in The Manchester Review (Issue 27) – June 2025.

​

​​

ASH

 

That strange habit you had

comparing people to trees 

 

your best friend birch for all her grace

rowan so easily your elegant mother

 

willow your weak-willed father of course 

and aspen for that ever-nervous uncle  

 

you chose oak for yourself

which needed no explanation 

 

all that strength and knowing beauty 

so steadfast and self-assured

 

but I could never understand

why I’d been given ash

 

until years after we parted: 

I discovered its brittleness

 

the readiness to snap

the willingness to be burned.

​

Shaun Barr

​

First published in Dream Catcher (Issue 51), Summer 2025 edition​​​

 

 

DAYLIGHT SAVING

 

In the kitchen downstairs a woman is talking about light, 

or the lack of it, and how the days seem to lose 

themselves, disappearing down alleyways, 

falling into gutters and slipping through 

the air vents where the cobwebs shiver. 

She’s speaking quickly, as if time is against her; 

how it feels like oxygen escaping, the suffocating, 

stifling grip of it; each shortening day holding 

a little less room to breathe. No one responds. 

Outside a frost is silvering car roofs, the air 

knife-edge thin under a sky sheeted with stars 

that somehow seem sharpened. 

 

Along the lane the smell of ice as it puckers leaves 

of nettle and dock, the grass crunching beneath us 

like shingle. I want to tell the woman it’s only winter, 

how none of this will last, but when we return it’s late, 

her rooms all in darkness. She sleeps with the curtains 

wide open — a kind of resistance — so that, 

when the dawn comes, the windows are waiting 

like the gaping mouths of hungry chicks, 

ready to catch the new day the sunrise feeds them. 

For her it’s a matter of survival: each fragment 

of gathered light some small defence against the darkness 

that keeps creeping towards her. 

​

Shaun Barr

​

First published in The Frogmore Papers (Issue 107) March 2026.

​

​

THE LIGHT THIEF

 

There’s a man slipping stars into his pockets

thinking no one’s watching

 

while we pretend not to notice,

walking behind him, almost embarrassed

 

to see the celestial glow seeping from his seams,

spilling on to the cobbles like a trail of silver coins,

 

illuminating the winding passages and shop-front

doorways as he hurries past, coat-tails flapping,

 

scraps of litter spinning like spent confetti in his wake.

Then stillness. He vanishes into the night.

 

A familiar darkness returns to the empty street.

It’s a dream, of course, reoccurring.

 

But each time I wake, I’m drawn to the window,

see a hole in the sky where the stars should be.

 

But each time I wake I’m drawn to the window 

and see a hole in the sky where the stars should be.

​

Shaun Barr

​

First published in Orbis #216, Summer 2026.

 

 

AT THE WINDOW

 

All afternoon I’ve been waiting for light 

to lift what’s left of the day, to inch itself 

 

improbably — the unlikely contortionist —

through a gap in the gloom. I stare out of the window 

 

willing something to appear; something beyond 

the partial reflection of a self I almost remember.

 

On the sun-yellowed sill the scattered husks 

of houseflies, bumblebees, the dust of dead moths;

 

I imagine their last moments: seeing through the glass 

a world no more than a wingbeat away, a way out 

 

almost within reach; unaware until the last

how even transparency becomes impenetrable.

​

Shaun Barr

​

​

First published in Tar River Poetry – Fall, 2026.

​

 

BEACHED                                                                                    

 

It seems to happen slowly:

whales tricked by a light or sound 

they’re pulled towards, mapped 

and mistaken for something else,

 

a navigational mishap maybe, or the false 

sense of security a whole ocean gives you: 

far-off horizons and unimaginable depths, 

boundaries no more than a blurred sense

 

of casual belief in limitations;

an easy willingness to trust 

in a world that exists 

without endings.

 

Rapt by a sudden warmth of sunlit 

shallows, the  novelty of the new,

realisation comes late 

and soon gives way 

 

to floundering and the thrash and flail 

of fins. Until gravity grips,

a pressure pushes in, 

crushes life out. 

 

Gone is the grace of their slow-motion 

fluidity, morphed into a mass of bodies 

stranded like strange boats, strewn over 

the sands for what seems like miles.

 

Watching the aftermath on a TV screen

we puzzle over why so many end up here.

They say it can be the senility of just one, 

the confusion old age can bring.

 

But so tight the family ties, so bonded the generations,

the rest are bound to follow headlong into harm. 

We turn from the screen distraught, wondering 

when (though neither of us can say it out loud)

 

the mass death of other families bound together —

children, mothers, and fathers — stopped hitting us 

like this; how a scene of dead whales shocks us more. 

Stays with us longer.

​

Shaun Barr

​

First publsihed in: The Madrid Review, Issue 8, June 2026 – for World Ocean Day 2026

​

Orbis #216 Summer 2026

 

​

BIRTHDAY BALLOON

 

Buried somewhere in the no-man’s land

of her salt scorched body

she holds secrets she can never share —

like unpinned grenades

 

held as carefully as the helium balloon

once given her with a ‘9’ on it;

fingers tensed round its thin red ribbon,

terrified she might lose it

 

yet at the same time

wanting to;

the pull of opposing impulses

palpable, almost pain,

 

until only one survived, impossible

to ignore the whispered words

which kept on repeating themselves:

Let go

 

like the overwhelming urge to jump

she felt when close to the edge

of a tall building, that same euphoric thrill

the French describe as l’appel du vide.

 

She looked at her hands as if they were

someone else’s. Saw the slow-motion slip

of ribbon through fingers, then,

nothing left to hold on to,

 

the tug of the balloon’s resistance gone,

her palms opened up to the sky like a book

from which a bird flies, a freedom

she imagined felt like fledging.

 

She watched the balloon rise over rooftops,

climbing higher as it crossed the river

towards the edge of town, as if it knew where it needed to be,

shrinking to a speck the distance swallowed.

 

That was when she fell in love

with weightlessness, with things lighter

than air or that refused to be held down; resisted

the force of gravity — and flew.

 

 

And so she discovered the art of drifting,

slipping into dreams in which she floated far

from home; beyond the reach of anyone,

but especially those closest to her.

.

Shaun Barr

​

First published in Orbis #216 Summer 2026.

 

​

ISLAND

 

What if we were to stay right here

         on this page

with its island of words

         we can wander over

and walk between

         lingering among the letters

and loitering along the lines

         coaxing characters into a world

we will for the first time

         make sense of

while imagination runs barefoot

         discovering

we’re marooned for as long

         as we need to be

and maybe sometimes

         walking along its ragged edges

to where it meets the white space

         we might dream of sailing across

once we feel braver.

​

Shaun Barr

​

First published in Orbis #216 Summer 2026.

​

​

SPARK

 

In the cool dark

of countless dawns

 

I recalled sparks

occasionally igniting,

 

each time smouldering

to nothing

 

beyond the ring

of a false alarm

 

and a fire

which never started

 

while I waited

for something more;

 

holding out

for a hint of heat,

 

kindling hope

of a flame, willing

 

a first flicker.

Then you came

 

out of nowhere.

Already ablaze.

​

Shaun Barr

​

First published in Orbis #216 Summer 2026.

​

 

CORMORANT

 

Crucifix stance perfected:

wings outstretched and wide open,

as if acceptance is everything,

I watch sunlight blend to bronze

 

that slick oil-black back,

your body lit like some holy idol

we might pray to 

if we believed enough.

 

More scale than feather,

more reptile than bird,

shapeshifter with perhaps

something of the prehistoric in you:

 

butcher’s hook neck snaking

a silhouette s on a beachball sun,

bouncing light from emeralds

where your eyes should be.

 

Of course we’ve weighted you with labels,

painted you as sinner and saint,

sailors seeing the devil in you,

a sea-raven sign of the sinister;

 

for others a good luck charm, or maybe 

a messenger to loved ones lost at sea —

short-distance traveller between

this world and the next.

 

Yet what we make of you is made 

from the mirrors we mistake for windows,

the names no more than reflections 

of disliked selves, or the grief-hewn hope 

 

desperation fools us into believing, 

like a presence, or something else 

beyond the faded beauty of a face 

we can’t quite recognise.

 

None of this matters to you; only the day 

slinking into dusk, harbour lights still pale 

like early stars as you slip under the surface 

like spilt fluid, before rising once again. 

​

Shaun Barr

​

First published in Southlight Issue 40 Autumn/Winter 2026.

​

BLURRED LINES

 

A fog has slipped in like a silent coup

swallowing rooftops and settling on side streets,

 

the sharp edges of the absolute softened, 

sounds sponged into something less familiar:

 

a dog barking and the hum of traffic muffled, 

and somewhere at a distance unclear,  

 

a man shouting at his wife, 

his voice muted, drowned in vapour.

 

From the window I’m watching droplets dance 

in the dimmed yellow of a streetlight, 

 

someone’s footsteps, foamy and far away, then fading.

Two churches on opposite sides of the square 

 

are indistinguishable, faiths fused,

beliefs bleeding into each other,

 

unanswered prayers cross-pollinating and

left swirling in the pews.

 

Residents wake to an altered world,

an occupation of ambiguity: 

 

cast-iron convictions corroded with uncertainty;

binary choices buried under a middle ground;

 

black and white mixing to hues and shades and gradations; 

dividing lines washed over; definition dissolved.

 

Boundaries are broken — here, no better than there.

Them, no different to you. 

​

Shaun Barr

​

First published in Southlight Issue 40 Autumn/Winter 2026.

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