Poet Kieron Winn has the curious role of being a “freelance teacher of creative writing and English literature.” That’s probably like being a gunslinger, only with pens instead of guns–more lethal. He has released his first collection of poems, The Mortal Man, in the U.K. One of them is available this month in The New Criterion, called “In the Garden” and others through his website.

In one about his aging father, he writes:

I cannot bring a bucket of rock-pool creatures
And have him beam at me and understand,
But it dies hard, wanting someone to say
All will be well, with the power to make it so today.