Category Poetry

If music be the food of love then poetry may just be the language of emotion. Home for my own words and those of others who in some way inspire, inform, entertain or educate me.

Swift

First south and west, then north and east, I quarter up the sky.I’m watching for your sickle wings to scythe across my eye. I look, I look, then look again and listen for your scream.But bar the clap of pigeon…

We shall sight them on the beaches

They didn’t want to be fishers of menWomen and children first hauled from the seaAnd laid out on the deck like a prize catchGently by hands that are roughened by saltCalloused but not callous softened by saltTears that fall from…

Biology with Mr Fisher

Lesson one: let nature be your teacher.No scrape of chairs indoors, no blackboard chalkFor him. Classroom fields. An outdoor creatureWho smelled of earth and planted with his talk… Elms. Galleons afloat the pasture seasBut scuttled by scolytus. Now un-helmedHulls, boreholed…

Night farming

Furrows the Plough ‘cross the field of night.Bellows Canis at the owls out of sight.Callow Orion unbelted his might,Shallow-breathed Virgo sowed without fight. Sorrows the brow, Cassiopeia the queen.Mellow the music of Lyra, unseen.Hero Perseus his sword broad and keen.Hallow’d…

Footprints in the snow

Eastern ashes astir aglow As new moon lips mouth morning’s breeze The arc then melts like springtime snow Unshackling Earth from night-time’s freeze. Nocturnal creatures can’t be caught By hieroglyphs to leaf-lined lairs Their secrets safe in shadows short Billowing…

Not Saving But Drowning

Everybody heard him, the dead migrantBut still they say, moaning:Our compassion’s much further out than you thoughtAnd not saving but drowning. With apologies to Stevie Smith.

Still Life

Shackled by time slippers shuffledStooped to the high-backed seatQueen throned, grey crown ruffledPrince and Princess at her feet  The Prince takes a marbled handBut a child’s touch cannot reach beyondTheir birth to a foreign land To retrieve lost memories fond In…

Please make your selection…

Guinness, lager, shandy, coke(You can go your own way)Wisecracks, quips and sexist jokes(Go your own way)“This chair taken? No feel free!”(You can call it another lonely day)“Your shout Dave I need a pee.” Please make your selection… Fleetwood Mac then…

Vespula vulgaris

Cherry blossom and Coreley church

Paper lantern queenYour subjects crawl on their kneesNo sting in the sun. For me the soundtrack of the first lockdown was the bumblebees feasting on the nectar in the blossom of our cherry trees. It’s a different kind of buzz…