Poets Corner

Waiting for the light…….!

I sit out, belligerent. 
Jumper or blanket?
…another mediocre nothing day, stealing Spring so fast
the world feels flattened.

Pull the cuffs down tighter – grip each arm into a strait jacket
-    the blanket waits inside…with a baskets of scarves, hats…

Time has been stolen! So many grey days!
Sitting, staring outside -  a night frost
bulbs emerge, white, blue
then recede, unpicked and bedraggled
buried for another year.

THEN the light arrives!  …….in all its biblical glory,
smashing its way to earth as the last grey cloud moves east.
-    it bathes my bones in a Hollywood spotlight - 
and the world shifts into technicolour of yellow, scent and sound.

Birds test their voices, mixing with bees and hoverflies
cuffs are released
sleeves rolled up
face angled
eyes closed 
……eyelids appear translucent, red veins quivering. 
The heat breaks through black leggings, a motley design 
of red and cream as the wooden warmth of the bench imprints itself.

Book set aside,
sunglasses (encased in moths), click open!

Breath in a memory!

Hyacinths – the blue scent of April.

We were all just here, waiting, 
waiting for the light to return.

 

Written by Pam Brown

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(Shakespeare, Sonnet 73)

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum’d by that which it was nourished by.
   This thou perceiv’st which makes thy love more strong,
   To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

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Submitted by David Callan

2024 was the year of the Slug

Slimy, slippily slithering,

bulbous, blubbery, bulging,

sliding, sluggishly slinking,

undeterred by eggshells, coffee grounds, copper tape

and other children of wishful thoughts,

you cross damp earth and abseil up a lofty stem.

You shred fat flesh with sharp tiny teeth,

tunnelling down, and gouging out

a dark, damp haven boasting gingerbread walls.

 

In joint enterprise with pigeons, caterpillars and snails

you transform my proud upstanding cabbages

into ragged, rotting, drooping ruins.

You are both father and mother, super-breeder,

hermaphrodite, the ultimate LGBTQ.

Where are the starlings, blackbirds,

thrushes, hedgehogs and frogs which,

once upon a not so distant time,

used to keep your numbers in check ?

Are slug killers helping to finish them off?

You thrive in cold, damp British summers. 

2024 was yet another Year of the Slug.​

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​Written by Bob Heyman

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