Day Twenty-one

-Mike Stone

-photo by Jim the Poet

-Neal Zetter

Father’s Day

 

-V M A Gaskill

the good scout

jupiter and saturn in the southern sky
son and father each the other
now mute glowworms
late gas giants
courted by the stars
in their silent perspectives

on my back on the hard ground
of a barren mountain field
listening to my father
as we lay encamped
as he named the astral bodies
in their myriads

earlier that day he sent me to the village
to buy bread in a language not my own
he supplied me with a word in the arabic
khubz that the baker understood
and i returned with enough for ten
thus we make men of our sons

now comes the goddess with her golden lamp
now comes the reckoning of merit
much have i heard about illusions
much have i learned about deception
long will i remember the good scout
who named the morning stars to me

-W V Sutra

My Father as a Zephyr

Lightest of all things,
he blows in light of a perpetual spring,
scatters the salty Clyde with early summer breezes,
with seaweed fronds on soft foam,
fruit of our childhood holidays.
His soft stirring smile greets aquamarine.
His wind-song dances on fiddle strings, sotto.
The west wind restores dear ones
with a tease, a coorie-in, a purr.

-Maggie Mackay (from her collection ‘A West Coast Psalter’)

Their Father’s Business

Their father in an important mood
would roll up two starched shirts
and a pair of grey flannel trousers
all the time saying how tight
in those capsules he designed
for spacemen.
He shined and buffed
his black shoes, discussed the heat
on Mars, livable planets,
claiming he went just to watch,
to feel the rush of air
along his neck, the lift off.
But as the soft cloth carefully
worked his shoes
in single glossy motions
under the bright lamp,
his children thought that given a chance
his very own hands could force
a rocket from the launch pad,
cradle of fire.

-Moira J. Saucer

 

I will never forget
The first time
You skimmed a pebble
Across the sea.
You reassured me
Stones could bounce
I listened disbelievingly
But as I watched
The sleeping rocks
Come to life
Riding the waves
I fell in love with the
Timeless sea
I’m still in love today.

-Jill Webb

 

A TRIOLET TRIPTYCH : Halloween Revisited
In memory of my much-loved father Edmund Joseph Browning

Ready or not, dark memories take me there,
To that bay-windowed room where he would play
His old piano, perched on a cushioned chair.
Ready or not, dark memories take me there.
I hear him sing that hymn, I cannot bear
Reliving the slow film spool of that day.
Ready or not, dark memories take me there
To that bay-windowed room where he would play.

I see the double rainbow in the sky,
Seek to make peace with Fate, caught so off guard.
Dead at the wheel, on Halloween, but why?
I see the double rainbow in the sky,
Mop up October’s tears, resolve to try
And come to terms with this, but life is hard!
I see the double rainbow in the sky,
Seek to make peace with Fate, caught so off guard.

Relieved, I find his hymnal on the stand,
So clearly highlighted with words of hope.
‘I feel the promise is not vain’, his plan!
Relieved, I find his hymnal on the stand.
I realise he’s here, he holds my hand.
I know that somehow I’ll find strength to cope.
Relieved, I find his hymnal on the stand,
So clearly highlighted with words of hope.

-©️ Margaret Royall
From her poetry pamphlet ‘Earth Magicke”

 

 

Never Only Considers Most

relevant part of a map.
When he gets lost, he stops,
at the entrance to the busiest junction,
sometimes, before a roundabout,
and unfolds a view of the world
to its fullest extent to find his way.

Perhaps, at work when he changes
one tiny part of the system he traces
its effect on a detailed drafted whole diagram
of council offices, hospitals
or nuclear subs where he has installed
new heating waste management services.

And I at work or home cursed with the same
need for thorough deliberation,
find bosses, wives and workmates sigh
at my slow, detailed examination
of an issue, that had I rushed,
as when angry, only find confusion.

My dad and I bring the whole going on
to a brief stop as others
who wish to get on, hoot, cringe,
whistle and toot their dismay.
We ignore them all to, quietly,
stubbornly, slowly map our way.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-Moira J Saucer

is a disabled poet living in the Alabama Wiregrass. She holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas, (Fayetteville) Creative Writing Program and an MA in English from the University of Delaware. Her poems have been published by Fevers of the Mind, Floodlight Editions, Burning House Press, Visual Verse, Mookychick, Fly on the Wall Poetry Press, and Ice Floe Press. Her debut – a full length poetry collection – is forthcoming in 2021-22 from Ice Floe Press

Day Twenty

The daisies close their tired eyes
Wild bluebells call the fairies home
The tulips point up to the skies
The parks and fields at dusk I roam
The spider weaves a silky maze
Puff balls in flight to hope and health
Round Emley Moor a distant haze
A cat looks up then moves with stealth
The time to pause. The time to hear
The time to breathe. Not time for fear

-Jo Fear

Above and Below

Cobblestone daisies
rise from stubborn roots
and tongued leaves
bright stars against
the ribbed slate night.

An ant creeps along
the herringbone road
while overhead green shanks
support milkwhite openness,
yellow pinheads of pollen.

-Angela Topping (from Paper Patterns (Lapwing 2012))

Dandelions For Mothers’ Day

“Pee-the-Beds” and “Mother-Die!”
“Pick it and your mam’ll die!”

“Faces like the sun.” she said
Plunged them in a jam-jar.

But they caught up with her: –
Stained her skin yellow,
Turned her hair to seed-clocks,
Blew away her years.

-Angela Topping (from her first collection)

Cowslips

I wanted to write a poem about cowslips, because, taking
my Covid 19 exercise, I saw some on a grassy bank
beside the beck and thought Oh they’re not extinct at all,
remembering fields of them on walks with Dad,
those freckled yellow bells where Prospero’s sprite
Ariel couched, wobbling above tooth-nibbled green rosettes,
scent similar to apricots, petals distilled to pale wine sipped
by country maids, bucolic vicars in Elizabeth Gaskill novels.
St Peter’s Keys, the rustics called them – they sprang up
from where he dropped the means of getting into Heaven.
Then I discovered the most likely origin of their name.
Cowslip.
They like to flower where cows have slupped or slopped,
bob among the pats, the crusty mottle wobbling above
liquid green, where skinny orange flies paddle and probe.
I remember plodging a plastic sandal accidentally in,
watching white sock soak up the viscous sludge.
My kids, out on the same walks, would taunt each other,
threaten to drop stones – plop – into the shite,
spray it up legs, up backs, sometimes did.
Cowslup, Cowslop. Cowslip.
I still like them though.

-Ann Cuthbert

LADY CONVOLVULUS

Pretty as a picture in white and pink
Lady Convolvulus lifts up her head.
The jewels of the morning adorn her cheeks
and her green gown winds about her legs.

And my lady creeps and my lady runs.
On a summer wind she blows.
When she tilts her chin to kiss the sun
she will follow where he goes.

Yet my lady sighs and my lady weeps.
My lady cleaves and clings.
Till she binds her lover where he sleeps.
A green and fecund web she spins.

(first published Hysteria Poetry Competition, Winners’ Anthology, 2014)

THE HONEYSUCKLE

The honeysuckle hides her jewel
in hedgerows thick with thorn.
And blackbird sings most tunefully
where weeds in wheels conceal his song.

To blossom and to sing we too
require a privacy.
To flourish occurs best
in hearts attuned to mystery.

CAMPION

Sweet campion comes late in May
when golden king cups raise their heads
and all about the tawny carn
a merry May-time madness spreads

As bluebells fade like ghosts away
and bow their faces to the dust
while hedgerows sing and daisies dan.e
and grass leaps up because it must.

It’s then in pink and white and red
this spring-time’s maiden green is dressed.
And all through June she lingers on
as summer’s modest, lovely guest.

VALERIAN

Once pretty in pink
you are innocent no longer
but frowsy now
under the sun.

Your head lolls
like a drowsing drunk’s
towards the lulling,
oblivion of sleep.

Briefly you flourished
where the old wall cracks,
your slender roots
fingering this dust.

Now you dig down deep
for the cooling dark,
grimly holding out,
holding on.

-Abigail Elizabeth Ottley

Daisies

Pluck all on the lawn, turn my back and more
appear. I should poison them all, be rid.
But, I do not want to open the door
of making our cats ill, which is sordid.

Whenever a child dies God sprinkles earth
with Daisies. Freya’s favourite flower.
I would slaughter innocents for the worth
of a pure lawn. It’s within my power

to purify the green destroy yellow.
I deem, dictate what’s a weed and what’s not.
Perhaps, I should rewild a bit, allow
Daisies in only one part of my plot.

Delusions of grandeur, an obsessive
space manipulator, an oppressive.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links
-Abigail Elizabeth Ottley
writes poetry and short fiction. Her work has appeared in more than two hundred magazines, journals and anthologies. A former English teacher with a lifelong interest in history, Abigail lives in Penzance where she cares for her very elderly mother and is currently writing her first novel.

Day Nineteen

Manvers Lake Sunset by Paul Brookes

5 sunsets, beach

The sky is metal-cold above flattened sea.
For now, the haven’s safe but will it hold against the sea?

Indigo is not a violent hue
yet bruises bloom like mould upon the sea.

Stranded, we gaze where mottled sky
zigzags rose-gold, seeks the open sea.

A full-stop moon closes the day in shadow
while old ideas are scrolled across the sea.

At this distance, detail’s lost, amorphous.
Are life and death still doled out by the sea?

-Ann Cuthbert

-Stewart Carswell

Sunset

As the sun sets I seek.
Before closing the curtains.
Watching the colours between the trees.
Indigo, peach and cloudy blue.
Would I have noticed this before the lockdown?
As we remain here, still, in the present.
Watching wistfully, as I hear my neighbour’s muted talk from next door.
We are all weary, but remain focussed on the frontline of life.
Germinating from the springboard of our fertile imaginations.
There is no illusion, on the still picture book outlook, that I am gazing, and admiring for the first time.
Perhaps it has always been but not noticed before.
The view from my window.

-Geraldine Ward (previously published in The Sunday Tribune)

-Adrian Rice (The Strange Estate: New & Selected Poems 1986-2017, Press 53)

Sunset over Galway Bay

For Dave

He’s out on the patio,
reading. The sun is just
starting its slow slide
seaward,
dipping russet toes
into the bay.

He pours coffee,
scalding hot, into a blue
and white striped mug.
The mountains are hennaed.
The Atlantic Ocean burns
as the sun goes down in flames.

He makes his way indoors,
marking his place with care,
bringing cafetière and coffee cup,
smiling as the sun finally drowns itself,
and the moon comes into her own.

-Angela Topping (from I Sing of Bricks (Salt 2011))

-Alex Guenther

 

Menai Morning

Dawn rises slowly over the Straits,
A creeping light slips through mist.
The pines observe like sage old men
who have seen it all a thousand times.
Across the water the mountains
keep fast their secrets. I would
bring you a morning such as this
for walking through woods, our skin
turning from blue to ivory as broad day
replaces the shreds of night.

Angela Topping (from The Way We Came (Bluechrome 2007))

Across the River

Those summer evenings
so easy and dusty.
We hung out on the village bridge
dangled our bruised legs over the drop
three – four solemn trout fidgeted
amongst slimy rocks.

After a while when nothing happened
we slinked over to Bob’s bench
on the corner hoping for something
other than the smell of Edna’s cooked vegetables.
We counted down the days for hours mouthing
trailers for sale or rent

as one car purred by like a film star.
We imagined Hollywood, silk blouses, love
and how that day would come.
Tarmac stayed warm and soft walking home,
sky slipped from the pines, smeared lipstick pink,
a blackbird sang across the river.

Kerry Darbishire

(Published in own collection, A Lift of Wings – Indigo Dreams Publishing 2014
Published in The Interpreter’s House issue 57)

Heavenly Love

Your father paints amongst deer,
northern rain,
sunrise, sunset, kitchen tables
glazed in lamp light.

His sheep graze hawthorn shadows
hiding below an orange sun
dipping slowly behind indigo fells.
You would have learned to draw,

how light falls, how blue and orange
make you feel, the brush of clover,
daises, buttercups against your legs,
peat-cool dubs after school,

the crunch of snow, moon silvering
a pillow the way your pearl-eyes searched
that dead-sea-stillness for a door.
There is no blame, in loss

some words can never be found,
just a prayer
the moment you weren’t born.

Kerry Darbishire

(published in own collection Distance Sweet on my Tongue – Indigo Dreams Publishing)

Fifteen Hours in Sifnos

From behind the massive night bone of mountain
the sun’s un-cracked yolk slips its perfect form
over earth’s contour, into sky.

The silent mountain
glows pink, aroused, announces
the blue and white Sifnos day

in which we walk six shining-sea miles
on a tiny mountain track to Kastro, ancient capital.
You’re looking good today in electric blue.

Around us
the heady scent of wild basil, oregano, thyme.
The roofs, first mountain-strewn, now close, are balled

in perfect domes, blue on white, in anticipation of volcanoes.
Clusters of tiny churches, white and blue too, emit a scent of frankincense
and in their cool insides we intrude on precious ikons,

gilded for private reverence. An organ plays.
These rough-hewn walkways are carved from the mountain.
Through white arches, the blue surprise of the Greek sea.

At lunch we share tiropita,
feta, olives, tomatoes and the generous
free dessert. Warmed by wine

I find an azure brooch
in an Aegean doll’s house-shop.
Seven Cycladic cats swamp us

with their climbing, purring,
furry welcome when we get home to Sifnaika.

The sea laps milk and blue in and away,
splashes the moon’s gentle light, spreading it
in tiny sea-horse crests.

We watch the ferry come in at Kamares,
dots of light flash
in hectic green/blue coda,
as lorries spew out on cue.

-Alison Dunhill (soon to be published in her forthcoming SurVision chapbook)

Bios and Links

-Kerry Darbishire

lives in Cumbria where most of her poetry is rooted. Her two poetry collections are with Indigo Dreams Publishing. Her biography Kay’s Ark published by Handstand Press. Her poems have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies and have won or been short listed in several competitions. Kerry’s third collection (joint winner of the Full Fat Collection, Hedgehog Press) will be published in 2022.

-Alison Dunhill

Originally a Londoner, Alison Dunhill had a poetry pamphlet published in her early twenties in Paul Brown’s Trans Gravity Advertiser, 1972. She was also published in Martin Stannard’s Joe Soap’s Canoe #15 in 1992. She was tutored at the Arvon Foundation by Michael Laskey and Martin Stannard in the early 1990s, and has given readings at Pentameters, St Catherine’s College, Oxford, St James’s Piccadilly and Torriano Meeting House. Having moved to Norfolk in the new millennium, she has participated in open mikes at Fenspeak in King’s Lynn and Ely, Café Writers in Norwich and at CB1@CB2 in Cambridge. She has participated in almost ten years of stimulating workshops with Sue Burge. Sue acted as mentor for my forthcoming SurVision chapbook. She had two pieces longlisted for the Fish Flash Fiction Prize in March this year. Two of her poems are published in the current issue of SurVision magazine (July 2020) and two are  published in the December 2020 issue of Fenland Poetry Journal. She won Second Prize in the James Tate International Poetry Prize, 2020 and has a consequent chapbook forthcoming in 2021.  She has always worked concurrently in the visual arts and in recent years is incorporating poetry into her art practice. An art historian too, her MPhil thesis forges links between interwar surrealism and 1970s US photography (please see her WikiPedia entry).

Day Eighteen

Autumn Winds

Autumn-yellow mushrooms
Form belled-out pant legs at
The base of a tree,
Matching the picture I
Saw in a magazine.

You quip an age-old joke
About “fun guys” and
Old is made new again in
Our children’s bright, happy laughter
Carried across the campsite, on the wind.

My face is warm, wind-burned;
Bones chilled, from its
Constant whipping
Even as the campfire laps up
Golden flames, set against dying grey embers.

The firewood and late summer season
Must both reach their ends.
But goldenrod and fungi spores are
Wind-scattered,
Ready to begin again.
-st

What makes a camp fire glow?

The thrill of the wild
the dare of the dark
the acrid air

the crackle and spark
the chatter and laugh
the soothe of share

You’ll know when you’re there

Copyright: Kate Williams

Bios and Links

-Samantha Terrell,

author of Vision, and Other Things We Hide From (Potter’s Grove Press, 2021), is a widely published poet whose work emphasizes self-awareness as a means to social awareness. She has been featured on Sunny G Radio (Glasgow), The Open Collaboration (Bristol, U.K.), the Dublin-based “Eat the Storms” podcast, and the Creative Drive podcast (U.S.A.). She writes from her home in upstate New York.