Day Eleven

a yellow jacket miner emerges

the secrets

-Christina Chin

(A haiga in the inaugural issue of Bleached Butterfly Magazine)

-Wold Track by Dave Green

Bumble Bee Summer

The alder-buckthorn tree is singing
with the sound
of working bees;

I watch their plump black trundle
flower-to-flower
among the leaves.

The carder and the meadow bee
squeeze
up the monkshood’s deep blue sleeves

The carpenter and garden bees,
the masonry, the solitary,
probe the hoods of lamium.

The red-tailed
and the buff-tailed bees
cling to the saucer face of dark geranium.

Long hot summer, good summer,
loud with
the industry of bumble bees.

-Gill McEvoy

The Brooding Queen

I was a single, simple, yellow, cell,
who grew a grubbing appetite for gold,
an appetite they fed, fed, fed
until it made me large and strange,
and sealed me from my sisters
while I dreamed of change.

I was a naked sleeper in a changing room,
who dreamed of fur and woke enrobed.
I ate, ate, ate until I burst
the white walls of my prison cell
and dared one flight in air before
returning to my jailers and their citadel,

my sisters and our white and yellow womb.

(First published in my pamphlet, ‘Speaking parts’, Half Moon Books)

May Bee

No snow. White heat
as blossom beckons:
lilac fingers, rowan palms,
May’s mouths now
summoning my tongue.

(Unpublished)

-both by Linda Goulden

Thief

I always thought you honest,
your focus on integrity.
After all, didn’t Manchester choose you
to symbolise their ethic of hard work?
Didn’t you become an emblem of the city
as a hive of activity and industry?

How strange then to watch you
moving between the vivid blooms
of aquilegia, like a pickpocket
through a crowd of sight-seers,
your hungry proboscis probing
the ornate sacs of nectar
without the courtesy of pollination.

-Angi Holden

-Both by Neal Zetter

Bees in Winter Ivy

At the shank of the year,
when the gloaming kicks in at four o’clock,
globes of fat rain plother
on hairy footed bumblebees
clustering, weary under shiny green,
smothering a dusky-pink brick wall.

No clover, dandelion, foxglove,
no drinking cup of nectar,
no hope of a crowned Dionysus,
but there’s one human hand,
offering a sugar snack in a bottle cap,
reviving ambrosia.

-Maggie Mackay

Sweet Pollen

Bigger wing beat gusts me from sweet pollen
billows, I must stick to its surface amid
buffet and blast. Now heavier, taken,
away from scented trail back home I skid.

Track my trail through vibration pulses, map
I will dance when home is reached to tell all
where sweet pollen will be found, waggle tap
the route after unloading my food haul.

As light fades our head sensors flop, my legs
wrap around others, I rehearse my days
forage, retrace my flight, my complex steps
mark vibration changes that radiate.

Bright warmth lifts our heads from sleep to again,
find our memory way, avoid harsh rain.

-Paul Brookes (from The Insect Sonnets)

Bios and Links

-Maggie Mackay’s

pamphlet ‘The Heart of the Run’, 2018 is published by Picaroon Poetry and her full collection ‘A West Coast Psalter’, Kelsay Books, is available now. In 2020 she was awarded a place in the Poetry Archive’s WordView permanent collection. She reviews poetry pamphlets at https://sphinxreview.co.uk (Happenstance Press) . Twitter:@Bonniedreamer

-Christina Chin

-Dave Green

lives and works in Sheffield.  For 30 years he worked in education with vulnerable and neurodiverse children before belatedly discovering that recent governments may not be prioritizing the marginalized in society.  Now he trains people in positive mental health and how to recover from the pandemic.  He writes poems, paints, chops logs, cycles everywhere and shops local.

These are the day themes for the next ten days:

11. Follow a bumblebee

12. Make a map of local wildlife

13. Record what you see in your garden or at a park

14. Set up your own moth trap with a sheet and torch

15. Help create a hedgehog highway

16. Watch a wild webcam Wildlifetrusts.org/webcam

17. Go on a bughunt

18. Visit your local park at dusk and look for bats

19. Set up camp in or outdoors

20. Watch the sunrise or sunset

A FORGOTTEN BICYCLE

It leans against the old summerhouse,
rusty wheel spokes a nod to its former
glory days as champion of forays into nature.

Wilted bouquets overhang the woven basket:
Withered lilac still murmuring lines from
summer sonnets, sweet pea symphonies with their

spectral arpeggios, rising and falling in cadences,
like gusting leaves across manicured lawns,
chasing away all traces of seasonal depression.

Birds sing full-throated, their daffodil chorus
echoing round the orchard garden,
hedgehogs wake snuffling in the musty woodpile.

At full moon new life throbs through the crippled frame,
sounding the bell in time with the hooting owls,
beckoning fairy folk to mount the saddle, take a ride.

They fly down in the bells of virgin snowdrops,
Filling the basket with crocus and lesser celandine
speeding to the woods in search of early narcissi.

What stories come to mind as they revel in magical
flight through moonlit meadows and glades.
Released from years of neglect, the old girl lives again.

-Margaret Royall (From her collection “When Flora Sings”

gleaning

the harvest fields 

golden sunset 

~ Christina Chin 

Fireflies’s Light 

Ruin on Lewis by Dave Green

Bios and Links

-Christina Chin

-Dave Green

lives and works in Sheffield.  For 30 years he worked in education with vulnerable and neurodiverse children before belatedly discovering that recent governments may not be prioritizing the marginalized in society.  Now he trains people in positive mental health and how to recover from the pandemic.  He writes poems, paints, chops logs, cycles everywhere and shops local.

Day Nine

Garden Junk by Dave Green

morning voices 

first the sunbirds 

then the bees 

~ Christina Chin 

Fireflies’s Light 

Sunrise Concertante – Patricia M Osborne
Burnt golden rays break
the night-time sky,
beating on the Ouse’s slow crawl.

Air-warmed sweet-grasses
fan fragrance into the wind:
marsh marigolds shine.

A blackbird’s
chromatic glissando sweeps

towards the riverbank.

Swanking his red tuxedo, a robin
trills to join the recital

as elm silhouettes dance,
watching their mirror image.

The mistle thrush flaunts
his speckled belly. He takes his turn
to chant – introduces

hedge sparrows who chatter,
boast brown suits.

A cadenza call governs the concerto–
plump skylark makes his solo in the skies.

Shades of light peep,
geese chevron across the blue,
noses down, necks stretched, wings

spread wide. Honking their signal sound,
they climb the horizon and sky-fall
on to daylight’s iridescent waves.

-Patricia M. Osborne

 

Bios And Links

-Patricia M Osborne

Sarasvati Magazine (Indigo Dreams) Published 2017
Taxus Baccata (Hedgehog Poetry Press) Published 2020
Ingénue Magazine Published 2020

-Christina Chin

-Dave Green

lives and works in Sheffield.  For 30 years he worked in education with vulnerable and neurodiverse children before belatedly discovering that recent governments may not be prioritizing the marginalized in society.  Now he trains people in positive mental health and how to recover from the pandemic.  He writes poems, paints, chops logs, cycles everywhere and shops local.

Day Eight.

-Christina Chin

This is a poem I wrote and read at Glasgow Kelvingrove Museum, aa while ago, celebrating the rebuilding of the Al-Mutnabbi Street, the street full of bookstores in Baghdad Iraq was that car bombed in 2007. I see that books stores have been bombed in Palestine recently, but books survive are rewritten, salvaged and rise again. Al Mutnabbi was a 10th Century poet and the street was named after him.

I hope you like this poem for today.

Waves
“Many a mountain I crossed to witness
I was mountain, seas, I was the sea wave”– Al Mutanabbi

Kept in a tin trunk of memories so that
It may not disappear like sand in an hourglass
We left sediments of the past
The caravans of skeletons,
The geography of sorrow
Nebulous scars, on the shore, with
Timelessness stamped on them.
We harvest coral, pearls,
That swims above the surf, floating in the air
but beyond reach of well-said prayers.
The waves lashing on the rocks, that time has rounded
scored with names of the dead
in a life before this, the print of them
still in the waves, foaming white
Perhaps the waves can read our minds.

-Leela Soma

Both artworks by Anjum Wasim Dar

Intro

Oceans are one of the many miracles of the Creator as the Earth itself is. The water holds itself yet moves, full of life, rebirth and deaths and fathoms of fluid space, stable for all ships and boats, salty roadways, for travelers transport and sport.

“Water is Hurt”

O’ Poseidon bestowed with the power unique
tell us the secret of the two seas that do not meet
yet flow with different colors, wave by wave, move
by move, side by side, a perfect acceptance of diversity,

Poseidon speaks, ‘Man is nothing without the Gods’
oceans or skies the sole power is with the Creator
who loves clear open hearts, He blocks nothing nor
builds walls, see my home has no doors nor windows’

All are free to enter, float, sail, swim dive or dig
I am full of food, fish, color, charms and treasures
but many living beings are careless, inconsiderate
they throw harmful waste trash plastic on and in me.

Water will not become less but will be a source of
trouble for human beings themselves, the dead will
float the dying will cry and curse, the thought makes
me shudder, storms surge, waves rise to great heights,

Water is hurt, it is red now with blood and scales
breathing is difficult, inhale a struggle, exhale an
ordeal, oil blocks unmarked uncharted paths
Oceanides no longer accept offerings from fans.

Home state worries Oceanus, growing more old
countless pennies coins of gold, are useless down
on the sea bed, worthless is such a treasure which
sinks and loses its values, shines and becomes cold.

A revenge rising tsunami results, as the grand
bowl shakes, jolts, jumps and throws up-
beware O’ People …I envision a huge surge…
sing not any songs nor lie naked on the beach

Pray pray pray peace, repentance forgiveness seek

-Anjum Wasim Dar
Poet/Artist
Pakistan

Taffeta

Take me to the ocean, I said.
I wore my ocean-green shot taffeta skirt.
The wind shifted its colours
from red to green, making it
a magic lantern, glittering
like the opalescent sea.
The dunes stretched for miles.
Cars simmered in the heat haze
like jewels. Released from austerity,
an exam room weighted with words,
I wanted to see space, a wide horizon,
sky full of gulls, gossiping.
I wanted to be lapped by a salt tide,
buffeted by waves and cleansing winds.
My white legs became a mermaid’s tail,
my toes sensed the ribbed sand,
imprinted by travelling waves.
You took me home from the ocean
that summer and married me.

-Angela Topping

Sea Change

Full fathom five thy father lies,
of his bones are coral made;
those are pearls that were his eyes;
The Tempest

What the sea does, and does so well,
is to embrace and change
all things to its cool element.

From the Titanic a suitcase is lifted,
like a drowned dog, its body leaking;
folded, laundered shirts are stained.

A pile of crumbling junk, that ship;
crunching bacteria fasten
nibbling mouths on its very steel;

the railings’ fur of barnacles
outlives the stoles of women.
The champagne may still be drinkable.

On the ocean floor in pliés
pairs of boots point outward toes.
Rusticles hang like crystallised tears.

Shoals of fish play small chase
in and out the rusty portholes.
Where is Hartley’s violin?

-Angela Topping (Both from her book “The Way We Came”)

Bathing on the Titanic

Brass taps spurt a salty waterfall
drawn from the ocean below, piped
warm as blood, from heated tanks.

Health-giving baths with iodine and cobalt,
as boasted on posters, urged by doctors.
Rinse off with fresh water from a bucket

standing to attention behind the bath.
Such luxuries of scented soap and cloudy towels
while the valet lays out dinner clothes.

After brandy and cigars, a game of cards.
until it’s time to take another bath
in salt water, this time taken with ice.

-Angela Topping

First published in Paper Patterns (Lapwing 2012)

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.

From I Sing of Bricks (Salt 2011)

Atlantic Whale Fishing

Below, at night, I hear the salt airs of the sea,
a poignant mermaids’ tune we sailors fear,
the keening of the pitching ship, as, at the prow
our Jenny breasts the waves, the only girl aboard.

Timbers sigh as we sail farther from our home.
‘To wives and sweethearts – may they never meet’,
the awful joke accompanies our daily rum,
hides our longing like sailcloth covers the sky.

Stars grow unfamiliar as we sail beyond our scope.
I think of my Nancy, at home with our little ones,
waiting for money and these scrimshaw toys I carve.

The sea has made men of us all, and yet
it’s land we long for, till we grow homesick
for black and ice-berged sea, its infinite deeps.

Angela Topping

First published in I Sing of Bricks (Salt 2011)

 

Humble Me

Baptize me
In your
Red Sea,
So I may know
What you know,

That I may go
Where you
Go.
Make a way,
Away from the waves

Of humanity’s woes,
That we
Might undergo
A transformation
Of peaceful collaboration,

Admitting over and over again,
That we must drown
Our own hopes and sins,
To keep
Each other afloat, in this world of waves and deep.
-st

Ocean

Loud and large,
Overwhelming, slapping –
Waves, water
Calm, then clapping.
Find rest by my side
As you listen to the tide –
A reminder of who you are
As I rush near, far.
Rush away, like me –
Keeping ears and eyes open
That you may hear, see.
Don’t vacillate
In my vastness,
But rest
Even in my restlessness.
Then, steadfast and serene,
I will lull you to sleep.
-st

“Humble Me” (originally published by Poetry Super Highway), and “Ocean” (which was once featured in a collaborative photo project by Mr. Roberto Cerini).

Bios and Links

-Angela Topping

is the author of eight full collections of poetry, and four pamphlets, all with reputable publishers. Her work has appeared in a wide range of magazines, including Poetry Review, Magma, Stand, The North, The Dark Horse, and over 100 anthologies. She is a former writer in residence at Gladstone’s Library, Hawarden. Her poems have been set for A level, featured on BBC Radio’s Poetry Please, and been included in teaching materials for the OU, The Samaritans, and other causes. She has performed at several festivals and in many other venues.

was born in 1954. After completing two English degrees at Liverpool University, marrying in 1976, she worked unhappily in the Civil Service, having steadfastly ignored all career advice because she wanted to be writer.

-Samantha Terrell