The Secret Keepers

You would not believe
the things we have seen,
done here under a moon’s
full bone-white eye.

The man who wanted to win
came and looked at the stars
and measured our bodies
with his cold blue gaze.

We moved, a millimetre here,
a fraction there, so he never
quite got it right. We knew
his intentions weren’t exactly

as honourable as he told us
they were. There is no fooling us,
we who have stood here so long
that we have forgotten what we are for.

It doesn’t matter though, we shift and pitch
and always find a new role to play.
Sometimes we hold space for promises
and goodbyes, though we prefer other things.

It is true that we can’t be counted
at least not in human ways. We like
to tease and trick, because what else
are stones supposed to do with everything?

If we just hold on, we will become harder
and more distant, impossible to decipher.
This way is better for our kind, to keep
things going – understanding was never
part of the great diviner’s plan you know.

-Ali Jones

Sadness is a positive emotion
=====================

I want to drill holes
in the concrete ground,
thrust my feet inside
and stand in calmness.

Yes, I am lonely & alone.
My companion who promised
that she will face
every storm with me has left
before the first storm has began.

Near the railings of the ground
there are sunflowers
which sparkle in the sunshine.

Hope is trying hard to find me:
my feet are grounded.

-Jay Gandhi

Neolithic Era

Did the Neolithic
Gaze upon the dandelions?
Or, did they graze upon them instead?
And, what was the significance of their stones?

We tread upon dandelions,
And cover the earth in concrete,
Whilst searching the past for answers
To questions the present readily provides.

If only we would gaze upon the fields,
Bask in the sun,
Call our current existence to the task
Of plodding, yes, but lightly.

-Samantha Terrell

“For there is no man without fault, no man without a burden, no man sufficient to himself, no man wise enough to himself but we must bear together, comfort together, help together, teach and admonish together.” -T. ‘A Kempis

A Garden of Time

Flowers creep out from beneath the frost,
bloom through the chaos of battle fields
and the unrelenting wreckage of disease.
They weave themselves into the landscape,
spread fragrance over the backs of relics.
Some stand tall, with faces open to the sun,
others sit quietly, whispering on top of the soil,
strewn like stars over the expanse of seasons.
They are given as gestures of love and regret,
placed on graves and coveted at weddings.
I chose to have them inked into my skin,
petals sprinkled across my feet and ankles,
vines and blossoms winding up my arms,
spilling gracefully over my shoulders,
a garden of time that turns something ugly
into something permanent and beautiful.

-Susan Richardson

The Rung Down

ring of blue rocks eroded,
schtum inner circle,
gong orchestra gone

stand tuneless rock
dumbfound broken
notes drummed out

gust between clefts
spit spat rain flits
cracks, shatters clack

back into unheard
till heard by inspired
knock on rock echoes

Megalithic lithophones
ring of blue stones decoded
orchestra clangs elsewhere.

Yearly lion’s teeth clocks
gust blows into seed float
above and around, inbetween

stood standing memory site,
soundscape escaped
now found traced source
of sea carried sound

-Paul Brookes

Neolithic Flowers

Eternity’s span
this arch of stars,
counts time beyond
ten finger tips.

Into wicker’s rest.
Fill this grave
with a crush
of wild flowers.

Mixed meadows
delicate pastels
and fine perfumes,
grace your memory.

Unbearable grief
and beauty speak
under the voice.

Why must our ways
always be run,
through a curtain
of dying flowers
and falling tears.

© Dai Fry 20th February 2020.

Bios and links

-Jane Cornwell

Shape Shifters

Carve wind, carve rain,
Come storm, begin again.
Come winter, come spring,
Come goddess from within.
Come fire in the head,
Come worshipping the dead.
Come footprint and beast,
Come battle and feast.
Come blood and ride,
Come pipe call and red tide.
Come quiet, come calm,
Come atmosphere to disarm.
Come spirit and ghost,
Come frightening the most.
Come secret and be
Come to all that I see.
Come mountain and mother,
Come stand like no other.

-Ali Jones

The Blue Hawk

Stream and hill follow my contours.
This beak is a high jut of rock.
I command the veer of rivers.

My black wing tips
are the storm’s edges.
My gyre makes the gust.
My white feathers, clouds.

Rain is the pelt of water
off my pinions and claws.
One of my eyes is the sun.
The other eye is the moon.

Gravity is my fall.
Death, my talons.
Sharp edge of ice,
my beak makes orphans.

The unwary, unwatchful,
unaware and weak
are morsels for my young
that turn in the world of my eye.

II.

I pass

the dead

to my wife

in

flight.

Two rocks

bridged

by red sinew.

-Paul Brookes

We Are the Badlands

An absence of foliage
In vast canyons
Gives way to something more,
The opportunity to evoke
Emotion from its expanse.
Variegated cutaways of
Ancient earth
Rise and fall
The same way my body
Shudders at your embrace.
What great equalizer
Cuts through earth and
Our bodies, but Time?
And we are all, merely,
Nature laid bare,
Shrouded only
By the eyes of God.

-st

Little things

All that tectonic plates
do is vibrate a little
and crush a civilisation.

All the notions that we
rule every corner of earth,
bury inside the fissures
caused by the earthquake.

Geologists get down
to the business and confirm
that the soul is the epicentre.

-Jay Gandhi

The Sound of Falling

Lost in the tangle of twilight’s thread,
she tucks into the edges
of a rock face,
finds the music of solitude,
blooms into a single note that reaches
into the core of the earth.
The roots of her sorrow
plunge deeply
into the heart of the mountain,
where darkness bleeds like ink
from her veins.
She inhales deeply,
tastes the shadowy tones of silence,
gets heady with longing.
Somewhere in the distance,
a friend calls her name,
pleading.
His voice fades like a ghost into the granite.
She exhales and falls gracefully
into a melody only she and the rocks can hear.

=Susan Richardson

Bios and links

-Jane Cornwell

The Fae Harvest

I never knew how babies grew,
until one night, my grandmother led me out
under the weight of dawn and a lifting sky.

On the mountains shoulders, light cast
out, looking for a new beginning,
And there they were. The conditions have to
Be just right. The moon lining up to sew the pattern,
With Venus, and the other planetary lamps
Measuring shadow and shade.

The old made young again, rising like seedlings
in the dab grey dew, while spiders sung their webs
and the fairy host turned straight on until morning.

Old Mr Begg from the house on the end,
Old Mrs Sutherland, from the garret on the ginnel.
Same face, bodies shrunken, pushing up
in purple heather. A blackbird belled a warning
And my grandmother and I were away to our beds,

But I didn’t sleep again that night, as the sun
pulled up the shutters and roused the animals
from paw twitching dreams to daytime clamour.

I never asked how my grandmother knew.
We never spoke of it again, and I can only think
that she made a pact, to lie amongst the heather
when her time came, to give herself over to them.

-Ali Jones

Unbreakable

In her dreams,
the seasons bleed together.
Birth into burning into silence.

She is a blossom
taking her first sip of air,

a flower
opening itself
to a sky filled with flames,

a petal,
wilting, floating,
falling into a final embrace.

Her heart is weightless here,
soundless and unbreakable.
She reaches through a cloud of fire,
touches the center of the sun.

She feels no pain.

-Susan Richardson

Summer of 1995

My bro & I played Cricket at home.
We broke the “Ajanta” Wall clock.
Petrified of our Dad, we ran to the fields
and sat by the pond in a hope that the frogs
would pop up and that Dad’s anger would
vapourise.

Sun would set late and evenings
were all about lemonades.
We would climb the trees without
a plan of how to get down! On
certain days while taking rest in farms,
we would fall asleep.

Mom would come into the fields
screaming my name in search of me.

And today, father has lost his sting,
mother has lost her hearing & my wife
goes in search our kids to the farms.

-Jay Gandhi

Latency

The best
The future has to offer
Serenely rests
On the mountain, or in some valley
Already preparing to solve crimes,
Write stories, cure diseases; tiny bodies, home to giant minds.

As dew on mountain grasses waits
To evaporate in the morning sun,
Transforms to return to earth as rain,
These, too, shall arise
With a transfer of latent energy
To meet the world’s expectancy.

-st

The One Hand

of the hillside holds curled up bairns.
Some nestle into its palm dream a sunrise
or a sunset whilst the cold lake awaits

their splash and play in the bath of their days .
For some it is the evening of their lives
and will not see another sun. Shepherds

gathering stock from these moors
will find their white bones under ferns
as they take their sheep to be sheared
down paths only the animals know.

These are the lost and unremembered bairns.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and links

-Jane Cornwell