New poetry by Maureen Sutton.

Sir John Franklin’s Mitten
                 And Snow Shoes

I want to connect with your spirit,
place my feet upon your snow shoes,
imagine each determined step,
hear the ghostly echo of your footfall,
inhale scented remains of  leather boots.

I want to place my hand inside
your left-hand mitten,
touch its black baize cuff
feel the softness of red silk edging,
recover the warmth of your hand.

I want to read your watch and compass,
follow and time your route, count wild stars,
listen to the bull-seal’s roar, return to the
Northwest passage where the Intuits
in skin canoes found the way through.  

In this alien landscape howling gales
have sculptured ice and snow, forged
icebergs, opened and closed frozen waste.
I want to build you a cairn on the shoreline,
admire your courage, find your remains and
bring you back to Lincolnshire.



Copyright   Maureen Sutton     03 08 2015

Franklin and his 128 officers and crew died during the mission to find the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Artic.  The two ships-Erebus & Terror- were last seen on July26th 1845 at Baffin Bay.
 

The Beautiful Game by Susan Flower

THE   BEAUTIFUL   GAME

We scatter the last crumbs of home-made quiche
And iced cake for bird fodder as we shake our picnic remains
Onto Clumber Park’s grass – still verdant green patches
Thrive despite an August drought and a high summer wind
Makes the heat more tolerable as it snakes amongst tree-tops.

Three thousand eight hundred acres, once the country estate
Of the Dukes of Newcastle. Open heath, woodland, rolling farmland,
Swan-dotted lake, a ‘cathedral in miniature’ chapel, playgrounds
For children and adults, the ubiquitous National Trust merchandise
Of Orla Keirly woven red and blue picnic rugs, wine-goblets, flasks.

The air smells summer- green and herby, we rise from our blankets,
A racing-green painted seat, grab Evie’s ball won at Sheffield’s
Lucky Duck race and fan out in a roughly circular layout,
Clout a hand-ball, kick a high one, and flick an overhead pass.
It is fast, furious fun; the wind as light now as our thoughts.

Evie-May runs deftly as fast as her daddy-long legs
Can carry the full weight of her five and a half years,
Dribbling the ball a specialty, her aim and sense of direction
Charming in its youthful inaccuracy.  Her father plucks her up,
Swings her legs at the ball time and again; we are all dizzy


With laughter as the ball escapes to the lake-edge
Nested with swans and humans clustering its reeded banks.
Evie in hot pursuit, whooping at full-pelt, a red-headed whirl-wind.
The child retrieves the ball, runs back to the pitch, flings herself
Prostrate into its centre.  ‘Man down, man down!’ cries her father.

We make few concessions for her age but often neither does she,
Just envy her  extra stamina and realise we are the noisiest family
At Clumber Park today, but one having the most fun in breaking
Rules and making it up as we go; that’s life, the beautiful game.




Copyright    Susan Flower     2015

Two pieces of work by Shirley Bell.

My daughter says that when I'm dead she'll show her kids this picture
and they'll know me.


I'm encased in ivory faille, high necked, long sleeved, severe.
It's a kind of armour to protect me from the fear of falling, failing,
or of you failing to appear. I thought it would be less than this.
Dried flowers, witnesses pulled in from their everydays to ours,
a registrar, looking at his watch. Unfortunately your mum wants
more. Late born, her twinned afterthought, she has standards
for you, but my dad's dead and it's we who foot this bill.

We're ruthless and we cull the relatives: cheerfully eliminating
aunties, cousins, children under three, which went down
well. I hire the dress; that's cheap. I dress my bridesmaids up
in nighties. (Long, quite pretty, sprigged with flowers on navy blue
and I don't think that they knew). Practical, you always are, you
wear an ordinary suit. For everyday. The gale has flung my veil
across my face, daffodils are lurching, the dress and I are hurtling

to the porch. The choir is singing just for us. Later I learn your mum
has spent the journey down spotting crematoria and graveyards.
Over chicken, your dad gives me the gift of how much
he had disliked me when we met, but now I am OK. I'm not that
grateful. In this photograph I'm back in normal clothes again.
I'm looking at you with a minxy grin. We’re off to Paris. Hah! Later
I photoshop my auntie out and my son says that it is rather Stalinist.




Eavesdropping at the Almeida for Tina

I've started raiding people's lives for inspiration;

it's a shameless way of building up a poem.

You like the way I write my overheards but wish

they could be lighter. The hospital would be dark,

of course, but even in the library the talk was of

a funeral after which 'she can move on', which

I doubt. Now I'm eavesdropping at the Almeida,

hoping for some light-hearted piece of chatter,

polished to an anecdote.  It's my daughter's birthday.

We've come to see James's Turn of the Screw

and have already upset someone at the bar by

queue jumping by mistake. ‘Perhaps next time

you'll serve your customers in order’. We run away

with wine in plastic cups and prop them on the balcony.

It takes an age for us to see the steward in the stalls

is telling us to move them in case they fall and we feel

a bit embarrassed. While we wait for the first act

Im talks about her year in France. I used to go to stay

and she'd come to Lille to see me off. ‘Did I ever tell you

how a guy came up to me after you left? He asked me

to go back to his to make a sex film with him? I said

in French I don't understand because I can't speak French,

and 'Mais....' he said. 'But.... '’ We laugh a lot at this

and I think I'll write this down for Tina as it's still a kind of

exploitation, no? The play's had bad reviews, all the

nuances are gone. But it doesn't matter; obediently I jump

on cue at every scare. Though I do suspect

the audience should not be laughing quite as much as this.


Copyright  Shirley Bell

Skating with Father by Celia McCulloch

Skating with Father


Winter mist against the window glass,
the kitchen smells of oil-stove heat and cedar wax
and we're wearing thick wool socks that scratch
our legs. First we laid the pasty wax, my father and I,

and now his dark, tall figure begins to glide
across the floor. I try to follow but just can't slide
across the sticky goo until I put my feet in his smooth tracks
and then he swirls and loops as skaters do, over and back.

He hums his monotone of Skaters' Waltz. He spells words in wax
for me to guess. He whirls, hands held high, ballerina-style.
I do the same. Then I stand on his size 12 feet and we run across the tiles.
I follow every crazy move till we end up a giggling pile

as my mother comes through the door
stamping snow from her feet.      She frowns and we feel poor
excuses for workers, ashamed somehow. I simply asked you to polish the floor,
she says. Must you always make a game of work!


Copyright   Celia McCulloch

In the Memory and Cognition Room by Celia McCulloch

In the Memory and Cognition Room



Sparks of tinsel light up cobnuts and stub-ends
and Aunt Lizzie, big and dozy in her chair,
a knit/purl night-nurse slumped before the fire,
while you play with her ashtray. Press the button—
Zap—it opens, shows its black-ash heart.
Click. It shuts, and Lizzie almost stirs.
Tree lights dazzle behind their angel-hair.
In the next room, a parabola of laughter
in the yellow light where Uncle’s talking cock-
and-bull (and Father tells him so). The yips
of Scottie circle round the table begging scraps.
Your mother giggles, Granny fills her cup.
You know that you could join their paradise,
but see, for you, for them, it’d break the mood.
They’d ask, “Oh, has no one put the child to bed?”
You see it whole: the theys, the yous, the Is.
Like a squirrel you gather to yourself this nut,
and it feels something like forbidden fruit.


Copyright  Celia McCulloch

Kindergarten of the Heart Celia McCulloch

Kindergarten of the Heart  



What do you call this mint-green winter?

The one fine snow lies thin as lint on the landscape

and roses still bud and bloom—a tender, tentative

wintergreen season, holding autumn and spring 

in equal measure, a dying and a generation.

Our hair echoes by eye the frosted grasses.

Our hearts that long ago found causes not to love

now   struggle   as   an   infant   strains   to   speak.

Shy, we do not touch, walking our trackless hinterland,
tied with some new, invisible cincture…

Dippers bob in the cold stream-water, totally at home.


Copyright   Celia McCulloch

New poetry: Ron Booth: 2015.

Here I am alone at midnight,
sitting looking up at the moonlight
shining through the clouds.
A glass of whiskey in my hand,
wondering what's become of me
and my dreams, my passions!
What have I done with my life?

A nursery ryhme runs through my head...

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.
Life is but a dream...

My dreams are slipping away,
Fading into oblivion.
Dying in the dark recesses of my mind.
My dreams are slipping away.

I take a long sip of whiskey from my glass, and love the feeling it gives me as it goes straight to my head.
I hear a distant rumble as storm clouds gather. I feel at ease as rain begins to fall
and pitter patters on the conservatory roof, and a streak of lightning flashes in the night sky. It's at times like this I play some moody jazz, you know, something like in those old black and white gangster movies, it's always raining in new york, streets glistening with the reflection of city lights.

I hear that ryhme again...

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.
Life is but a dream...

My dreams are slipping away.
Fading into oblivion.
Dying in the dark recesses of my mind.
My dreams are slipping away.

I'm at peace sitting here as the rain falls harder, comfortable in my chair as smooth tones of a saxaphone, accompanied by the tinkling sounds of a piano, filter through the air.
Dreaming of some lazy hazy days in the sun... I sigh! remembering happy summer days, laughing and playing, telling stories and dirty jokes about adult things.
Playing games in the heat of the sun,
Ohhhh! what fun we had,
Where did the summers go?
Where has time gone?
Have all those dreams gone too?
Doesn't seem right.

I can't get the ryhme out of my head...

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.
Life is but a dream...

My dreams are slipping away,
Fading into oblivion.
Dying in the dark recesses of my mind.
My dreams are slipping away.

I remember hot summer nights
walking through the city, everything was alive! with people leaving bars and clubs.
Laughing,  having a good time.
Lovers holding hands, making eyes at each other, then kissing on the lips.
I envied them. Why am I hear?
I should go home, but I'm drawn to this night life. I see women in short skirts.
I wonder what it would be like to have a night of passion, in the heat of passion we want those things dreams are made of.
Then I saw you smiling, as you walked towards me; the city lights held your body in the spotlight. Angel of my dreams.
You sang a ryhme...

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.
Life is but a dream.

My dreams came true when I met you.
Giving me inspiration.
Creativity shone bright inside my head.
What dreams may come
When we dare to dream.
Love is the reason for such dreams.

Ron Booth
Copyright ©

1.7.2015

The Guardian: Saturday Poem……..

The Guardian Saturday poem: A Fable for the 21st Century by Tishani Doshi

Existing is plagiarism — EM Cioran

There is no end to unknowing.
We read papers. Wrap fish in yesterday’s news,
spread squares on the floor so puppy can pee
on Putin’s face. Even the mountains cannot say
what killed the Sumerians all those years ago.
And as such, you should know that blindness
is historical, that nothing in this poem will make
you thinner, richer, or smarter. Myself –
I couldn’t say how a light bulb worked,
but if we threw you headfirst into the past,
what would you say about the secrets
of chlorophyll? How would you expound
on the aggression of sea anemones,
the Battle of Plassey, Boko Haram?
Language is a peculiar destiny.
Once, at the desert’s edge,
a circle of pilgrims spoke of wonder –
their lives dark with mud and hoes.
They didn’t know you could make perfume
from rain, that human blood was more fattening
than beer. But their fears were ripe and lucent,
their clods of children plentiful, and God
walked among them, knitting sweaters
for injured chevaliers. Will you tell them
how everything that’s been said is worth
saying again? How the body is helicoidal,
spiriting on and on
how it is only ever through the will of nose,
bronchiole, trachea, lung,
that breath outpaces
any sadness
of tongue

Pimento bits………….

'Silver sliver of pond………………….'

SHRIEK Vernon Goddard

Shriek.

It’s the middle of August,

Dry year behind.

Think.

Reach ahead for words with legs,

Something to move this along.

Link.

Well, August can be the driest of months.

Parched and arid.

Trace, instead, the sea of seaside,

The ebb and flow,

Ebb and flow:

Lift of dew

Fall of rain.

Silver sliver of pond,

River rock and roll,

Laden leaves, dripping mist.

Waterfall waves

Headlong

Heady

Heading.

Dizzy

Drizzling

Dropping

DownPour

Like inked words

To mark the paper.

Outside my window

A wild sky

Shrieks.

Clears the dust

From a dry heart.

Vernon Goddard.

1st Draft 9th August, 2015

A recent poem by Paul Mein………Hartland Quay ±1.

Hartland Quay #1

Heave of swell-sea bellows

forge without fire, restless shaper

ceaseless hammer

on the anvil of the coast.

The bay is full - 

a cold cauldron

of relentless rollers

rushing house-high

to spend on the boulder beach,

grope dark openings

of caves at the foot

of high cliffs, layers 

twisted to vertical

by an uneasy torsion aeons ago,

or hurl bursting against

jagged guardians of rock,

cataract to foaming, roiling

unforgiving boiling at their base,

merge with others

in aweful curling spume, careless fling.

A gull glides in vigil on the wind's whim,

clouds drift away, letting

sky and water clear from dull iron

to an iceberg's chill-blue depth.

A boy looks from the quay,

arms outstretched in welcome

to an ocean's power

he wishes were his.

©   Paul Mein    22/7/15