Out of school.....

Each morning from Monday to Friday
Just beyond the birds eating, treating
Beyond the browned beech hedging,
Children stroll to the school bus.
From right to left across my view
Of birds and hedge.
Each carries a days supplies to the front line.

At 4.30 pm precisely
The same children,
Across my eyeline,
From left to right,
Ignore the swooping birds

Worn down already
With the backpack of evening doom.

Being at the ditch has wearied them
So they neither see bird
Nor the blue skied sunniness
Of a February Valentine.
Nor me peeking at them from a foreign clime.

Whilst they have trudged
From here to there
And back again.

I have written a poem.

New anthology for Pimento.

We have a new anthology coming out in March with contributions from all our members. I think it will be a stalwart effort to get it all done. It’s to celebrate 25 years of Pimentos existence.

Published through Amazon, it will be interesting to see our final results and to have a launch in Lincoln at the end of March.

Pimento meetings in 2019....

We now meet on Tuesdays once a month at the Lincoln Library. Good venue with a round table and chairs for the dozen of us!

Plenty of superb poetry and stimulating discussion.

May it long continue.....

Hiraeth: the meaning…..

Its not just longing
Its belonging
Its beckoning
Calling
Rejoicing
Singing
From and in and to the hills
And Vales
And Wales.

Its Knowing
In the heart land
Be coming home
Wanting
Yearning
Burning
From and in and to.

Its memory
Fading
And awake
Remembering
The small and tiny
Pebbles on a beach
A summer peach
And speech
The preach of pulpit
From and in and to.

The beauty of a Blue
A mist
A time
Our time
The chime of Llandaff bells
Falling fading
River wading
Waters cascading
The drizzle of a drizsling
Singing gently gently
From and in and to.

The dark deep
Of a Forest sweep
The hollow steep
The hollow weep
Of gathering night
A last  ing sight
Before the flight
To sleep
From and in and to……

Vern September song 2018

Pimento Poets Next Meeting….

Hi Everyone,

How time is skipping by.

Our next session together will be on MONDAY 14th November, 2016.

Usual time: Arrive any time after 10 a.m. for a 10.30 start.
Usual Place:  Pimento Tearooms.
Usual arrangement: Bring some poetry….let's be reading it.

Looking forward to it and some  bright, intelligent, brilliant poems and discussion…..as usual.

With best wishes,

Vernon

As Above....So below..........................................

Pimento Poets meet to read and discuss their poetry….14th March 2016.

For our March meeting Sue Wallace will be leading the discussions on our work.

Please bring recent work which you want to read to the group.

We meet at 10.30 am but the room is available from 10 am if you want to arrive earlier.

Refreshments available from the tearooms.

Pimento Tearooms on 14th March 2016!

'As I Am' by Paul Mein.

 As I am

He is a man,
as I am,
but he plots in palaces,
holy places, holes in the earth.
His words reach
to soldiers, apostates,
blind followers;
words wrapped around
misguided, blinkered philosophies;
bleak words, excluding words,
inflaming words;
words inciting to hatred, killing
with extreme prejudice ­ the women who dare
to bare their heads,
teachers and writers
who set minds free,
the wide­eyed orphan in
the bombed­out basement,
the doctor trapped by bodies
in bold­drenched corridors,
men like me ­whose ‘crime’ is to
be overheard, seen,
in the wrong place, wrong time.
So I run, walk, carry, crawl
with others like me,
to break, an exhausted wave,
on the razor wire
of far borders,
tear gas and batons
our welcome to uncertain freedom;
ripped from our birth-country
because a man, as I am,
decides which side
of colour, belief, tribe
is right or wrong;
a man, as I am,
who plots in palaces...

©     Paul Mein      26/8/15

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

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

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 

A Norfolk April by Paul Mein.

 A Norfolk April

We struggle to keep upright,
walking along the sea wall, inches
above angry, bran waves, racing hard,
fast before the cruel-cold of a north-easter;
they break, dirty-white and dangerous,
against the stone wanderers,
imported to defend the coast,
or slap, relentless, against
stoic, thick-planked groynes
stretched between their metal supports,
spotted like an old man's arms
rusted by too much sun.

In the troughs
innocent marbling
gentle froth forming
dissolving swiftly
taking on the power
of racing crests.
Further out, taller end-posts drown quietly,
Gormley figures resigned to their fate.
Still further, the horizon's razor-cut;
deep-sea indigo spills into the sky beyond sight.

Man's work in digging, the sea's in rising -
a blurring of boundaries, a landscape at mercy,
where tides make uneasy those who live where they touch,
eyes casting constantly to combinations
of seasons, the moon, the winds,
creating a rushing, spilling, tree-salting force
which turns fresh water brackish, soaks doubt into hamlets
abandoned to sea-swallow and planners' priorities.

Across column-ploughed fields,
crisp-bordered by hedging,
we see the clear-edged certainty
of flint and stone towers,
churched to the heavens,
pointing to salvation for lost congregations.

©   Paul Mein  1/5/15

New poetry by Susan Flower

Angel Of The North

I raise tired eyes to encroaching dusk sky
Above Lincoln’s rail station trackside.
Golden tracks parallel thoughts of home;
Both his and mine.
Father relatively home at last in a home. 
Father-Christmas emblazoned tee-shirt 
Protects eighty-six years of dignity, pride
In his only great grand-daughter.
Evie stands four and a half years ’proud, 
Auburn curls halo red-cheeked excitement,
She grips his mobility-scooter handlebars,
Granddad beeps at corners, Evie hoots a warning,
Spinning around the top floor, 
Avoiding a corridor of closed doors.

A hushed silence broken by odd bells.
I do not ask for whom they toll.
We are cast both bell and striker,
Turn and turn about; in pealing melodies.
Presently I lift my camera to capture,  
Freeze a magnificent coral-pink angel as it hovers,
Wings raised to the heavens,
Piercing a gunshot-blue sky
And all my blank grey prejudices.                                                                       


Copyright: Susan Flower 2014

New poetry by Shirley Bell.

Emigration

That was a dandelion year, their faces turning with the light,
illuminating every roadside verge with their yellow countenances
on midsummer’s day as we drove you away from us.

From Thursday’s visa to Sunday’s plane you were unloosening your grip,
at such a speed, I never quite caught up with you. But your face was filled
with happiness, like the flowers’. How strange to see you loping to the gate
without a backward glance into a future in a new world we’d never seen.

Dent de lion. Those flowers have teeth; they bite me now whenever
I think of that hectic flight. I love your happiness, I love your wife,
but I still recall the years you flourished here with us.
And there’s still that morsel of me left that was sad to see you go.

We’ve visited. It’s alien to us. The flowers are different there,
the squirrels big and black; chipmunks don’t come in cages,
we can taste the dead skunk’s odour as the wheels roll over it.
Chickadees and hairy woodpeckers populate the trees that we don’t have.

Everything was like a dream I half remembered from all the films,
where I didn’t see those wooden houses. She always talked to us,
of our buildings made of brick and stone, the narrow roads which hug the
old boundaries, meandering through years of ownership. It came to life.

Hers is such a big country with so much space for you to stretch and grow.
Wildernesses press up against the highways, so many roads to cross
and cross again a continent. This is not a small world

Copyright by Shirley Bell.

Our Next Meeting…….

English: Uploaded from flickr.com Creative Commons section under an Attribution License. By Russell J. Smith. http://www.flickr.com/photos/russelljsmith/146216894/ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Pimento Poets next meet on Monday 9th February 2015, commencing at 10.30 am. A warm welcome awaits you at the Pimento Tearooms near Bailgate, Lincoln.

Pimento Poets: Meet the Poets: Susan Flower.

Susan Flower: member of Pimento Poets.

Pimento Poets: Meet the Poets: Sue Flower

Homecoming

I take the Romany’s sprigged heather,
tuck its pink tight buds curled like
baby fists tight as a talisman,
blue with longing, into my bag

I am pierced mid-flight
by a hint of traveller she sees
within – an Irish woman 
On the grandmother side

Ellen Glancy unschooled, catholic
in tastes and religion, 
Pawned her soul for potatoes
that lay rotting,bleeding
into darkened sod

Her pilgrimage to England
and Alfred, then retracing steps
to Enniskillen for the wedding,
returning   to peg washing
not in a whipped north-easterly
which cut the souls

Back cross grey waters
fretful and choppy, till her own
broke a tidal wave, her firstborn.
Homesick for emerald patches,
 a mercurial sky tilting meniscus
struggling for freedom

Iron rain lashes my face,
her slashed smile a rent petticoat.
Merging the troubles one with another,
I take her hand in mine,
it lies still but warm, without
need for words

C. Susan Flower 2012

Pimento Poets: Meet the Poets: John Malvert.

C.  Country-side Walk by John Malvert.

Pimento Poets: Maurren Sutton - Girls on the Bus.

Girls on the Bus

They’re both wearing the same kind of coat  
identical cut and colour of hair
odd socks that match each other
one blue, one grey, one grey one blue.
One pulls away an earpiece
while she boards, the other follows.
Ear pieces are back in, right ear for
the window girl left for her twin.
They’re mute, dead-pan faces.
The bus stops, one unplugs, both alight.
I watch as they walk away co-joined
by an ear cord as if
they’re back in the womb.



 Maureen Sutton
                                     01 11 20