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Ominous

Unexpected darkness descends With a decrepit desire for long absent affection, clutching at thin wispy ends with diminished thoughts and caged responses my deserted smile departed. Jill
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Who Is Saving The World?

The recycler, bicycler, bio-masser and solar paneller, the sustainable developer, the charity worker, the medics (sans frontieres?), fundraisers and carers, givers and listeners, growers of organics, designers of biodegradables. Genetic engineers? Surgeons and researchers, forgivers and forgetters, Billy the bug hunter, Immy the mathematician, Troy the paratriathelete, Wendy the wigwam maker. The ones who go last, the ones who smile, the ones who don’t want to argue about it, the ones who give up their seat, the ones who calm a storm, the ones who cook up a feast, the ones who sing praises, the ones who shine, Auntie Gwen and Malala…… ….and I drink water from a glass bottle. Sue Foster Image by Fernando via Unsplash .
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Ballinasloe Station

Flood plains replenished and diminished, a deceiving here-and-there fluidity and the flat statement of stubborn water. Occasionally trackside trees are stranded, littered in swirling pools that soundlessly disappear. On the horizon, tall walls and radio mast mark the far-off asylum neatly screened with its avenue of trees. The people are hidden beyond the town, their tears reaching as far as the railway lines. The train navigates the flood’s edge like logic escaping emotion, trim engineering escaping danger, holding firmly onto the rails. (Ballinasloe was a major mental home in County Galway) Pat Jourdan
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Oak Meadow

B anished by force are warmth and sunlight Where we scratch and hack in the undergrowth. Nature’s front line is well entrenched here, In-grown and wiry with brambles and brash. Ages running wild, seeding and shooting At will, snagging, choking and smothering Have toughened her. In self-strangling struggle She scrabbles and claws her resistance – A tortuous mesh of trip-lines, barbs for skin And slips for boots in the mush underfoot. Old, alone and confused, like a geriatric tramp She bristles in layers of shredded sacking. Let’s tease out her bits, put to the burning Barrow-loads of combings; rake up the mess On her breast, sticky with burrs and briars; Open her up to the sun, re-stitch her Seams in woven hedgerows, with patches of Flowers fight back the years. Waken Beauty, Give bees and butterflies her face to love And we too will grow young with the work. Julian Case
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Spreading Health

How much better it is to use a hanky or tissue than to propel germs, bacteria, viruses. How much better to keep that hanky up your sleeve then to wash it in 30 degrees or to compost that tissue for bugs and worms to consume making soil to grow food for health. Sue Foster Photo by Diana Polekhina via Unsplash  
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Covid Funeral Haiku

To an empty room As she told their story The clean air vibrated Clare
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Torn Apart

Afterwards it was a long process, two years rolled into ten, of letting go, letting it out. She stumbled through days, drank warmed milk or camomile, paced all night. She worked; walked in the green; bathed in geranium and rose oil hot baths; and only talked to those friends who made her laugh. No sugar, no wine, went vegan, but tears, so much wetness like the churning of rainwater tumbling into a ravine frothing, drowning she fought for breath. She tried counting her blessings. She put on the lost smile, pretended. She made consciously positive statements about herself, about others. No-one knew. She went to happy places, spent time with good people. She allowed the tears, gushing taps, to drench at night kissing her lips with salt, with stinging, with coldness. Sometimes, now, even after all these years words needle her memory, but that is the stitching pulling, snagging. Soon there will only be a scar. No getting over it. Just a mend to staunch the bleeding. Sue Foster
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Cardamine Pratensis

after Laurie Lee, ‘Milkmaid’ ‘Tender cress and cuckoo-flower: And curly-haired, fair-headed maids, Sweet was the sound of their singing’* A pretty name, the ‘cuckoo flower’, just one of many guises: ‘Our Lady’s smock’, or ‘fairy flowers’ that come in varied sizes. The flower, they said, could bring bad luck so rarely picked for remedies; but sometimes risked to use like cress to pepper up the lunchtime cheese. The ‘May flower’ tells us when it blooms while ‘coco plants’ confuse the mind, the rustic ‘milkmaid’ seems to show an image that is less refined. The name suggests a dainty wench, just like the flower, a pleasant sight, who tends the herd in shaded barn in frilly smock, all dazzling white. They say the blooming coincides with cuckoo’s call; they may be right but milkmaids conjure up the mood of summer’s idyll at its height. Lee’s marigolds and buttercups and ‘brimming harvest of their day’ reveal to us a bygone time, remind us of those country ways. Julia Duke *From a 15th or 16...
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Post Traumatic Stress

Your steps alert yet furtive, Your actions so subdued, The walls you'd built around yourself, No others heard or viewed. Your senses sharp and heightened, Reacting to small cues, Kept memories lingering in your head No others heard your news. Self protection served its purpose, Of course, and that made sense, But little did you know that, It was all in the past tense. Relief it was short lived, in fact, The price that was to pay Was that years had passed before your eyes With not living in today. So walls built strong like concrete, Impermeable to most, Restricted you so badly, With the past a haunting ghost. Those dreams seemed like reality, Like you were still right there, The terror you experienced then again, Unjust and unfair. In later years you found a way, A chance to start again, Each gentle step to live once more, Crawling gently from your den. Putting back the chaos, That ran amok inside your head, Gave you strength to start to live, And deal with all the dread. Then pea...
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River Linnet

River Linnet, A chalk stream In Bury. Rubbish, Let’s bin it Instead of Filling it. Edith St-King
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