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Eucalyptus Grove, Nowton Park, Bury St Edmunds

Where koalas climb
Your essence exudes
Striped bark, 
An Everlasting glade
Of inspiration
Comfort and reassurance
In a changing world.

Oval olive leaves
With yellow veins enriching 
The aroma,
Crisp and sturdy.

Your ghost white-dusted
Cigarillo rolls,
Like long brittle fingers
Scattering the ground.

Sometimes smooth
and simple,
Sometimes crispy
and rough,
your colourful patchwork; 
my secret makers-stamp
revealed.

Louise


Currently Popular Poems:

A Way of Life

It’s become a way of life this summer, the canvas bag slung over my shoulder hoping not to need it hoping the sky will stay blue long enough to get a walk by the sea. It’s become a way of life this summer, wearing my green jeans, wearing a matching sweatshirt to keep the wind out, wearing green wherever possible to match my green cagoule in case I need it. It’s becoming a way of life, it’s true, this life of uncertainty which nags at the back of your mind and keeps you constantly looking up the weather on your phone. It’s a way of life, this anxiety which sends me scurrying for help when it mushrooms out of control in the middle of the night. Julia

Woodpecker Squall

The five feathers of Autumn weather Were a woodpecker’s downed chatter Under an Oaks wings And the rain’s prism sang in my lashes Over and over Ring in fast skies September October The beak of the sky Pummelled the wood But I dried it’s staccato why By waving the feathers of my hand Until the spots merged Back to fine weather Then left altogether. Stephen Kirin

Ringtides

With a rising tide My heart holds no boundaries between waves. Thomas

Erosion

Unerring yet erratic The weight of water never waits for readiness Sandstone is proven to be a two-faced liar a pretence of solidity written into the features of its rockface which crumbles under a wave’s supremacy and we wave goodbye to all we knew Lynne Nesbit

Greyfriars

If ever there were dragons they left their passion here in garnet schist and granite,  crazy migmatite of marbled black and white: hot scramblings of the pluton. What's left of monks is bony, hard to see: a grassy field where horses crop and starlings pop and bubble natter-songs of seed and insect, feeding over buried walls. Cobble-flocks and boulders Cluster; mortared stone reliques tell crustal stories deeper than our poor humanity. Churches pass and minsters fall: the pagan flints remain. Tim

Becalmed

I can no longer dot the i’s, nor cross the t’s. A pale haze, like Sunday afternoons, pleasant after a glass of wine too many, drifts across my day. I am at peace. I find myself disposed to acquiesce, content to live life at this gentle pace, content, it seems, with how life’s focus, now diminished, takes on the softened blur of evening light. Something sharp is lost. But the time for mourning it is done. The wind that swelled the sails has dropped, the tide recedes, the fierceness of the sun is quenched, leaving the sunshine’s golden glow that speaks the lateness of the hour. A taste of salt upon my lips - no call for worry or regrets - a bitter-sweet recall of what has gone. Julia Duke

Feathers

It’s as if all the birds In every weather Had dropped every feather The weight sometimes Of all those why's A ton of lead Or a ton of words unsaid Down on a feathered bed The weight belies The width of squawks When the birds are dead And they sing remembering When a ton of song Weighed the same as Fly away Autumns Flu away fall Feather or not Bird at all. Stephen Kirin

Masked Stranger

I sit alone in a void Waiting, anticipating my fever. A masked stranger takes my arm Jabs me To protect me from a crazy world Like bird flu A mass epidemic to destruct. Like the virus itself Knowing no borders Anxiety crosses the room. I wait ten minutes A lifeline of protection.   Anon

Shaping the Landscape

  I am enclosed under a canopy of overhanging shade, where majestic trees rustle in dappled sunlight.  I am surrounded by shapes, by twisted fronds  of birds’ nest ferns and leaf spikes that  thrust sharply upwards against the light.   A spring bubbles through cushions  of moss. Dark green waters trail  water lilies; water boatmen  judder across the surface of the pond. Softness,  sharpness, textured and structured, mingle together,  cradling me in  the shelter of their arms.   Julia Duke