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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

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Pollard Willows at Sunset

Van Gogh, 'Pollard Willows at Sunset', (1888) Under a throbbing sun, trees stand tall, coldly blue against the summer glow. Gnarled, knobby and defiant, they raise their hands to the yellow sky, where, high above, a shining globe dispenses lemon-coloured radiance. As the sun sinks, the trees settle down for a brief night of repose, whilst the sap still rises, triumphant, resisting, mirroring the cut and thrust of life. Together, they reach for the sky. Behind them the coruscating water proclaims its own blue indispensability: light, warmth and water, hallowed gifts of life on which the whole earth depends. Julia

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Solitude of Pines

With a frail And uncertain future Breathing in rhythmical pines Calms my thoughts. Solitude I seek Within the forest Amorphous blankets of snow Covering crestfallen waves. Spirited wind Melancholy whispers A tear falls Past traumas relived. Ephemeral bird calls Wispy clouds and frost Revitalises lost energies I no longer feel lost.     Matthew  

To Shed My Youthful Skin

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Behind Your Smile

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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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Flowing alongside water's edge An overflow of activity And constricted Jumbled thoughts. Broken passages and swollen memories of channelled energies And intermittent promises. Hungry vines Competing for light Succumbed to the fragility of life. Awash with echoed considerations Downstream they float Towards a bareness. Dynamic vitality Sparkling from the frontier Invigorated to the final source. Daniel  

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I dug myself a hole I planted a tree, I wanted to bury my thoughts But now I’m free. Helen

Sweet Diatoms

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North Transept

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