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White Hawthorns

The day speaks of white hawthorn Sundays
Long washed out road trips, reluctant relatives
waving you off on arrival.

Rain from decades passed,
a swishing of glimpses.
Parents cramped and fretful.
Passing through a littered accompaniment
of faceless outlines.

Stretched out warming children, car sick,
scrunch up weathered newspapers.
Pungent smells of nostalgia,
almost Springs
bouncing forward hours.

Eager sweet wrappers lunge
for half opened windows
to adorn the floating blossom clouds
of hawthorn bushes,
March’s winds step in
much like a bone-chilled
but amiable hitch hiker.

A querulous sibling rolls over, sickening,
falls out in a screeching of tires.
Tearfully rain-splattered.

Another weekend pulled out and pegged up,
redolent of adolescences quickly traversed.

Mark Ereira-Guyer

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Mudstone mosaics and jumbled fractures - an uneven puzzle waiting; holy stone with leper marks, dotted and spotted black. Ever expanding lichen rings with double oil-spotted rainbow; angular rust-like stains Testing the presence of time. Clenched into cracks Of weathered rocks and broken messages; scarlet snapdragons trailing their cardinal stems. Damp buttress of moss clinging, Festooning the flint; ink spots, stone measles, proud thistle commanding the base. Random yet structured, closely inter-twined cobwebs Fastened carefully to parched and pocketed stones. Chaotic yet ordered toad-like grotesque within; marking essences of devoted and hidden faces. Picture flints grinning their caramel coffee smiles amongst Anglian crags, embracing their forgotten cousins. Stephanie To see the inspiration for this poem and hear it being narrated at the remains of the Leper Chapel, Dunwich, visit this page from our Chronicles of Greyfriars project website.

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