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The Skylark

A fletched fanfare to the field
Pulses upward
Ladders the air
No regalia for this herald:
A flickering tattered grey-brown speck
Yet he cascades his song
Like a million pieces of silver
Glorying the sky
Owning the hunkered down, machine-torn hedges,
The tilled and tamed expanse beneath
Daring the wind, taunting
I’m here, he cries, I’m here
Awakening the wild joy in our hearts
Bone-bred memories of open heath and grassland.

Robert Lindsay

Currently Popular Poems:

Solitude of Pines

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Hawk Moth

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All of a sudden, I am awake and the sea is licking round my feet. A wall of muddy grey fringed with white assaults my mind and spirit jostling me from sleep. A wave has broken. I am alive. Felix stands on the sea’s edge; hardly a split second’s pause before he is stumbling forward, fearless into the waves, embracing the ocean, saying yes, yes I will, yes to his new friend. I have been sleep-walking, a spectator, unable to grasp this new role, the forgotten skills of grand-parenting lost in the wreckage that is Covid. Standing bemused in playgrounds, waiting for the light to dawn. Suddenly, I am woken by the waves, remembering what life consists of, remembering how to say yes, remembering how to say no, remembering what makes me who I am. Child of the sea. Julia Duke

Becalmed

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Dunwich

Dunwich, once second to London its bells still ring far out to sea when I was young I used to find skulls, ribs and femurs scattered down its cliffs, all now buried in my heart John