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‘R’ You Saving The World?

globe of the Earth with a supportive hand underneath it
Some of us R trying:
Recyclers, re-users and repairers;
riders of bicycles and rev-ers of electric cars;
reducers of emissions with bio-mass boilers,
roof solar panels, and residents who use them,
really sustainable developers,
       with rainfall harvesters and run-off tanks;
regular givers and those who limit usage of finite resources;
radical learners who know what’s safe, not toxic nor wasteful;
radiant fashionistas in natural fabrics, not man-made rayons;
rich beauties who never use micro-beads in ‘products’;
radgie gadgies who put their newspapers into the blue sulo;
ruddy faced growers of organics who reject chemicals;
reflective designers of biodegradables who create wrappings
    and rubbish that rots rapidly;
religious genetic engineers who’ve worked out the ethics;
researchers who grow food with hydroponics;
readable writers who explain global warming,
    so oRdinaRy people understand;
realistic politicians (The Green Party)
    who plan for the planet not just for now;
revolutionary citizens who vote ecologically,
resourceful pupils in gardening clubs, growing radishes and runners,
retired folk, volunteers in conservation projects, who make compost;
Rwandan game-keepers who care for rhino,
Russian zoo-keepers who breed endangered raptors,
rustic bird lovers who refill seed feeders regularly,
retailers who refuse to sell plastic,
people who use renewables over and over again,
and I refill a reusable glass bottle to rehydrate.

Sue Foster



Photo by Greg Rosenke via Unsplash

Currently Popular Poems:

Covehithe

Driftwood trunks Many moons ago Float ashore Sally

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

Blue Sky

Blue sky And clouds float by Looking up high I can see why They do fly Blue sky Mavis

Leper Chapel - Screams from the Past

Ghost-like stones Of crumbled chalk And forgotten dreams: A leper screams. Lost limbs and Fallen faces: Nuns and monk’s graces Lost to leprosy. Condemned to the chapel: Painful screams, Disfiguring disease In Eleventh Century. A prosperous port To Dunwich they came, Outside Pales Dyke -The fortified ditch. Fragments of columns, Wind-worn capitals And carved Caen stone: Soulless shadows alone. Sandstone arches Guarding unearthly silhouettes Of threatened and isolated lepers Forbidden to work. Medicinal monk-fussing ointments Of hemlock, henbane and mandrake. Preparing for surgery, Opium alerts and vinegar-dabbed faces. Herbs soothing bacteria progressing; Curved sandstone arches Clasping the ghost-like shadows, Echoing the delicate gloom. Stephanie

Silence in Class

Into a cushioned pillow Amplified silences Signal a crushing loss and services unknown. An unofficial Query Offers hope to the unknown Forgotten in resonance and steep memories. Traumas unveil A mask of deception Decades of vicious darkness an undercover supply. Anon.

After Ozymandias

I met this itinerant in a van He says, “two huge cables dangle from cliffs In Dunwich, on the slant, with a casing round There’s printing on it where the shingle shifts And drags at the retreating sandy ground A bold script part-survives through rust, in blue A knowing, falsely modest, lower case Proclaims a proud legend for all to view Who crunch along the edge of Doggerland It tells me that the national grid renew… the rest corrodes into the shingle strand And that’s it. I’d have liked a cup of tea But the café is long gone beneath the waves” A gull skims the surface of the grey sea. Rod Smith

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

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 .

Leper Chapel - Mosaics of Time

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.

Ready to Spring

Like the gnarly springtime bulbs, dormant in the ground Your demons crouch under the skin, waiting to be found Waiting for their moment, to break through and be seen The pale face of snowdrops, in a vibrant sea of green Emmalene Taylor