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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
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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
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Change

As  I stand with my feet in the ocean, and look at the setting sun, I think of how many me's, have stood in how many seas, but always stared at the same one. A snapshot of scenes in the movie of me, at various times of my being. A new version of me every single time; the same star I'm always seeing. It fills me with curious wonder, for the places that I may go; And the life that has yet to happen, and the things I have yet to know. Jess
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Seasons

To each a season: the planets Turn in Kepler's gyre, Swelling the mental weather, Fattening the wealth Of light and dark I weekly Feel in my own solitude. To each a season: a death Of what was hard and cold: A burst of sun to break My hoary sadness And gild the shining tower I build around your smile. But let's not talk of sun But speak instead of life And all the things I feel When living through mortality. The lovely times We feast and meagre times We only feed on memories. I have my seasons. Tim Holt-Wilson
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Pandemic

Piecing together all our hopes and dreams, joining the broken fragments of our lives, managing the pain of another loss, full of joy when finally together, society’s fabric hangs by a thread. Julia Duke
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River Stour Haiku

Wandering the bend, Bending around the wonder Meander reveals. Freda
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From one frog to humans, or 'Go dig a Pond'

Burnt summer, Another hot summer Without a drop of water I wait It’s only June. With ochre hives And forgotten tones Of emerald green Parched fields and thorny hegderows. A dead speckled wood I’d rather eat fresh Is on the menu today, tomorrow unknown. A bleak summer ahead, Our long forgotten cousins Creep steathily unseen Waiting silently for clouds. A buttercup-yellow Marsh marigold forest Croaked from Floating reeds and choked crispy chickweed. Andrew Toms
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Acronyms

PTSD PPE BA 2.75.2 Ratios, numbers, percentages “look after yourself…” they said. We were all Marcel Marceau feeling the invisible walls closing in. I was lucky, I could get out for 30 minutes Music in the car on the way home from the crem., to those invisible walls carrying the grief of the world on my shoulders and forever in my heart. Ratios, numbers, percentages “look after yourself… Suzanne
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River Linnet

River Linnet, A chalk stream In Bury. Rubbish, Let’s bin it Instead of Filling it. Edith St-King
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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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