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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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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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Cardamine Pratensis

after Laurie Lee, ‘Milkmaid’ ‘Tender cress and cuckoo-flower: And curly-haired, fair-headed maids, Sweet was the sound of their singing’* A pretty name, the ‘cuckoo flower’, just one of many guises: ‘Our Lady’s smock’, or ‘fairy flowers’ that come in varied sizes. The flower, they said, could bring bad luck so rarely picked for remedies; but sometimes risked to use like cress to pepper up the lunchtime cheese. The ‘May flower’ tells us when it blooms while ‘coco plants’ confuse the mind, the rustic ‘milkmaid’ seems to show an image that is less refined. The name suggests a dainty wench, just like the flower, a pleasant sight, who tends the herd in shaded barn in frilly smock, all dazzling white. They say the blooming coincides with cuckoo’s call; they may be right but milkmaids conjure up the mood of summer’s idyll at its height. Lee’s marigolds and buttercups and ‘brimming harvest of their day’ reveal to us a bygone time, remind us of those country ways. Julia Duke *From a 15th or 16...
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Green Swatches

My body will forget My thoughts will be Scattered Amongst Winter's Gloom. Amongst Nature’s Seasoned robes I walk and restore My broken thoughts. With widening strides I turn to the botanical essence Leaving traces of desire. To swatches of green I turn my attentiveness To refresh tomorrow’s thoughts. Jim  
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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.
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Insect Playground

Hidey holes and pockets of flowers Silhouetted with a lonely crow, watchful of artists. A jumble sale of geology, thoughts, and passers by; A granulated sugar platform Of sandy grains and apple pie. Abbey Tales Group  Poem
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Bones on the Shore

We walk the shoreline down in that dark dip at year’s end, while life’s still slumbering. The beach is a graveyard. We clamber, beneath ominous skies, through cathedrals of bones. Beached giants, prone on the sand, gaunt skeletons, arms uplifted, feet still reluctant to leave. In the lifetime of my children, these dinosaurs, these mighty oaks have fallen, their forms sculpted by time and weather, yet even in death they hold such power. They lie, steadfast as ever, awesome, majestic, statuesque, garlanded with gifts from the river: soft green fronds, little crabs, bladder wrack decorating their fingers. For centuries they stood strong, hearing the river’s song: ebb, flow, winter, spring, tide and moon rising, falling, curlew calling, calling. We will walk the shorelines at that bright time of new beginnings, now we are awakening. Jan Armstrong Photo by Daniel Lincoln via Unsplash
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Treasure Chest

A Spanish treasure Adrift, washed ashore To sea shingle Dunwich beach In fifteenth Century A lost key. Sue
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In the Skip of the Moon

In the skip of the moon I felt my life lighten, Held between worlds, Drifting slowly to the shore. Fathomed to the flow, Secure in the depths Of the hidden undertow Revealing it’s current. Dragged along, The awakening of freshwater To the spit of Orford, I swam ashore. April
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Above a Sea of Fog

Caspar David Friedrich, 'Wanderer above a Sea of Fog' (c.1818) She once said I looked like a graceful swan drifting serene across the surface of the water, giving no clue to the feet paddling so furiously beneath me. It was a cliché, small comfort unless you are obsessed with appearances. His wandering, like mine, is threatened by the drifting mist that twists and turns, obscuring paths that lie ahead, decisions that weigh so heavily on lesser minds, not lightly made. Masterful he looks, above this boiling sea, so nicely turned out, so dapper in his neatly tailored coat, perched high above the reach of such disorder, never likely to muddy his resolve. Webbed feet paddle beneath me so constantly I am not always aware. I dress well, tie back my unruly hair leaving a wisp or two free to roam. I do not want to look severe. But the fog creeps. Julia
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Mental Health

When is it really quiet? Underwater bubbles pop and sounds muffle. When drowning screams are choked by the deluge into mouth and larynx. Then there’s the sinking, the floating, the bloating. A Quakers’ meeting is quiet enough except for sniffs, breathing, the odd shuffle and the builders outside shouting and cursing about late cement. Then there’s catching up, and clicking back. Laying in clover and ox-eyes on a field is quiet but the wind wiffles leaves, whilst high up a buzzard screeches her woes. Does her mate listen? Then there’s the underground-scratching of moles. I meditate to find the quiet, swim to find stillness. I turn off radios, T.V., iphone, my mind. Yet cables buzz, aircraft streak across quiet skies plants and trees creak and sing as they grow. I seek the grail as I dance echoes of pain and joy I read my poems aloud, and then comes the silence. Sue Foster
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