by Helen Ivory | Apr 15, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
After the forest fire Because we were four and I only had strength to carry one and knew no other way I carried the one who called out loudest; threatened us most. You two were left to walk behind in the dust of hot, dry summer and the heavy mud...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 14, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
The Inspiring As you rummage of a morning among dust-furred personal effects jumbled in an old wooden suitcase under a bed and seeming to belong to no-one, you find a woman about whom the world, if it ever supposed at all, supposed only...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 13, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Lines Written in Early Spring The Lake District Tourist Board has had no input into what you are now reading, but I so miss Cumbria in Holy Week; late March or early April; snow on the tops or a cold sun vying with a cold wind; congregations of chaotic...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 12, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Red as a fairytale Who will pick the apples now she’s gone? Orchards of eaters, cookers, some red-fleshed that she’d harvest and lay on racks, then gather those on the ground, struggle down with bag-loads to dump on my doorstep. No note. As...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 11, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
The Girl with Goldfish Under Her Skin She has few secrets with her translucent map skin of blue underground rivers visible to scale. Contours of overlapping knots oblivious to each other and to you – mesmerised by the girl with goldfish under her...
by Helen Ivory | Apr 10, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Cepaea nemoralis A dozen snail shells exposed on dry soil in the archangel’s cut brown stalks. Banded like fairground sweets and helter-skelters, but forget all those frivolous stripey things. These are brittle, open-mouthed vacancies, void of the...
