Today’s choice
Previous poems
Margaret Baldock
Hurst Reservoir
In the sharpness of a January wind
we stepped down,
feeling with neoprened feet
for the safety of the edge.
Bags and clothes huddled
on a plastic picnic sheet.
We launched, lovingly
into dark and silky water
unknown yet benign.
Bodies at awkward angles.
Heads raised high against
the tiny vicious waves.
Crazy women some might say
but we laughed
with the joy of it, almost cried,
elation our reward for saying:
No! to fear of cold.
No! to fear at all.
Margaret Baldock is a retired NHS project manager whose poetry aims to express spirituality in the concrete everydayness of life. She lives in Derbyshire and practices as a spiritual director.
Liz Byrne
I want to be two-tongued again
To go back to the time when I slipped
from one language to another with ease,
Matthew Thorpe-Coles
You retreat back to your bedroom,
your headset cooler than any
sunlight . . .
S Reeson
only now is it apparent how
dishonouring a body is a crime
Paul Connolly
At Aber Falls
he felt nothing
water sheeted
past grottoes
snakes of tributary
lazed along
Cindy Botha
I notice her because she doesn’t have a dog
in an afternoon of dog-walkers
Alex Josephy
the goddess of the library
extends in cloth-bound curves
along a lettered shelf
Ben Banyard
There were hundreds of them, all in period costume,
each generation explained who they were,
queued like at a wedding reception to greet us.
Lindsay McLeod Espinoza
Venus passed over the south node of the Moon today
Ilse Pedler
She offered up her linen bag to me, said
pick a shell my lady and I’ll tell your fortune