Today’s choice
Previous poems
David Van-Cauter
Bats
You are pleased to see me
in my gothic T-shirt –
those bats, you say, have been your friends.
Throughout the months you think you’ve been here,
they have perched above your bed,
protectors,
telling you by sonar, not to fear.
Without them, you tell me,
you would have given up
so many times.
Hard to say
whether the bats have clung to you
or you to them,
but it’s good to have some friends
when your world turns upside down.
David Van-Cauter’ is a personal tutor based in Hitchin, Herts. This year he was shortlisted in both the Live Canon and Free Verse competitions. His pamphlet Mirror Lake was published by Arenig in 2019 and a new collection is forthcoming.
Lucy Heuschen
It is known: a woman like that
brings evil on board.
Carolyn Oulton
Heat on the window
baking my face like a biscuit.
I move some hair, look over
at moss and narcissi, in a pot –
Jennifer A. McGowan
You have buried your mother and put
a memorial bench on a high hillside where
the wind blows sunsets straight through
and it’s always better to wear something warm.
Matt Bryden
You used to wind yourself in curtain turning taut,
look down at your feet, pirouette
as the fabric hugged you in.
James Coghill
the undershrub, shored up,
stakes its waspish claim,
its hereabouts
Peter Bickerton
The gull
on the meadow
taps her little yellow feet
like a shovel-snouted lizard
dancing on a floor of lava
Lydia Harris
ask this place
ask the silver day
the steady horizon
the self-heal the buttercup
the hard fern in the ditch
ask the bee and the tormentil
Seán Street
Dogs in spring park light
pulled by intent wet noses
through luminous grass
Becky Cherriman
What does it wake me to
as sky is hearthed by morning
and my home warms slow?