Today’s choice
Previous poems
Elizabeth Barton
On Diamond Hill
I didn’t
think of you once
as I climbed
past stunted willows
straggles of gorse
there was
no burning bush
but when
light poured through
each stone step
glittered
and I heard
crystals of song
spilling
from pipits’ throats
it wasn’t
until I got back
that I sensed
I’d met you
half-way up
where the ghost grass
quivered
and I recognised
your voice
in the chanting
of wind
on the moor
and my tears
welled up
like bog water
Elizabeth Barton is Stanza rep for Mole Valley Poets and facilitate creative writing workshops, such as a forthcoming one entitled, Portals into the Psyche: how fairy tales can enrich our writing. Her debut poetry pamphlet, If Grief were a Bird, was published in 2022 by Agenda Editions. Glimpses of Wilderness, a collaborative book of tanka poetry, art and natural history, was launched just before Christmas.
David Thompson
Scrolling through my inbox I hold down
the shift key, select all and mass delete
briefly feel the repose of the therapist’s couch.
Marcelle Newbold
Hope lies like the edge of a teaspoon, upward facing, a thickness
perhaps enough solidness to knife
through a banana or other soft fruit
Britta Giersche
a wooden door slams shut in my brain
a man perishes in a space the size of his grave from malnutrition eighty years ago
Abby Crawford
When I was born
the house was full
of stones, an old blacksmiths shed.
Rachael Clyne
And if a land loses its people and they
are exiled will a land feel their absence
Tom Nutting
They have been burying us,
not realising
we were seeds
of revolution.
Emily A. Taylor
I move my hand long
so yours will follow, and though
this moment tastes of tequila soda
paracetamol pillowed on a fizzing tongue
amnesia… pull me in anyway.
Steph Morris
No way would they let him keep that tag. They saw
a boy they must rename, must mark
from them, a boy whose limbs folded far too gently,
Eryn McDonald
It is here that the day breaks apart
Like ice on frustrated frozen pond
Here in the grounds of Ashton Court
I wish to bury myself amongst the green