Today’s choice

Previous poems

Ash Bowden

 

 

 

Composting

Out again with the pitchfork churning
compost into the old green bin, stinking
and silent as an ancient earthen vat.

Here, dirt makes no distinction
between trench beds and the twirling earth.
Onion shavings conspire to life

by bringing fresh tears to our eyes.
The whole rotting heap hushes
over the tunnelling of pink worms

and it is a war kept close to the weeds;
potato skins kissing dried dandelion leaves
as if to clothe a skeleton key.

It’s best we shush. Pigeons
have occupied the neighbour’s clothesline,
and the evening’s keen to keep a lid on it

Ash Bowden is a Halifax based poet whose work has previously appeared in The Cherita and Confluence, and he is seeking more publications to work his way towards publishing a pamphlet. He can be found on Instagram @ashbowpoet, on bluesky @ashbowpoet.bsky.social and on Facebook at Ash Bowden Poet.

Jean O’Brien

Winter soil is hard and hoar crusted,
birds peck with blunted beaks,
pushing up are the blind green pods
of what will soon be yellow daffodils,
given light and air.

Jean Atkin

We scoured the parish tip most weeks, when we were kids.
We clambered it in wellies.  Ferals, we scavenged
in the debris of the adults’ lives.

Lesley Curwen

Her feet snagged in a cleverly-placed net
my sister waits for him to untangle her,
to hold her head still between thick fingers . . .

From the Archives: In Memory of Jean Cardy

      Denizens Mice live in the London Tube. A train leaves and small pieces of sooty black detach themselves from the sooty black walls and forage for crumbs in the rubbish under the rails that are death to man. You can’t see their feet move. They...