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.
JLM Morton
In a dull sky
the guttering flame
of a white heron
Tonnie Richmond
We could tell there was something
we weren’t allowed to know. Something
kept hidden from us children
Morag Smith
When the waters broke we were
out there, borderless, with just
a view of bloodshot sky from
the labour suite
Gordon Scapens
Stripping wallpaper
leaves naked the scrawls
of yesteryear’s children,
small forecasts of flights
that are inevitable.
Chrissy Banks and Antony Owen (from the IS&T archives) for Holocaust Memorial Day
Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep Goodnight moon, goodnight stars, goodnight cherry, pear, apple tree. Goodnight pond, stop wriggling, newts, stop zipping the water, water-boatmen. Goodnight, glossy horses on the hill, rabbits in the field, white...
Clare Bryden
how do I begin?
Yvonne Baker
an etherial whiteness
that covers and disguises
as a strip of white frosted glass
Hilary Thompson
Ambling up North Street
on a Saturday afternoon
at the end of a long Winter,
I am stopped by two women
Irene Cunningham
Lavender seeps. I expect my limbs to leaden, lead the body down through sheet, mattress-cover, into the machinery of sleep where other lives exist.