Today’s choice
Previous poems
Jenny Hockey
Circulation
Crouched above the stream he dug,
known by his kid-along brother
as the dry gulch, its circulation pump
rarely switched on, I’m not just
weeding but digging wormy compost
into the banks, pruning the hebe
and dredging winter’s detritus, banishing
slime and renewing the silted pebbles,
till by the end of this warm afternoon
a long bubbling flow springs from the top
of the garden, hurrying between rocks
before tumbling into the pond and back
as he comes home with a coin of blood
on the bandage at his wrist, occlusions
in his arteries, an aortic valve on the blink
and a hospital date some months ahead.
Later we talk gardening, my daughter
and I, the clogged stream, free-flowing
now. In some societies that’d be
job done, she says — we laugh.
Jenny Hockey is a Sheffield poet who’s published in magazines such as The North; Ink Sweat & Tears; The Frogmore Papers and Dreamcatcher. She reviews for Orbis and her collection, Going to bed with the moon appeared in 2019 (overstepsbooks.com) (jennyhockeypoetry.co.uk)
Fran Hayden
a friend messaged me:
“every time I see sunflowers,
I think of you”
Betty Doyle
Both cast out to sea, I wonder –
did your ashes ever meet?
It was under the same sun setting,
although years and miles apart.
Mark Rutter
when the people are gone
and the wooden house
has been burned down
to recover its nails
Gráinne Daly
Not for me the tomb of Irish soil.
Put me on a plane
and let me make one last journey
before my final departure.
Rebecca Cohen
If you don’t believe in God, my friend says,
why don’t you eat pork?
Rhian Thomas
On my phone a newsreel shows a car boot lifting
just above the flood. Tail lights like eyes
caught in a comic gasp, while its body, like the carriageway,
lies under sixty million litres of last night’s rain.
Sue Norton
Today I tipped the packet of coffee
into the cafetiere instead of the tin.
Caught myself in time, didn’t pour water in.
Steph Morris
Who’s idea was it? I think his, as I’d started
wearing everything from Oxfam. Among my finds
collarless shirts.
Kathy Pimlott
Going down to do lights and curtains to fool any burglars Twilight: one after another security lights click on illuminating pathways, steps, empty front lawns, triggered by my benign progress, then, disappointed, click off. The sky is a layer cake...