Reconciliation

A country at war
drops bombs from feral planes
and an arsenal of hate and fear
from the media,
exploding darkness in our hearts
as well as death on their streets.

Afterwards
it is the hearts that take longest
to mend,
sheltering the shrapnel
of hostility.

Moving forward
requires recognising
the humanity and frailty
that link us,
getting down into the dust bath
of forgiveness,
lifting up the open hand
of reconciliation.

©Jane Upchurch
www.janeupchurch.co.uk

In Praise Of Slow

Daydreamers know they only seem
to spin the world who rush and steam-
rollerthe money making scheme
with workaholic self esteem.

In hammock hung from apple bough
ideas come, it's not known how.
Inventors, poets all avow
the idling minds the one endowed.

with thought. The Newtons, Wordsworths know
the fruitfulness of going slow,
of gazing, musing, strolling so
let's pause a while and wiser grow.

Dorothy Pope

African Statue

Why does he cry so loud?
Is he homesick living
amoung such gentle greenery?
Does out misted light
leave him stifled-
he whose horizon lies
thirty miles away
where he cannot reach out
to touch the nomad camels?

Is the autumn sky
too fragrant with rain?
He opens his mouth so wide-
is it to catch the sacred drops
so anxiuosly awaited in his country,
so shruggingly dismissed in mine?
Or does he gasp for breath
desperate for the desert air
sullied by sand by unpoluted
by our raucous fumes?

I am not of his world.
The desert camels and the sand
are not for me. Yet
I am uneasy in his presence.
I fear him in his elemental needs.
I have lost his joy in the rain
and the crispness of the clear October light.
The city's rush and rumble overwhelm
and heedless I inhale its exhalations.
I am too much of our world
and he recalls me constantly to his.

Sylvia Goodman

Reflecting

I wiped someone's life from the picture
not thoughtlessly, or maliciously
just unaware.
The date gave you twenty years
an incomplete sentence
topped with dust.
I drew closer to turquoise
and dark green reflections
paddling through the pier rain
as we looked out.
Four empty deckchairs
held by wind-rivets,
and more than enough fun
for two waxed jackets
golf brolly
and a flask of
piping hot smiles.

Jerry Pike

Newcomer

He entered the water like an ancient walrus
and struggled down the ladder at the shallow end
to join me in the slow lane,
wobbling and panting in his fat old age.

Seeing the pot belly and hearing him wheeze
I believed this at last was my time to shine,
and knew as he fell into his feeble breast stroke
I would no longer be the swimming pool joke.

Joyful, I sped after the wrinkled shoulder blades
lunging and splashing past his weak wallowing
and then swirled ahead, swivelling onto my back,
frolicking carelessly like some aquatic acrobat.

Thus, chortling dolphin to his manatee bulk,
I witnessed with a trickle of dread doubt
how he surfaced like a wounded hulk,
and suddenly broke into a slow, methodical, crawl.

Only then did I see my deluded mistake
as, arms crashing tirelessly through the water
like steamboat paddles, first he surged level,
then left me to splutter in his wake.

Peter Keeble