Fern Hill (After Dylan Thomas)

As I was young and uneasy far from the apple boughs,
About the silent house, unhappyas the streets were grey,
The sun above me cold and flat,
Life held me tight and sighing
Caught in the turmoil of my time,
And forgotten among commuters
I was lost in the timeless town
So when I sank to sleep
the farm peopled my dreams
Faded from colour to white
Down the rivers of the windfall night.
 And as I was dark and burdened,
alone among the stars,
Sitting in the school and listening
as the farm was born
In the poem that was young once more,
Time let me stretch and be
Golden in the mercy of his words,
And new and golden
I was loved and farmer, the fields
Rang to my touch,
the sunlight on the hills
shone clear and bold
And the spirit sang, glowing
In the ripples of the flowing streams.
All the day long it was humming,
it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as my home,
the sound of the swallow, it was free
And flying, food and water
And green as flame.
The sungrew round that very day.
Nothing I cared, in my sky blue daze,
that soil and mortar
In their dust and drying
and the cobwebs of dying things
Clung to the soles of my feet
Fir I sang in my chains like the sea.

 Jane Upchurch

DESPAIR

I used to think I knew the ways of verse,
and that I kissed its purposes and methods:
to amuse and entertain,
to admire, educate, describe and politicise,
to transform and to sustain
sometimes with just a simple list.
Then I read Terrier in rape
and despaired at my ignorance
and at how it gave no explanations
but held that mass of yellow smells
up to the dog within us all,
how seen from above by bees
it's only an atom's track immersed
within the yellow rape:
and how all this just is,
like the very universe.

Peter Keeble

The World's Gone Out

The World’s Gone Out.
 It stole my moleskin trilby
grabbed a beige Mack by the door
and scooted.
Leaving my dwelling
on the good times
of fourteen across,
pencilled in and near completion.
I sketched missing links on paper
got out of my brain
slid to the floor
and wandered about,
seeing things as they were
prodding past experiences into life,
and quizzing them
from my new freer perspective.
The world raced on,
and no one to stop me
I chased after it
sneaked through a window
and gazed back blurred
at a congealing mist
that crossed my essence,
as I ran moonward
Dancing unhindered,
empty as air
I smiled at the nothing I’d become.
Joking and talking to people
who couldn’t see me,
I bumped into another nobody
we hugged
the world stood still
and doffed my hat.

 Jerry Pike

Those Feet (With apologies to William Blake)

And did those feet, a lovely thought,
tread England's grasses sandal-shod
or is this mere idea, caught
in wishful thinking's web? He's trod

the walkways of the mind of man
world-wide for centuries and so
to want him here in Avalon
is natural but can we know?

The facts add up and there are years
of His life unaccounted for.
A thorn tree for his crown of tears
is rooted on this English shore.

The rational remain aloof.
"It's possible," our minds admit,
"though only that for lack of proof,"
Yet instinct clamours, "I know it."

Dorothy Pope

Holiday

The sun is a bowl
holding heat on my skin
like love,
soaking into my bones,
into my mood
like balm.

My knots unravel,
my pressures melt away.

I am butter, oozing.
I am apple pie,
peeled and baked and brown.

I have brought all of me
on holiday,
my toes, my tears, my ears,
the whole package
so we can each unwind.

This is meditation,
my mind not chasing plans,
past and future folded away,
just the glorious, sun-filled
present.


©Jane Upchurch

Record Shop

The hallowed deck
warmly rubbered
span to life
its beating art
sent thumping
into wood box speakers
watt-filled copper cables
topping up the shop's life
causing people to nod
rhythmically
to kick and snare
exploding mid range
Tannoys
and herding bass lines
route one
through the rib cage.

Jerry Pike

Sunbathers

As snow blows
and we huddle in our
hoods and scarves
trees drop their leaves
and abandon last years fashion,
scattering skirts and underwear
to display their nakedness
like children on a beach.

Today the early morning sun
caught their dark bark
and lit it bright with orange
as they stretched their arms
to the sky
and basked in the sunlight
letting the glow bronze their skin.

Winter is an intimate
time of year
for trees.

©Jane Upchurch
www.janeupchurch.co.uk

Evacuee

She washed up in a shoreside terraced cottage
fostered by a Devon couple, gentle,
loving, in this haven came to know
the heaven of a sandy beach. With pail
and wooden spade, she reconstructed house,
cathedral, school and sweet shop ubder skies
with no more in them than unworried gulls
which skimmed her pet name here of Dimples, limned
in capitals, in sand the perfect stage
of damp, with with edges of spade and then with shells.
She paddled in the playful waves with squeals
of new delight, quite cleansed of dread. In bed,
tucked, lulled, she breathed, in sleeping synchrony,
the soothing music of the rhymic sea.

Dorothy Pope

Open-air Baths, West Harrow

She told him that while there were still scrappy fields
all around the estate
each Monday their school made them swim
in the open-air pool
- even in Novembers.

He had seen Johnny weismuller open it
young years before that
saw the great Olympian thrash a top-speed length
before his whole class splashed in
- this he alwats remembers.

Now half way through the winter they sit clasping hands
in the low-ceilinged lounge of their sheltered unit.
As each stares into the embers,
she shivers at the thought of the bitterest cold
while he exullts in the movie star's glow.

Peter Keeble

Geezers Of Nazareth

I know the decorations must be somewhere,
seen photographs of when I'd fixed them up,
and memories are drawing-pinned there with them,
a yesterday from which I'll take a sup.

I watched and wished a big star in the night sky
from childhood tales of Christmas just begun,
and underneath a smile I had forgotten,
I trekked back to the birthplace of his son.

The roads were just a mud patch, dried and stony,
the king would surely never venture here,
but sure enough old Elvis rocked the manger,
and three wise men at least, broke out the beer.

I caught a glance, some fat bloke in a window,
dressed up in green, he punched his mobile's text,
it isn't true, he said, but …what the Dickens,
that’s Santa, selling gifts to undersexed.

Outside the corner tent, Patel was cursing,
his luck was low, and pine trees touched the sky,
he also stacked up angels and some starlight,
and paper chains, but no one knew quite why.

Then up the road came shepherds drunk on sheep dip,
each sang their hallelujahs and passed wind,
they'd come in fancy dress, geezers of Nazareth,
and as they stormed the barn, the wise ones thinned.

Each squinted in the candle brightened hay stack,
a child was born, sang Mathis (to their shock),
they all got down and partied with old Mary,
and Joseph pulled some JD from his frock.

I heard that some years later, short on shekels,
young Jesus (who'd been inside left for Rome),
signed books, and balls to anyone he'd hated,
his online blogging buzz, slid to a drone.

Now leaning on this lamp post, where once gas light
would rest its glow on hardened, weary souls,
take note from lowly ancients and their fan base,
and write yourself a bible, don't score goals.

Jerry Pike