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