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

Hard Frost

A night frost following an early spring
has blighted the magnolia. Now browned,
its petals droop and fall, littering
like yesterday's confetti on the ground.

Where is its glory now, perfection's blush
that stopped me as I walked to gaze and gaze?
That just one silent stroke could do so much
by stealth to spoil its subsequential days!

The man who walks his dog said, "Never mind.
There's always next year to look forward to,"
but what, of course, he could not understand
was that to me the lovely tree was you.

You, darling, cannot bloom in future years.
Your petals a finality - my tears.

Dorothy Pope

Coming Home

A piano plays,
warming the edge of thought.

Fuller than a radio, the music carries
the sense of skin pressing each note,
the sense of blood beating each beat,
an embodied song.

This is how you come home,
how you reclaim your space
in our lives.

The piano stops but the music stays,
warming the waiting air.

©Jane Upchurch
www.janeupchurch.co.uk

Answers On A Postcard

It was near the end of the world,
as I remember,
her sunset flecks written
over speedboat trails
before it was dragged across
the vacant, slurried beach.
She sent me here,
some journey back,
that pastel artist,
straggling up Porth Dinllaen's
rising slipway
under-arm sketches
in turquoise, mauve and black,
kindling mad and moody.
Unknown ships,
we jammed into chat,
on some delirious
boy's canvas.
No Inns, but a suggested out,
I should have caught.
The North-West jaunt, now
had soft beer for spirit,
and a Leica for eyes,
with the end closer than before,
as Aberdaron seawall, mosaiced
to a tomb stone collage
tilting the graveyard for
their nearing slide
splash-less
into the sea-deep.

Jerry Pike

Let's Get Lost....For Chet Baker, Jazz Man

Again the ceiling thumped, through black
and whitened flickers of the old,
as step by step, each muted track,
hummed from his lips, to heavens gold

A coil of brass let loose and long.
He played this funny Valentine.
steeped up in drugs, too higher song
that felled so many from their climb.

Those books of substance wrote his dues,
and planes touched down, but barely him
three countries banned him from their news,
but Paris heroed, pretty slim.

Deep down inside Le Chat Qui Pêche
the devils heat cooked up a gas
He never knew which chord to wish,
but hell he’d hypnotised the mass,

The beat set, and its women drooled,
he built them stairways out of smoke
and walking down, each woman fooled,
on green, green grass of home (and coke).

Alfa Romeo, made his day,
unlike in broken sixty-eight,
when caught they knocked his teeth away.
#six months before he proper ate.

Khaki fatigues, pyjama stripes,
accounts from prison, laid no sin.
Outside his own career he swipes
at any way to get back in.

Then loads of Secanol delayed,
he crossed the age of fifty-eight,
and balconies just watched him fade,
out of that Paris jazz debate.

I’m deep in dream for you he’d say,
come let’s get lost, inside my head,
and slicked brown hair, brushed all away
now Dizzy, Miles and Bird are dead.

but when Chet blew, his notes curled up
in smokey blue where moonbeams hide.
And when he sang, all hearts stood still,
the ceiling thumped,
and angels cried.

Jerry Pike

For jazz trumpeter and singer, Chet Baker.