Silver Spun Sand Poems

Selection of Poems

Comments

Hi Tina,

I'm sure I commented on your poem about the lady with arthritis ... and the bird in the cage... and now it's gone? Hope all is ok?

Thanks, $

 

Cherry

Black Willow

To know I will never see your face again ...
1 likes
Cherry

Buried Treasure

...'Stones', or rather 'Neolithic tools' as his granddad had described them.
Cherry

Came the Sandman

Evening crept – liquid chocolate... dark and soft like the fur of a kitten...

The Last Cigarette

I hid my cigarette in the fold of my coat...
Cherry

"Hi Ho Silver Lining"

“...and away you go now baby; I see your sun is shining..."

"Hi, Mum...it's me"

“You remember," I say. She doesn’t answer, but I just carry on, anyway.

"I Am ..." I Said (I.P.)

(Edit) "Oppression can only survive through silence." Carmen de Monteflores
Cherry

"I Loves You Porgy"

“Someday I know he’s coming to call me. He’s going to hold me, so it’s going to be like dying, Porgy... but when he comes, I know I’ll have to go.” Ira Gershwin
Cherry

"In These Shoes?"

(I.P.) So! You've wound down yer winda. So there is life on Mars!
Cherry

"Long Time No Speak..."

Off he goes again – like a well-worn LP.
Cherry

"Made in Egypt"

(Inspired by a report on yesterday's 'News at Ten') No self-respecting five-star hotel, would be complete without Egyptian cotton sheets...
Cherry

"Pretty Bubbles in the Air"

I would cup my hands; capture them. Only, I can’t...
Cherry

"Prince of Desire" (I.P.)

(edit) “The lights go out and I die. Tomorrow I will be reborn. Tomorrow I will dance again.” (Rudolf Nureyev – March, 1938 - January, 1993)

'A Map of the World' (I.P.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8WU_RRx-A Melt to the tunes of Pat Metheny; pour myself another cup of coffee...
Cherry

'After the Gold Rush'

Sleep won’t come and so I write... listen to Neil Young – golden oldies from the past, the nineteen seventies and such.
Cherry

'All Human Life is There' (I.P.)

Scratchwood; yours truly – chilling out, after a ‘hard day at the office’.
Cherry

'At the Going Down of the Sun '(I.P.)

“As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust, moving in marches upon the heavenly plain, as the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness, to the end,they remain"
Cherry

'Back to Black'

It's the little things mean most.
Cherry

'Bright, Shiny Things'

(Edit) A mere moment in time; gone in a trice...
Cherry

'Can't Let Maggie Go'

Yellow hair, spiky fringe – sententious to a fault.

'Dish of the Day'

Toad in the Hole. Now there's a thought.
Cherry

'Finders, Keepers'

The hill – mine, plus a hundred acres of sky.
Cherry

'Goodbye' She Wrote

“The moving finger writes and having writ moves on..." Omar Khayyam
Cherry

'Happy New Year'...

It trips off our tongue. We say it to our friends...the postman the milkman...
Cherry

'Hi, Son'

It was just a matter of time, now.
Cherry

'It was a Dark and Stormy Night...'

A scarlet shawl, from shoulders soft, slipped, silent, to the ground...

'It's Over...'

Still can’t get his text out of my head...

'Kiss an Angel'

(Edit) She’d said to watch his hands, and his mouth...
Cherry

'Lead Us Not...' (I.P.)

I’ve lost my way...somewhere between, ‘Our Father’ and ‘Lead us not..."
Cherry

'Little Sparrow'

Mummy said not to talk to strangers...
Cherry

'Narnia'...

Our summer-house, at the end of the garden.
Cherry

'Percussion, Salt and Honey'

Satin sheets bind tangled feet, yet, no reluctant prisoner – this.

'Pie in the Sky' (I.P.)

(Edit 12/03/2012) There’s some might say we had it made... having gone from rags to riches;
Cherry

'Proud Mary' Blues

(Edit 19/03/2011) Soon, Katrina will come...
Cherry

'Purple Haze'

Inspired by the life and lyrics of the late, great, Jimi Hendrix
Cherry

'Songs of Love and Hate'

(Edit) With more than a nod to Leonard Cohen
Cherry

'Spit 'n Polish' (I.P.)

Each evening, Cherry, as she was called, cleaned her old man’s shoes...

'Study in Blue'

It sizzles in Soho tonight...
Cherry

( IP) The Last Pharaoh

As if possessed – tears at her bodice; rips apart her rose-silk gown...
Cherry

(I.P.) "Sorry for the Wait, Sir..."

So what did you say the problem was? Your washing machine won’t rinse? My ‘washing machine’ stormed out yesterday; took my cash and credit cards with her, no less.

(I.P.) A Winter Reverie

(Edit 31/01/2011) April seems aeons away; Blooms of daffodils a-blaze. Chilly winds make one long for Drowsy dog-days...
Cherry

(I.P.) Portrait of My Father

Even a simple shopping list he could transform into a sonnet... until one night when fate intervened.

... Presumed Dead

We used to have so much to say. Not enough hours in the day to discuss … whatever.

A Beautiful Find

Is it because ...?
Cherry

A Beautiful Find

A walk to the bottom of my garden...
Cherry

A Coming to Terms

(Re-edit 2/12/2012) There are lessons to be learned from fallen leaves...
Cherry

A Day in the Life

An amicable divorce...he'd wanted.
Cherry

A Distant Thunder

You can’t fight evil like that with Kalashnikovs...
Cherry

A Distant Thunder

The chink of money changing hands...

A Familiar Affair

Never have much luck with men – not for the want of trying.

A Fear of Falling

On my back in the orchard...
Cherry

A Fine Romance

Thinks she's going half crazy ...
Cherry

A Gambian Experience

Dimpled toes court the dust ... pencils hover in mid air ...
Cherry

A Gentleman's Agreement (I.P.)

'Tell you what...I'll do you a deal..."
Cherry

A Girl Called Mattie (I.P.)

Those castles in the sand belong to yesterday...
Cherry

A Kind of Loving

Wonders where it went... the passion that was theirs.
Cherry

A Life More Ordinary

He's still a kid deep inside, acting out his Walter Mitty world.
Cherry

A Life More Than Ordinary

A mundane kind of life...
Cherry

A Man and His Dog

Just a card would have been nice, but I’ve still got last year’s in the drawer somewhere.
Cherry

A Man for All Seasons

The shiver of corkscrew curls, and the ripple of sinews...

A Midsummer's Daydream

Seeing as it's International Fairies Day today...
Cherry

A Moment in Time

I was ten - you were twelve...
Cherry

A Moment in Time

There are all kinds of time
Cherry

A Nice Day for It

I remember my dad staring out the window... not knowing what to do.
Cherry

A Night in Camargue

The moon called the tune...
Cherry

A Pelican in the Wilderness

Inspired by last week's I.P. Hunted as a freak she roamed the land...
Cherry

A Place Called Mattie

Beguiling – right from the start...
Cherry

A Robin on a Sprig of Holly

(edit) Just a card would have been nice.
Cherry

A Small Ceasing to Be

I don’t kid myself the world will stop because you’re not here;
Cherry

A Soldier's Prayer (I.P.)

“For Death came flying through the air..."
Cherry

A to Z

A poem born of this week's Inspiration Point.
Cherry

A Town Like Beverley

This – the leaving behind...
Cherry

A Very Fine Affair

A whisper of a dress caressed her thighs...

A Wing and a Prayer

Though far away, my dearest love, I must see thee, one last time...

A Winter Without Snow

A shamal blows in from the desert...
Cherry

Ab Initio

(Edit) ‘Neath a starry maple’s shade I was young, once...
Cherry

ABC for Zoologists

Seems we're all bitten by the bug;-)

About a Boy

Down the back of the settee I found a scrap of paper;
Cherry

Affordable Housing?

Rows of terracotta roofs and miles of decking...
Cherry

After Making Love...

I defy dawn to break this reverie...
Cherry

After the Ball

Life's no fairy-tale and I'm no Cinderella.

After the Rain (I.P.)

He and I, soporifically sated, choose our separate ways...
Cherry

After You've Gone

(Edit 30/4/2012) After you’ve gone... who shall I have to cook for..
Cherry

Air Kisses

... the concave curve of my hips - perfect bow of my lips ...
Cherry

Alicia at Number Three (I.P.)

Trees vie to give her shade... so soft and light her tread.
Cherry

Alien Shores

Like a scene from a foreign movie.
Cherry

All Done With Mirrors

I.P. 21/ll/08 Colin’s late again, for the third time this week.
Cherry

All that glitters ...

... the cross she always wore – twenty two carat; the one I bought her for her twenty-first.

All the King's Horses

What a circus – what a show!
Cherry

All the Young Dudes (I.P.)

Heed my warning or proceed at they peril!

Amaranthine

A branch, tapping on the window wakes me. I watch her sleeping...
Cherry

Amoureuse

If...
Cherry

An Englishman Abroad

Over-rated things; words.
Cherry

An Incident on the Line

IP 'No one saw him fall...'
Cherry

And Silver Spun Sand (I.P.)

You didn’t stand on tiptoes... you just reached out your hand...

And This One's for You

(Edit 25/03/2011) When I am old, and even greyer than now... finally, ‘thrown off this mortal coil’
Cherry

Angelina

‘Beat a path of retreat up them spiral staircases, past the tree of smoke past the angel with four faces begging God for mercy and weepin’ in holy places’ Bob Dylan
Cherry

Animal Quakas (I.P.)

An attempt at the I.P. A poem (of sorts) the letters E,R,N,P,Y prohibited. Difficult, or what?
Cherry

Anniversary

You stumble in... through the kitchen door –
Cherry

Another Day...

Closer to what he will become...
Cherry

Another Man's Treasure

A square peg in this dump-it-get-a-new-one age.

April Rising

How she hated April; tore its pages from her diary.
Cherry

Ars Poetica

I intoxicate as rain drunk from a loch...
Cherry

Aubade

“Children on the street, still playing their games, smiles on their faces have never changed – I hope it’s all the same, I didn’t leave in vain...” (Stephen Gately 17/3/76 - 10/10/09)
Cherry

Away With The Fairies

On the shingle they rock and they roll in rhythm to the surf’s rise and fall.

Baby Suits Blue

How to describe what it's like to swim with jewelfish...

Back Pages

‘Good and bad, I define these terms Quite clear, no doubt, somehow Ah but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.’ Bob Dylan

Baguettes at Dawn (I.P.)

(Re-edit) Sleep won’t come, so stroll down the cafe on the front...

Barefoot through the Bluebells

I ran my fingers through her hair ... waxed lyrical about her eyes.

Barely Blue

(I.P.) (Re-edit) I'm writing you now, just to see if you're better.
Cherry

Barnaby Jones

And so sleep tight...
Cherry

Beaujolais Days

She always said she’d be the first to go, but he’d gone and proved her wrong.
Cherry

Beautiful Dreamer

If you but looked inside my heart therein would lie such treasure...
Cherry

Bed Six is Betty Brown

Been here three weeks or more, this one. It’s OK; she can’t hear you...
Cherry

Bees in Amber

“I wish I could remember that first day, first moment of your meeting me.” Christina Rossetti
Cherry

Before Life on Mars

Before you and me were us...
Cherry

Before the Radiotheraphy

Everything's trivial now, except this.
Cherry

Before You Walk Away...

(Edit) Look back at the house we scrimped and saved for...
Cherry

Before You Went

I wanted to tell you this was tearing me apart...

Behind Closed Doors...

She winces...glimpses a face in the window.
Cherry

Being Thirteen

They pretend to know it all, but they don’t.
Cherry

Berceuse

Sometimes, life creeps up and taps us on the shoulder.
Cherry

Between the Lines

(Edit 24/09/09 with a thanks to Nathan) ...that duck-shaped damp patch on the wall by our bed has come back ...
Cherry

Beyond Words

'A poem of the air' such is snow...
Cherry

Black Became Her

She'd never been attracted to him sexually.
Cherry

Black Irises

How they shimmered in the evening stillness;
Cherry

Black Lace and Burgundy

Catlike, her fingers stalk the keys; Für Elise from memory. Con espressione, indeed ...
Cherry

Black Orchid

A surprising kind of plant...one might almost say ‘pervy’.
Cherry

Black Rain

If the dead can die again, they did ... (Written with the help of source material from eye-witness accounts)
Cherry

Blackberry Wine

(Edit) The berries yield to our touch...
Cherry

Blow Up

Another for the portfolio...

Blue

Believe it or not, a true story. Driving through the countryside we spot a quaint old pub, both of us could eat a horse, so agree to stop for lunch.
Cherry

Blue Became Her

Perhaps, because it was the colour of her eyes...
Cherry

Blue on Blue

On Sundays we’d go fishing, Dad and I.
Cherry

Blue Zebras

There's nothing to equal a child's imagination.
Cherry

Boxers in Yellow

Seen – from my window two hares – boxing on Easter Day.
Cherry

Boy with Violin

(Edit 14/4/2012) He – my bow; such a fine length – perfectly honed.
Cherry

Boy-Blue

Current I.P. His sweetheart, she rose early, one bright and sunny morn,
Cherry

Brave New World

Night fades to morning; I hear screams – outside in my back-yard.

Breaking the Ice

The thaw, slowly setting in...
Cherry

Breaking the Ice

The thaw slowly setting in...
Cherry

Breaking the Mould

He watches her sleeping. 'Peas in a pod', they’d been...
Cherry

Buy One Get One Free

The lather’s to die for – bubbles galore! Cost an arm and leg but sure as hell I’m worth it; Dolce Vita by Christian Dior.

By Silver Stream

We watched the ripples grow.
Cherry

California Sands...

A far cry from LA ...
Cherry

Call that Poetry

A lot of what these poets write, it makes no sense at all...

Camomile Lawn

A gem of a morning, a sunrise to die for...
Cherry

Carmine Kisses

The door groans open. “Anybody there?” he calls...
Cherry

Chardonnay and Me

Beside a pond, stiller than a dream, we set our picnic basket down, she and I.
Cherry

Chef de Cuisine

His white apron, languishes on the back of the kitchen door...
Cherry

Chessie

She didn't have a home for ten months, until I took her in.
Cherry

Chiaroscuro

Depict your contours in soft charcoal.
Cherry

Chicken Tikka for One (I.P.)

Standing at the sink, washing-up from dinner...
Cherry

Child of Mine

Just one short week since you arrived...

Child of Our Time

(edit) I was not there when war began...
Gold cherry

Cider with Gramps

I don’t recall that last time I ever saw you...
Cherry

Clanger! (I.P.)

Clanger was chuffed as a dog with two tails...
Cherry

Clean, Young Englishman (I.P.)

Plus-four breeches, green, baize coat...
Cherry

Cloud (I.P.)

I’ll meet you at the bend in the river.
Cherry

Cold Comfort

Funny...how we've changed over the years.
Cherry

Cold Comfort

Time to move on now, Mrs. Jones; to cross the i’s and dot the t’s...
Cherry

Collage

Crazily it shone... that moment –
Cherry

Come Away With Me

ABC Mag IP. Let's just sleep on it. Pretend it's all been a dream.
Cherry

Come Springtime

The same unforgiving wind...
Poem of the week

Come Summer

All winter long I played the role of feckless youth;
Cherry

Come the Spring

(Edit) What price...progress?
Cherry

Comes the Sandman

He spoke softly to you; coaxed eyelids fall shut.
Cherry

Coming to Terms

And how I would show you the snowdrops...
Cherry

Cote d'Azur

You stripped off on the beach...
Cherry

Crazy Little Thing Called Love

His last tour of duty; scuffs the sand with his boots.

Crazy Maybe

(Edit 10/02/2011) A winter’s afternoon, yet a May Tree by my window bursts into bloom!

Dad, it's me (I.P.)

(Edit 19.04.2010) "All the world's a stage, and one man, in his time, plays many parts..."
Cherry

Daffodil Dawn

So many rooms we've slept in... The one in Pont Saint Pierre with a bath, bidet, but no loo;

Dancing in the Dark

No step I couldn’t master when caught up in his arms. No other partner with whom I danced so well.
Cherry

Daphne's Dafferdills

A wry look at this week's IP. "Who needs poems ...?"
Cherry

Days Like These...

Peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink I watch him walk back down the path –
Cherry

Days like These...

‘The Chaos Theory’ personified – you and your room...
Cherry

Days of Lies and If Onlys

We got scolded when we climbed the lemon tree...
Cherry

Dead...Again

Today, I have 'died a million deaths'...
Cherry

Dear Daughter...

Don't go looking for an answer...
Cherry

Dear Diary ...

Dank, dark and drizzly this November afternoon;

Dear Mr. Oboe Man...

(edit) ...like I'm the only one in the world unable to sleep...
Cherry

Dear Whomsoever ...

When you read this note, you'll have found my box...underneath the floorboards.
Cherry

Fridays on the Towpath

We banked on being millionaires by fourteen;
Cherry

Little Dancer

An enchanting slip of a thing...

Nine White Tulips

A midnight sky drizzles its wind like curaçao, through the lime trees...
Cherry

No Happy Returns...

...no cards, no party...
Cherry

Sliding Doors (I.P.)

8.30 a.m. on the Bedpan Line...

Somewhere in Ypres

Curled against you in this god-forsaken ditch. (Battle of St Julien 24 April – 5 May, 1915)

Summer Nights

Time moves at a snail's pace.
Cherry

Summer Pudding

"No...this isn’t a poem, it’s just a three-day old loaf..."

To Glimpse a Butterfly

I nicknamed her ‘Papillon’, from that very first day I saw her...
Cherry

Wild Geese

Three months, they gave you...
Poem of the week

Zac's Garden

A red house on the hill
Cherry

A Kind of Grieving

Pour myself into gardening this morning...

The Stars and Back

Once more tonight I drown...

Dragonfly

Once upon a sunrise...
Cherry

Dressed to Kill

‘Made in Bangladesh’, wherever that is, the label read.
Cherry

For Silver

The time of the year when the sun sets further away...

Four ASBOs and a Wedding (I.P.)

A blushing bride emerges up at 23A... takes the front porch steps, two at a time...
Cherry

It Usually Rains at Funerals

A tragedy, of course, the next door neighbour – only twenty-five...

Lady April

Satin shapes sway inside her dress...
Cherry

Little Bird

(Edit) A fledgling fallen from the nest.

Love Soup

Tonight he’ll win her heart with his haute cuisine

Maddy by Moonlight

Her body, a geology of mountains and grottoes...
Cherry

Morning Song

We wake...me for the umpteenth time
Cherry

Not for Resuscitation

Only know me, not as the one wires me up to some machine...

Sara Orange Tip Was Here

http://greennature.com/article2313.html 'Please, make me beautiful,' she said.
Cherry

Song of the Windflowers

After you’d gone, grieving was good they’d have me believe

That Treasured Time

On the shores of Loch Maree
Cherry

The Games People Play

Blasted my eardrums, you two when you were kids.
Cherry

The Green Faerie

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder...perhaps.
Cherry

The Man with the Earring

There was someone, some time, somewhere.

The Poetess

In memory of Cecil Frances Alexander, 1818 – 1895 who wrote such hymns as All Things Bright and Beautiful, Once in Royal David’s City, and There is a Green Hill Far Away....

The Times of Our Lives

There were three of us that day... two boys, and me.
Cherry

Room Five is Mrs. Jenkins

... or could be any one of us.
Cherry

Verity Jones

Her T-shirt soaking wet, I gave her mine.
Cherry

Uncle Sam

My sister said to tell on him ...
Cherry

Murder in the City

An air of death in the City this morning.
Cherry

The day I grow up ...

...I'll watch the whole of Marathon Man.

First Frost

(Re-edited 21/04/2009) You are just a pawn in this crazy thing we call life.
Cherry

How High is the Moon

(edited, 22/09/08 with a thank you to jennifer, sunshine and Mori;-) Like schoolgirls we giggle, mad she calls me.
Cherry

To Whom It May Concern

The gift of life doesn't come fancy packaged ...
Cherry

What Kind of a Name is Penelope?

She stirred up the leaves with her white, spiky Nikes.
Cherry

Lady in Red

A family gathering – Mother’s ninety-fifth. The spirit stronger than the flesh ...
Cherry

The Woman in White

They paid their last respects – laid tulips on the freshly-dug grave of the vicar’s late wife.
Cherry

The Leaving

Caught up in a whirlwind of buying duvets and curtains, mugs, plates and bowls, electric kettles and toasters.

My name's Marilyn. What's yours?

Looking for a good time, handsome? Barrel of laughs – that’s me. We could while a way an hour or two – three if you like.
Cherry

His Father's Son

Alexander’s never known you and yet he swears he loves you. Vows to follow in your footsteps
Cherry

Poppies and Polka-dots

Yesterday was her birthday. She looked pretty in her party dress – the satin one with polka-dots. Red always was her colour.

The Wolves of Wakepeke

Just a late attempt at the inspiration point:-) “Can you hear the white wolves crying?” said Maranga to Kalista. “I can only hear the river,” said the young boy to his sister.

This One's for Me

Look out, Amy Whitehouse or whoever, here I come. (edit)
Cherry

Some Other Spring

Best thing about this dump is the chestnut tree and the garden. House not up to much. Only what you’d expect of Army Barracks.

What Makes Me Happy ...

At the end of a hard day, an easy-chair and a cold beer – a letter from a long-forgotten friend.

Word Perfect

The path of true love ... and all that.
Cherry

Moonchild

Our pilgrimage, this - our last ditch attempt as if, by some miracle, this would make you well again.
Cherry

Evening in Paris

I used to ask her where she went most every night. “To see a man about a dog,” was always her reply
Cherry

I remember ...

The way the wine dribbled down the bottle and you wiped it with your hand – licked your fingers as it drizzled down your chin
Cherry

In Another Life

“There is a better place,” she says. Tells me it’s my call. Up to me to decide where that will be.
Cherry

Glory Days

In those hungry years when we were young we had nothing.
Cherry

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

Incidentally, so sorry I’ve wrecked your Christmas. A lot more attractive things you could be doing on Christmas Eve.
Cherry

The Gift

Almost the hardest thing I’ve ever done, was surviving last Christmas.
Cherry

The Square on the Hypotenuse

He stares, blindly, through the window. “Good morning, Mr. Reeves,” say the children ...
Cherry

Sweet Charity

She’s only here to shelter from the rain. So am I, if the truth be known.
Poem of the week

Holcombe - the last time

‘Must be in my second childhood,’ the old man mused, as he watched her chase the waves ...
Cherry

Just This ...

(edited) Went for a walk in the snow today ...
Cherry

The Man Next Door

Strange thing - that sixth sense of ours.
Cherry

I Could Have Written A Book About ...

IP. Some things about me ... as seen through the eyes of another.
Cherry

The Others

All that breathes – moves – quakes, quickly darts for cover.
Cherry

Girl Watching Goldfish

Her world, so different from theirs and yet in some ways, much the same …
Cherry

She Was ...

At the end of the day, we are the things we love ... I guess. (Edit, with thanks to Jennifer)
Cherry

Ever So Slightly Mad

'Abba had nothing on my dancing queen ...'
Cherry

Esher Girls

He makes great coffee, so ... can I complain?
Cherry

Southwold Revisited (The Sound of the Sea)

A walk on the pier in the pouring rain, not her best idea.

The Stuff of Dreams

What had rekindled this passion – long-since smouldering, to suddenly spring alive?
Cherry

Things My Daughter Taught Me

Taught me ... I wouldn't be remembered for how clean my floor was. (edit)
Cherry

Going For a Song ...

This week's IP (30 words)
Cherry

The Beat Goes On ...

Scrawled-on stairwells resound to a sweet discordant euphony of climactic ecstasies.

Some Enchanted Evening

... a posh cocktail affair.
Cherry

Thicker than Water

Never told you this, but often, as a kid, I hated you.

Smoke and Mirrors

"Monsters aren't real." Mummy says.
Cherry

Letting Go

Let the violets go you once pinned in my hair ...
Cherry

The Crow and I

I am no vegetable ...
Cherry

Today I wrote a poem

Times change, sometimes for the better.
Cherry

Paradise Found

A bed and a table, a lamp and a chair; not much of a room ... except heaven is there.
Cherry

For Whom the Cicada Sings

“I ask you. What finer way to die than as a hero?"
Cherry

Phoning Home

He was in the garden – digging, according to her, and I could picture him...
Cherry

Me, and Her with the Piercings

(edit) ...we didn’t want the night to end... to slip through our fingers like a dream –
Cherry

Driving Great Aunt Maisie

We'd already done 'I Spy' to death...
Cherry

Sweet Emmaline

Life...ain't no bowl of cherries.
Cherry

Tomorrow's Children

In an infinite universe, anything is possible.
Cherry

How It Is

He was posted to Basra.
Cherry

The Beautician's Day Off

A flimsy curtain screen all that’s between them and their dignity...

Roundabouts and Roses

At the far-end of the bypass, opposite the garage you’ll find it...
Cherry

The Trouble with Grace

We couldn’t help ourselves, even though we knew where it would end.

No Poem

There is nothing I can write
Cherry

Picture at an Exhibition

A T-shirt that said, 'Save Our Seals'.

Requiem For a Friend

(edit 06/01/2010) We were both typists and jive-crazy.
Cherry

His Father's Eyes

He stirs; grabs at life with all ten fingers...
Cherry

Requital

Life is a gift...they told me
Poem of the week

Lines in the Sand

For my sixth birthday I wanted a doll; instead they gave me a rifle...

Justifiable Suicide

Odd - the things that come to mind sometimes.
Cherry

Paper, Scissors, Rock

Current IP. They snatched the scissors away...Nothing sharp permitted here, not in this place.
Cherry

Hotel Paradiso

(edit) They dine on langoustine – say how good it’s been to mingle with the natives.
Cherry

The Passing of Aunt Maud

(Current I.P.) The biggest bonus of being old, one doesn’t lose sleep over niceties.
Cherry

Tonight Josephine...

Current I.P. In retrospect, posing nude, not that much of a deal.
Cherry

Gnome Truths

Current I.P. Cast your mind back, if you can, to nineteen-fifty-five...
Cherry

The Fallen

(edit) "A barbed-wire fence, no deterrent...
Cherry

Monday Afternoon...

(An edit and retitle) She whispers she hear hears something outside. So do I...
Cherry

Saved by the Bell

Current I.P. "Keys that enchanted, perplexed, excited...
Cherry

Shades of Blue

I christened him ‘Blue’, the man with the Tesco carrier-bags.
Cherry

One Enchanted Evening...

Deprived of their TV – instead they chat of galaxies, giant-reds, black holes...
Cherry

Lear in a Nutshell

Current I.P. ;-)

Picture This

(edit) A rainy afternoon...flicking through an album
Cherry

Hey Joe...

So, label me a whore, Joe... feed the gossip, fuel the lies!
Cherry

Last Orders

Current I.P. I’ m waiting for the owner of this god-forsaken dive to call time...
Cherry

Read All About It

Current I.P. (Edit, with thanks to Ewan) My dream; to see my name in print.
Cherry

How's Frank?

'Frank died...Don't you remember?'
Cherry

Santa's Lament

The commotion awoke the whole family – the kerfuffle and hullabaloo...

Winter Solstice...

(edit 22/12/09) December 21st...as seen from my window this morning
Cherry

Madame Butterfly

"Like the tattoo," I say...

She Always Did That...

(edit) She had such nice hands...

In Retrospect

One snowflake, so fragile, but by sticking together, they can bring a country to its knees.
Cherry

Killing Me Softly

Much too old for Ring-a-Roses; not old enough to go proposing.
Cherry

Happy Divorce Day!

Who am I to shake the tree?
Cherry

Hear No Evil (I.P.)

The workmen couldn't get on her nerves no more.
Cherry

The Fortune-Teller

Your body speaks to me...
Cherry

Her Legacy (I. P.)

"Spend it like there'll be no tomorrow..."

Losing One's Marbles

Memories – elusive things. Where do they hide when they escape us? (Edited;-)
Cherry

Waltzing Matilda

(edited, with thanks to kheldar;-) ...bunches of forget-me-nots festoon the old, oak rafters.

Name's Roxanne (I.P.)

Window shopping, are we, handsome?
Cherry

For the Love of Her

Thus, our pilgrimage; friends and family...
Cherry

The Silence of the Summit (I.P.)

Avalanche risk was high; only, I’ve always courted danger...
Gold cherry

Myth of Narcissus

...I grow impatient for spring.

Every Little Thing (I.P.)

"Twins, separated at birth," we joked...
Cherry

Girl with Cello

She, who came in from the wind and drifting snow.
Cherry

The Moon and Back

Edit (22/3/2010) Thought I’d experiment. Take a stab at the moon; hoped you wouldn’t mind.

Only the Flowers Grow Wild

(Edit) 'Everyone bombs us now,' he says.
Cherry

Unrequited

The night you left...
Cherry

Sweet Nothings

Can't recall the things we spoke about...
Cherry

Freeze Frame (I.P.)

Good as dead – long before I hit the water.
Cherry

The Tender Buds of April

A flower, in all its splendour, finally opens...
Cherry

Sweet Caroline

Don’t make me wait with bated breath to feel that thrill of flesh on flesh...
Cherry

Fear of Falling

The fallen; easily forgotten.

Golden Delicious

(Edit 29.04.2010) A tree that grew outside their kitchen window...
Cherry

Goodbye to April

(Edit 1.05.2010) She rocks to sleep as the chair sings its own, sweet elegy to the passing of time.
Cherry

Vissi d'Arte

(Edit 7.05.2010) Bankside - Tate Modern...
Cherry

Saving Gracie (I.P.)

A saint, they called him, and to some, he was...
Cherry

Once More with Feeling

...fumble for our cosy, towelling robes...
Cherry

Homemade (I.P.)

"Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything, That’s how the light gets in." (Leonard Cohen)
Cherry

Reclining Nude

A model, draped over a green baize settee;
Cherry

One Man's Junk (I.P.)

...another's treasure.

Milk or Lemon?

A pleasant reunion; thanks to ‘Friends Reunited’. We chat of this and that; she serves afternoon tea..
Cherry

Going Down to the Sea Again

...the boarding of a train on our yearly pilgrimage to Broadstairs.
Cherry

Holly Blue

(Edit) Your dignity defiled...

Summer Evenings like These...

...the chatter of martins, sitting, gossiping on the wire.
Cherry

Rose

"Who needed men?" she'd asked a friend.
Cherry

Since You Arrived...

'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings...' or so it was written.
Cherry

The River that Drowned (I.P.)

(Edit 15/6/2010) ...inspired by China's "Three Gorges Dam Project" http://www.flickr.com/photos/wicks/3488452739/
Cherry

Frankie Goes to Summer Camp (I.P.)

“On far-off fields, by elm and oak, I see the lights. The Camp-fires of the Past are burning.” Henry Van Dyke ‘Indian Summer’

Girl with Blue Eyes

(Edit 4.07.2010) She never missed a trick...
Cherry

Postcard from Mumbai

Those few precious lines are part of the ether now...

Solveig's Song

(Edit 6.8.2010) Through an open window wafts a melody by Grieg.
Cherry

Zoe's Garden

Her hands shake more of late...bending down a painful process...

Wish You Were Here? (I.P.)

(Edit) A honeymoon story in 60 words...and they're all true!
Cherry

Maryam's Story

Her makeshift shelter swept away...
Cherry

Impasse

You know you need help, but who to turn to?
Cherry

Who'll Pay the Piper?

“Piper Alpha...one hundred and sixty-four missing...”
Cherry

Sepia Days

A fleeting smile of recognition...
Cherry

Watching Emily Play...(I.P.)

as she danced amongst the bluebells...
Cherry

Have to Laugh - Don't You?

(Edit) “Don’t worry,” the medics advised... it’s not life-shortening.”
Cherry

Woman

On tacky, lino floor, huddled in a corner...

Penelope Fairchild

She prays to a god of the copper, or silver kind...
Cherry

Paper Dreams

(Edit) Put the paper napkins in a drawer, now summer is done.
Cherry

The Cherry Tree (I.P.)

“How you shiver, Cherry Blossom! Let me warm you with my kisses..."
Cherry

Fish With Everything! (I.P.)

Shack up with a Sunfish, have yourself some fun, fish...
Cherry

I Bring You Roses...

You stare at your knife and fork...
Cherry

Past Imperfect

(Edit 8/12/2010) "I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide." (Edna St Vincent Millay)
Cherry

Sweet and Low

His body – comforting as I climb in, between the sheets...

I Crave to Save and yet...(I.P.)

Of some things, a hot-blooded girl like me can never get enough.
Cherry

Winter's Garden

A midnight walk last evening...
Cherry

Too Cold for Snow

Too young, as I was then, to know the true meaning of love...
Cherry

Fergal's Wake

Now you're gone, what am I left with?
Cherry

Girl, Painting...

(Re-edit 28/12/2010) Close my eyes – I can almost see her ...
Cherry

Willow

...
Cherry

Oyster Bay

There’s a place I once knew called Oyster Bay – I went there one day in my mind...
Cherry

If...

If you were sent to Neptune, I’d hire a rocket-ship...

Saskia's Song

(Edit 8/1/2011) Sepia memories...
Cherry

Wild Child

Thirty-one, seemed over the hill...in those days.
Cherry

Lights...Camera...Action (I.P.)

(Edit 10/1/2011) Couldn’t eat a thing; my hands atremble – throat, dry as the Sahara.
Cherry

No Name Joe

He’d call me ‘his Lily Rose’...
Cherry

Had it With You!

And, I’ve had your babies, vacuumed your floors...
Cherry

For Better For Worse

Cusses to herself, does Judy. Silently she weeps, but not for him.
Cherry

Postcard Home

how it came undone... that knitted swimsuit I wore
Cherry

Woman of Small Histories

(edit 28/01/2011) She was a hoarder of poems of diaries, letters and cards from husbands, lovers and friends...

School's Out Down Gas House Lane

Kids swarm like flies to the sweet shop round the corner. “Two at a time,” or so the notice says.
Cherry

Samantha

“You see I’ve forgotten if they’re green or they’re blue, anyway...the thing is what I really mean – yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen...” Bernie Taupin
Cherry

Just Supposing...

You’ve passed on – gone to heaven; you could be anything you wanted.
Cherry

Seven for the Seven Stars in the Sky (IP)

For once, the guns were quiet. He lay on his back, counting the planets and constellations.

One is One, and All Alone (IP)

(Edit 8/02/2011) Fog comes down, thick and fast, up here, in the churchyard on the moor.
Cherry

You Know That Feeling...

You’re exhausted; you’d give anything for sleep.
Cherry

That Beautiful Game

Ended up outside Craven Cottage; no Lillywhites that night.
Cherry

Until Tomorrow...

(Edit 18/02/2011) Is it such a crime to be old? I have lost the power of speech, but not my mind.
Cherry

Truth and Lies

It was all so easy then.
Cherry

Lake of Sighs

(edit and repost) Thunder brewed in threatening skies; a violent squall – their boat capsized, and boy and girl were lost from sight...
Cherry

Wild Blows the Willow

Spring comes and it goes...
Cherry

Sunny

Don’t play me no blues no more
Cherry

His Sweet Muse

Through a crack in the door he sees her...
Cherry

Old What's His Name...

‘I Am the New Jesus’ written on his T-shirt
Cherry

Grandpa's Funeral...

Funny, how no one ever told me – not outright, Gramps was dead.
Cherry

The Tiger and the Fly

As the canvas sings its own sweet elegy to a masterpiece...
Cherry

Sundays at Six...

You have left me...already, yet still, I kiss you goodbye.

Ring Around the Moon

"The end of the world is nigh and all of us is doomed..."
Cherry

Just Another Sunday...

Nothing more I could want – right now, but right this moment.
Cherry

Silly...I Know

I dreamt of him, again last night.
Cherry

Girl with the Gypsy Earring

She deseeds juicy, plum tomatoes...
Cherry

Just Another Poem (I.P.)

I am but a string of words
Cherry

Her Rucksack

For Ashley
Cherry

On Hollyhock Hill...

As a woman, I have learned all there is to know about waiting...
Cherry

Once Upon a Time

There was a time your goldfish were mine, too...

Monday's Child (I.P.)

Occasions such as these, I wish to god, I’d been born on a Tuesday...
Cherry

The Long and the Short of it

He’s had a full life, and a good one...
Cherry

Present Imperfect

"How many light years to heaven?"
Cherry

The Line of Beauty

Separation does not wait its hour.
Cherry

In Reverie...

Now I am content; paint-brush on its rest.
Cherry

Resurrection of a Kind (I.P.)

Do not look for me amongst the cold and mossy stones...
Cherry

The Widow Next Door

This week, I'm reading her Jane Eyre.
Cherry

Rising Five

...young enough to play 'Oranges and Lemons'...
Cherry

Something in the Air

A kind of longing in the air today.
Gold cherry

Poetry in Motion (I.P.)

bronze, be her body, un a reet dazzlin sheen...
Cherry

You Know How It Is...

You hear a fragment of a tune...
Cherry

I'd Die for a Cherry... (I.P.)

Give anything to taste a luscious, ripe morello...
Cherry

With Her Without Her

Manic sounds of frenzied packing...
Cherry

General Knowledge (I.P.)

“Thou knowest all; I sit and wait with blinded eyes and hands that fail..."
Cherry

On Making Fruit Salad

It’s moments like these, I ache to realise my wildest fantasies...

Those Were the Days...

There were squeaky wooden-gates between backyards and alleyways...
Cherry

The Kiss (I.P.)

Not the way she closed her eyes sipping her wine...
Cherry

Edith

Sad songs she sings... sad, like she was.
Cherry

Jessie's Garden

The swing-seat’s still there; I can hear you now – chiding me for rocking it...
Cherry

Let's Start Again?

No – this isn’t a poem...
Cherry

Gymnopédie (I.P.)

Like going back in time, when I heard that tune today.
Cherry

Minutiae

Little things mean a lot.
Cherry

Making Love

Their bedroom door ajar, I catch my breath...

Pretty Flamingo

‘Crimson dress that clings so tight...'
Cherry

Summer Solstice

The lush of the meadow murmurs morning prayers...
Cherry

Killing Time

(Edit 24/6/2011) After he...left, they told me – ‘Keep occupied...start writing...
Cherry

Grace

The essence of you, still lingers in this room...
Cherry

Summer ...the First Time

Breathless, one summer, at the top of a hill...
Cherry

Somewhere in Madison County...

How many trysts, made and broken here...
Cherry

Homespun

Like a quilt of many colours...
Cherry

Say It Isn't So

...or at the very best, help me to forget...
Cherry

Now She is Six...

She's an expert in cat-speak...

Going for Silver

Her lips met mine...not an ordinary kiss
Cherry

Telling it Like it is...(I.P.)

Spring never ever came that year - the year he left...
Cherry

No Fairytale (I.P.)

A mix, she was - somewhere between an angel and a nymph...
Cherry

Peace in Our Time

I remember a clanky, Mobo scooter...
Cherry

Lady in a Chinese Restaurant

People-watching; my favourite occupation.

Tired of Counting Sheep...

Five a.m. Looking out my window;
Cherry

Impossibly Yellow

Dedicated to the memory of Andrea Parker MA (02.08.1968 - 31.12.2007) ‘Celebrate my life – don’t mourn the life that I had not’
Cherry

Three and the Quarters...

My son rides high upon my shoulders... hacking our way through jungle.
Cherry

The Lavender Chair

She outbid me at an auction that morning.
Cherry

No Bouquet for Rose

Just a line to say I miss you...
Cherry

The Green Wheelbarrow (IP)

Why not Carlos Williams’ red one?
Cherry

Oranges and Lemons...

Tottenham born and bred, the terrible events of the past few days have been difficult for me to try to come to terms with.

Poppy

Almost as if you had never been away – there you are.

Once Upon Perseids...

One of those evenings you can hear the stars sing.
Cherry

The Art of Art

'Vissi d'Arte'
Cherry

Only Fools...And Roses

He lays six, crimson roses, growing wild, at the side of the road...
Cherry

Just Killing Time

'To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens.' (Ecclesiastes 3)
Cherry

In Another Life...(IP)

I'd dare to do things differently...
Cherry

In Shady Cloisters (IP)

Resigned to history, its Art Deco, stained glass windows.
Cherry

Small Wonder

The cord – cut, but the bond firmly tied.
Cherry

Rose By Any Other Name

All she has - theirs, when she's gone.
Cherry

Strange Places (IP)

Her mother seeks her out – but not in her bed, for she seldom sleeps there...
Cherry

Object of Desire

One kilo sells for a least thirteen hundred pounds.
Cherry

Midnight Sun

'Heaven's where you are'...I guess.
Cherry

The Days of Maggie Spencer

Pouring bleach down the toilet, her mind goes back to how she’d got there...

The Unbelievable (I.P.)

I am that voice in your head...
Gold cherry

The Colour Blue

A decade on...
Cherry

On Believing the Unbelievable...(IP)

Yesterday – too much to take in...a bad dream... if not for this.
Cherry

Freedom Is

A seven letter word, begins with 'F'...
Cherry

Room Eight's the Geordie

At just fifteen - sent down the pit to earn his keep.

Just Jade

(Edit) I'd ask him who Jade was, but he'd never reply.
Cherry

Mea Culpa

Do you know what? Undressing you’s more like undoing a sack of potatoes!
Cherry

Year of the Rabbit

Reluctant partners in this, yet to come to terms with, death thing.
Cherry

Hey - Joe

You got me purring, now, Joe. Vibrato always gets me going...
Cherry

Girls Like Me

I don’t know what it was; the age-gap thing, perhaps...
Cherry

Piano Man

I can read your mind through those pianist’s fingers of yours. You can’t keep secrets from me.
Cherry

Like a Sentry it Stood...(I.P.)

At the end of a long, dark hall – a grandfather clock.
Cherry

The One Called Dulcie

(Re-edit 7/10/2011) What colour - Mother's bouquet? I'd ask her myself, but that's another story.
Cherry

Ivy Rose

She dies, a little, every day...
Cherry

When Words are not Enough (I.P.)

(Edit 9.10.2011) For the past twenty years, she’d grown tired – weary of all who’d come with words; words, but no language.
Cherry

Quantum Physics and Other Trivia

And so you sit, having a stab at Einstein, God and the Tories...
Gold cherry

Of Mattie and a Mountain

Coming down, far harder than going up.
Cherry

Shush...

Her fingers speak of places I've not been...
Cherry

Mood Indigo...

If Autumn were a tune
Cherry

Dolly After Dark

Flying high - that's where she is...
Cherry

The Lemon Grower's Wife

(Edit 20/10/2011) How was he to know she was unhappy?
Cherry

On Putting the Clocks Back

Today, I saw swans tilt towards the south.
Cherry

This Eden

I crave that certain stillness...
Cherry

The Pumpkin Eater

‘Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her. Put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her, very well.’
Cherry

Salut D'Amour

Demure – she sits, as her music sucks me in.
Cherry

Just Before You Go...

“If today was not an endless highway If tonight was not a crooked trail If tomorrow wasn’t such a long time Then lonesome would mean nothing To you at all...” Bob Dylan
Cherry

Ticket to Ride

I fell asleep – head on your lap on a bench at the station...
Cherry

Done with Counting Sheep

(Edit) Tonight – the silence, almost tangible.

On Wings of a Song

Like a zephyr in the breeze, a thread of a tune wafts my way.
Cherry

On Entering...

Silly, I know, but I half expected to see her...
Cherry

Love in a Cold Climate

Strange...I acquired no taste for olives; she adored them, she said.

Seven Fishes in a Pond

We had it all, then; ‘the world – our oyster’
Cherry

Lady in White

A lone, white hood, bowed in prayer...

Visiting Hour

“Tell me – do you believe in reincarnation?” she asks.
Cherry

Nothing Good about Goodbye

I kidded myself if I said goodbye, then...when it came to the crunch it wouldn’t hurt as much.
Cherry

Growing Pains

Love-struck, we were in those days.
Cherry

Something about Sophie

‘Only something in your eye. I’ll have it out in a jiff,’ he’d tried to reassure her.
Cherry

Oh, What a Lovely War!

Said my prayers every night but still war came; and cravings for bananas and a dad who went away.
Cherry

Lily May

You in your jeans and waxed jacket, up to your armpits in mud...
Cherry

Pumpkin and Me

As good as it gets...
Cherry

Snake with Ruby Eyes

I’m just a helper... come and work here when I can.
Cherry

Winter Solstice

This year is dying – let us welcome in the next.
Cherry

The Long Way Home

I knelt down...the soil, damp and peaty.
Cherry

The Fragility of Porcelain

“So, what was she like? Your first wife?” I ask him.
Cherry

Fated Attraction

“Come inside, why don’t you? You’ll catch your death out there. Can I tempt you with a promise of food and wine to share?"

The Vanilla Room

In the vanilla room incense burns low...
Cherry

Feathers and Fandangos

Eventually, I knew not to ask about the frogs – sat on lily-pads on a scarf she’d knitted for me.
Cherry

Only Remember

I ask for no memorial no headstone, tomb, or tree for all are finite, in their time, no – these are not for me.
Cherry

Guns and Roses

Blind since birth, he paints flowers...

No Fairytale, This

(Black shoe - prawn sandwich competition...as inspired by a piece in the national press) 5.00 a.m. – Heathrow, Terminal 3, eerily quiet;
Cherry

Forever Eden

You showed up at my front-door; thrust a bunch of chrysanths at me.
Cherry

Of Men, Mice and Marmosets

Even though Mr. Kablinski had been around for longer than most people would care to remember, he’d always had an air of mystery about him...
Cherry

Saffron and White Sugar

Tehran’s smog crept inside my lungs, pressed like lead on my chest
Cherry

Other People's Lives (I.P.)

A kind of sombreness about the place... sensed the moment we turned the key.
Cherry

Moving Day

Time to pack up – moving on as one does...
Cherry

More than Words

He insisted I listen hard, for he’d secrets to tell, and yet, so much I already knew.
Cherry

Yesterday's Sky

Blue Moon – he chose; roses from my love...
Cherry

Hide and Seek

'Coming ready or not!’ she’d yell. You used to say she was a cheat for going too fast.
Cherry

The View from Here...

I travel back to that place they call 'childhood'...
Cherry

The Woman in the Street (I.P.)

(Edit 26/1/2012) Inspired by Margaret Atwoods dystopian 'Handmaid's Tale'.
Cherry

Saying it with Flowers

‘Something came up. Really sorry, my sweet...’
Cherry

The Muse and the Poet

(Edit 6/02/2012) The very essence of you lingers – a heady mix of sandalwood and pine.
Cherry

That'll be Ben

The hall light’s still on... a noise wakes me.
Cherry

Things to Do

Change the sheets. Feed the Cat...
Cherry

The Poppy Man

I tell him the widow next door, died last June. ‘I know,’ he tells me..
Cherry

If Love Were Banned...(I.P.)

Where would all the lovebirds go?
Cherry

The Girl Next Door

She sat, skinning a lemon; spying, as I was, through a hole in the fence.
Cherry

Terms of Endearment

You lived in me, and I in you.
Cherry

The Folly and The Ivy (I.P.)

His torso stiffens as a sickle moon rises...
Cherry

The Art of Letting Go

How could I have known?
Cherry

The Spinster, Late of this Parish

(Edit 23/2/2012) Light green crocodile skin – her handbag, from an age of Greta Garbo
Cherry

Storm

Through it all, she sleeps; her breath falls, soft, upon my cheek...
Cherry

The Nature of the Beast

OK, so I’m drinking too much, and smoking way too many cigarettes
Cherry

Rocket Science it was Not

Sometimes Sunday lunch is more than just Sunday lunch.
Cherry

The Thing about Dubai

Before shopping malls, and seven-star hotels...
Cherry

Of Moths and of Men (I.P.)

Boring as hell, staring at him, staring at it
Cherry

Homer...and all that Jazz

I lay with her in her room...
Cherry

Rustle of Spring

Will Spring, famously shy to a fault, hide in March’s billowing skirts...
Cherry

These Foolish Things

The attic room; how it smelled of musk, patchouli and you...
Cherry

The Beautiful Game

White Hart Lane, My dad and me.
Cherry

On Golden Pond

Star-gazing...again.

The Dog with the Luminous Nose (I.P.)

He sometimes got lonely and longed for a mate but his back legs were made out of spatulas and he had no illusions – accepted his fate. There were worse things than being a bachelor.
Cherry

Seen From a Window

Her eyes, almost meet mine, almost every time...
Poem of the week

Journeys

‘We cannot reach you,’ they said. ‘Where do you go inside that head of yours?'
Cherry

‘Les Amoureux en Gris’

After a painting by Marc Chagall, 1959 http://www.worldgallery.co.uk/art-print/Les-Amoureux-en-Gris-161694.html

My Girl Friday (I.P.)

Funny – the way they say, ‘you don’t miss what you’ve never had’...
Cherry

Nice Day for It

I remember how Mum fought like a tiger when it was her turn...
Cherry

Try to Tell Myself...

Yet, who am I trying to kid?
Cherry

Poem for a Granddaughter

You’re hell-bent on travelling half-way round the world, on this gap-year thing – I can see it in your eyes.
Cherry

This Started Out a Love Song...

Until the love song started to grow stale... its hair – turn grey.
Cherry

On Putting the Clocks Forward

She sleeps beside me; her back – curled against the morning...
Cherry

No Bowl of Cherries

Nevertheless, we have much to be thankful for...
Cherry

The Man with the Fish Tattoo

She knew all she meant to him was ‘his bit on the side’...

The Strife of Brian

(Edit) Harking back, of course, to 1979; dear old Monty Python and all, if your memory stretches that far.
Cherry

Lady at the Piano

Her pizzazz had got up and gone, but her sostenuto – wistful...
Cherry

Silent Witness

Queenie won’t be needing no milk... not this morning.
Cherry

No One Can Ever Love You Like I Do (I.P.)

I’m bleeding...but only a little, and after all, they do say love’s supposed to hurt

Lark Rise Over the Ridge

At his head, I lay wallflowers from my garden...
Cherry

The Art of Dying

You taught me right from wrong... the difference between a butterfly and a moth...
Cherry

Small Joys

It's always the little things in life mean most.

Requital

Looked back at the house you painted, all those years ago...
Cherry

Tomorrow's Child

May you never prime the guns of war...
Cherry

From Mattie with Love

(Edit 4/05/2012) Naked...all except her Chinese silk kimono
Cherry

Lilac Wine

We got high on lilac wine and sunshine...
Cherry

My Mother Myself

Your bedsores sting me a million times more than they hurt you,
Cherry

L'Atelier Saint-Germain

Greying auburn hair – set ablaze by late evening sunshine
Cherry

No Lilies for Sophie

Tomorrow was all she ever asked for.

Still Life

After you went, 'Find yourself a hobby,' they said.
Cherry

Journeys

Seeing her off at the airport...

Since He's Been Gone...

(Edit 19/5/2012) Love manifests itself in many ways;-)
Cherry

If They Ask Where I'm From

I tell them I am come from lamplighters, and chimney sweeps... usherettes that sold ice-creams, and ladies that ‘did’...

Sons and Brothers

I ask, “What was Father really like? You know,” I say, “Man to man.”

Where is the Love?

(Edit 3/06/12) Sapper Jones – his first tour of duty
Cherry

Girl with Pitcher

Somewhere between the sleeping and the waking...
Cherry

Nothing but Pearls

You ask me come swim with you...
Cherry

The End of the Affair

I spent all afternoon amongst the ‘living things’...

Etude for Elise

I would watch her through my window of an afternoon...
Cherry

Jesamine in June

Rushes inside to show him her find...
Cherry

L'Art Pour L'Art

“Any man who doesn’t have his inner world to translate is not an artist.” Theophile Gautier
Cherry

Summer Storm

So much rain and still it rains;
Cherry

In Loving Memory

On his lips, an almost smile...
Cherry

Girl on a Train

In my reverie... she was an angel fallen from grace
Cherry

Of a Summer Solstice

It is hard to see beauty without you around
Cherry

The Intruders

The door, all-but hanging off its hinges...

End of Story

Being born too soon... his only misdemeanour.
Cherry

In Praise of the Pigeon (I.P.)

With pizzicato feet they peck about
Cherry

Son et Lumière

The cold, and the death, chill his bones...

Thrice Caws the Crow

Realistically speaking, I’m for the knackers yard, shortly, so why waste money keeping me alive?
Cherry

Kicking It ( I.P.)

For once in our lives we agree. Yes, it is ‘a frigging filthy habit’, but I’m not entirely to blame.
Cherry

My Girl Friday

Four iced buns she buys; comes here every week.
Cherry

Man with the Sapphire Eyes

I watch him half-smile in his sleep...
Cherry

Picture Imperfect

Close my eyes and I can see you...
Cherry

Pie in the Sky

I’d be a vet when I grew up – him – a pilot like his dad.
Cherry

The Lady in Bed Six

People drifted in and out... smoothing sheets –
Cherry

The Leaving

I’d not considered what it would be like – the leaving.
Cherry

Road to Nowhere

Not a night for driving to any place, or worst still, away.
Cherry

This is Him...

Coaxing laidback, Sunday morning bluegrass from his guitar

The Seamstress

The TV flickers mindlessly on; repeat after repeat, but she wouldn’t notice.
Cherry

The Boy Next Door

I used to think he never washed, and how I envied him.

Nimbus Stratus (I.P.)

The sky – leaden, and an easterly blows chill
Cherry

Odd Job Joe

(Edit) His touch...rough and ready.
Cherry

Jess

...
Cherry

Great Aunt Zelda

Afternoons, I’d climb on her bed, brush her hair...
Cherry

Flo's Flutter

“Eyes down, and we’re ready to roll!”
Cherry

Mea Culpa

At first light I go outside to feed the ducks...wild mallards but they come here every year

Nine White Tulips...

a vase – shimmers liquid silver by the bed
Cherry

Standing Stones

I write songs in my head about ‘happy ever afters’.
Cherry

Season of Mists...

Days like these I want to be seventeen again...

Ode to an Austin A40 Somerset

All hail to thee – blessed car; you served us well...

Equinox

Summer turned to autumn all too soon...
Cherry

Girl at the Piano

I’d watch her from my window – the girl across the street
Cherry

That's What I Call Poetry

National Poetry Day today. Hence this little ditty. A shrinking violet I am not, so I’ll get this off my chest...
Cherry

Hey...You! (I.P.)

Listen, if you will; hear the lapwing sing

On Earth As It Is In Heaven

Custom dictates the maid close the drapes, this dull, rainy morning in Leamington Spa.

Holly-Blue

Cradled in the palm of my hand – you, slightly out of focus
Cherry

Reasons

Seems like a lifetime ago now...
Cherry

Softly Chimes the Bell...

In the corner of the kitchen a little boy...
Cherry

The Opaqueness of Glass

It’s been almost three years...
Cherry

Sophie's Choice

Found a parcel in the kitchen, on the table, tied with string,
Cherry

The One

He was a smoky dance-floor... the razzamatazz of a Saturday night...
Cherry

Lonely Planet

My dearest Ashley... not sure where you are
Cherry

Girl with a Silver Tongue

Apollinaire, wasn’t it, who said, ‘Memories are hunting horns, whose sound dies on the wind’?
Cherry

Despatches

A poem inspired by a remarkable young lady, who just happened to be my daughter.

Mightier than the Sword! (I.P.)

What fun you could have being small, if you were just two inches tall;

You have to Laugh...Don't You?

"Wretched whatchamacallit, darned Parkinson’s thing!"
Cherry

I Believe in Angels

'...something good in everything I see...'

Saying it with Pearls

Deep inside her, something burns – a searing, white heat...
Cherry

Monopoly

In winter we played that game a lot, after tea on Sundays;
Cherry

Sabita's Story

Through the brutal debris of theirs’ and other people’s lives – she wades, waist deep,
Cherry

November Geese

7.15 a.m. – not long to sunrise...

The Eye of the Beholder (I.P.)

She was no artist, or so she maintained.
Gold cherry

When We Were Six

The first and only time you were six, you recall being five...

The Upstair's Maid

Custom dictates I close all the drapes...
Cherry

Japanese Crane

‘Freedom,’ it begs,” she said.
Cherry

Forbidden Fruits

His dark curls entered my life before he did
Cherry

The Last Day of December

How could I have known that this - the last time I would see you?
Cherry

Lady M

...
Cherry

Happy New Year!

You can’t always have what you wish for, but what I wish for you in the coming year I hope comes true;
Cherry

Salut d'Amour

A kind of peach-sorbet dawn...
Cherry

The Patchwork Lady

A click of needles; a kaleidoscope of colours – the yarns she works.
Cherry

Nature of the Beast

On the brink of widowhood, she stops at the door...

Winter Solstice

The pond - a solid sheet of ice
Cherry

The Bees

...the sting of wet grass...
Cherry

Stuff I Never told You

You had lovely hands; couldn’t cook to save your life.
Cherry

Girl Gone Dancing

For the first, and the very last time, she knew what they meant by ‘coming home’.

When I'm Old I'll Wear Purple

And then, I spot him – wandering my way; hovering over the lingerie counter...
Cherry

Stars and Stuff

Brass monkey weather – high on Dunstable Downs, spotting shooting stars.
Cherry

Molly Mandy

Fat lot of good it done me, that so-called ‘special school’
Cherry

Fading to Sepia

And this is she... two minutes old

Forever in Blue Jeans

At the bus stop – see a girl in a doorway; mobile phone to ear.
Cherry

In My Life

“There are places I’ll remember all my life..."
Cherry

The Widower Next Door

Yesterday – credit, where credit was due, they arranged a fitting funeral.
Cherry

On My Daughter Learning to Ride

She can barely walk, but she must learn to ride, she says.
Cherry

Where there's Hope...

“Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.” ― Anne Frank

On Listening to Mahler

(edit) They say Mahler’s 5th turns corners...
Cherry

Girl with Grey Eyes

There’s a speck of a boat pricks the horizon;
Cherry

The Hours

Playing gob-stones beside the kerb...
Cherry

Morning Song

"Love set you going like a fat gold watch." Sylvia Plath
Cherry

Girl with the Flaxen Hair

She stoops to tend a rose...
Cherry

Lilac Wine

Thoughts of Spring, and sap...rising

March Mad

Crazy, I know... as if months take heed of dates
Cherry

They Called Her Rose

...arms full of flowers, for the altar.
Cherry

Run Roe Deer Run

The thriving population of UK roe deer could be damaging woodland, according to a study out today...adding fuel to the argument more wild deer need to be culled to protect the environment.

Written in the Stars

Written in the stars... him and me, I said, but beware he’d be playing with fire
Cherry

The Myth of Narcissus

A rogue narcissus, punching its way on through
Cherry

To Each Their Own

In these we lived and loved; white-walled rooms...

The Beast in Me

His fingers sure did things to me;
Cherry

The Reason Why...

I dreamed decimated forests, and drowned rivers...
Cherry

This Here Spring

A green woodpecker, pecks at the grass beneath inches of snow...

Song Without Words

“Hope is the thing with feathers” Emily Dickinson
Cherry

Moon Child

He told her her eyes shone - sparkled like the stars...

What I Really Really Want

I’d like to see you – hair, dripping wet – fresh from a shower...
Cherry

These I Have Loved

Sparks of static dancing in the dark...

Who is Sylvia?

“And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die.”

Z to A (I.P.)

I could not believe what came in the door...
Cherry

Whales' Song

“Dark rainbow bliss in the sea”
Cherry

Under the Sun

Warm today Has spring finally sprung?

Remains of the Day

...the London fog dogs me like a stalker...

Beaumaris Pier...the last time

Packed away in the attic our tacky, tin buckets and spades...
Cherry

Rain Man

(Edit) I see him walking the lanes, sitting on gates...
Cherry

Clair de Lune

Her sigh bends the down on my neck...

Coffee Mornings

Brand new estate...brand new mums.
Cherry

The Way of the Wind

Lately, I forget a lot of things...
Cherry

Ginger-Lily

Can picture her now...
Gold cherry

Finding the Words

My tribute to a great man, and great poet, Seamus Heaney, who died a few days ago on 30th August, and now sleeps in peace beside his brother - tragically killed at just 4 years old.

Moonchild

You were born at home...
1 likes
Cherry

"The Moon is Down"

“Someone will remember us I say, even in another time.” ‘Sappho’
Cherry

"Happy Birthday Dearest Wife"

You want to say it to her any way you can...
1 likes
Cherry

When I Was Very Small

We stood in the cleft of the hill... straining our eyes watching Orion ride
2 likes
Cherry

Room Six

We take it in turns to sit with her
Cherry

Study in Blue

And this is how I'll remember you...
Cherry

On Listening to Mahler

The memory of she at the top of a hill, and how she went cart-wheeling down...
Cherry

Dear Anyone...

"My emptiness has a lake in it, deep and watery, with several temperaments." Mary Landau
Cherry

An Angel By Any Other Name...

All at sea – adrift, in the middle of Oxford; the sat-nav, as usual, speaking in tongues.

October Geese

(Edit 3/10/2013) "Wild is the music of the autumnal wind Among the faded woods, but these blithe notes strike the deserted to the heart.” William Wordsworth
Gold cherry
Poem of the week

Poetry Sucks...

My contribution to National Poetry Day 2013 I ditch my pen and paper... go outside...sick and tired of trying to write
2 likes
Cherry

The Man on the Street

Every afternoon they shuffle in – him, holding her hand

Don't Mention the 'P' Word

When they told me I’d got Parkinson’s – took the wind right out my sails.
Cherry

The End of the Affair

Between us – a thousand miles...
Cherry

'After the Bath'

After a painting by Degas... Would he have overlooked the mole on my left buttock?

Dream of Delight

Hair...black as liquorice, eyes like Chartreuse.
Cherry

Going Down to the Sea

I went down to the sea to be near you;
Cherry

Sparky

You know who I mean...you must have seen him...mangy mutt in tow.
Cherry
Poem of the week

Awakenings

Spring, summer, autumn, winter...all the seasons passing.
Cherry

B's the Name

He could do most things he set his mind to... anything but speak.
2 likes

'Ladies of the Woods'

Erect they stand - heads bowed...
Cherry

Duet for Violin and Sky

You - the bow to my strings.
Cherry

Come the Autumn

Tonight...as we put the clocks back.
Cherry

Rise

Bending with the wind, a barbed wire fence, no deterrent –
Cherry

Just One of Those Days

In the middle of the frozen-food aisle at Tesco, she asks how babies are made.
2 likes
Gold cherry

The Scattering

For the fallen - yesterday's, today's...and tomorrow's.
Cherry

Fly Fujairah...

Fujairah is one of the seven United Arab Emirates, and the only one with a coastline on the Oman and none of the Persian Gulf. It also boast the oldest mosque...dating back to 1446, built of mud and bricks.
Cherry

Eight for 8.00 at The Pink Geranium

'How many ways do I love thee?' springs to mind...
Cherry

A Certain Coming to Terms

A week ago since I heard my mother speak...
Cherry

Thursdays with Aunt Maud

Each week, she’d bid me sit down; pour us both a sherry

Those Were the Days

There were squeaky wooden-gates...
Cherry

Of Minutia and Mattie

You need a Kindle – she said...

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Back in the USSR, 1927, food was scarce...
Cherry

New Beginnings (I.P.)

This is just to say, 'Happy Divorce Day', darling...
1 likes
Cherry

Castles in Spain

Unaware, that winter’s morning would be the last one they would share...

The Leaving of Lydia

Aloneness, and loneliness - two very different things.
Cherry

Black Was Her

He’d never really, turned her on; unlike others before him.
Cherry

My Daughter Myself

Afraid of your own shadow... escalators, lifts...flying
Cherry

Ars Poetica

The key to poetry is not the written word...
Cherry

Woman in Blue

You glimpse her from a window, merely for a second...
Cherry

The Night Before the Morning After...

He asks, should we, perhaps, have an early night?
Cherry

Rememberings

We were in France Pont St. Pierre.
1 likes
Cherry

'Bird, Moon and Falling Stars'

After the painting by Morris Graves
1 likes
Cherry

Santa's Lament

When Santa got stuck up the chimney said Rudolph, ‘It’s no big surprise...

Only This...

There are some moments too beautiful to last...
Cherry

Any Mother's Prayer (I.P.)

What child is this to cause such strife a king would kill with bloody knife..

Merry Christmas Mrs Lawrence

By the way...so sorry I screwed things up.
Cherry

The Man Who Did

He could neither read, nor write...
1 likes
Cherry

Night Thoughts

A heron lifts in the last light of day.
Cherry

See Emily Play

For me, days like these seem to say it all
1 likes
Cherry

Mornings

She takes her coffee black – takes a shower;
Cherry

Endymion - Revisited

At the edge of the canvas, his hand poised – he stopped and half remembered.

Stuff Happens...

And so it goes.
Cherry

Bluesette

Sitting, alone, in the taxi, coming back home, it felt surreal...like a dream
1 likes

These Foolish Things

...the boofadoo you bought in Provence...
Cherry

Dear Diaries

I've been going to write, again, for such a long, long time.

Jake Junior

I never ever saw you –
1 likes
Cherry

Fox

'Across clearings, an eye, a widening, deepening greenness...' Ted Hughes
Cherry

Where the Bluegrass Grows

She hung-out in the shack on Deadman’s Hill.
Cherry

Colour Me Blue

Shall imagine the sky is Aquamarine... not a weary shade of Winter Gloom;
Cherry
Poem of the week

What Remains

(Edit) Her latest piece – The Goldberg Variations still open at the final page.

In These Shoes? (I.P.)

So! You’ve wound down the window; so there is life on Mars.
1 likes
Cherry

Dusk Deep January

I’m tired of this winter...tired of writing poems about rain,
1 likes

Perusing Plato

And thinking too, of the night we first met...
1 likes
Cherry

Mathilde

Mozart on the radio, my arm resting on the wound-down window...
Cherry

This Here Now...

Is when you bend to kiss my breast...

Always Read the Label

In between his cornflakes and his toast, he looks up at me – says he thinks he’s probably bipolar. Why’s that? I ask him. Because, he says, of his...
Cherry

A Chertsey Morning

"So dawn goes down today. Nothing gold can stay." Robert Frost
Cherry

JoinedUpThinking

Why did he do it? Sure as hell, not for queen, or country.

Sara Orange-Tip

(Edit) "Remember me," she pleaded
Cherry

Come Hell or High Water...

A stench of death turns her stomach; the water makes her sick, but still, she drinks.
1 likes
Cherry

The Devil in Mrs Jones

Your beloved late husband will be drinking a toast;
1 likes

The Nature of Things

Us, gazing at a cocktail of stars...
Cherry

'On Such a Night as This...'

I glimpse you glancing down, from wherever you are,
Cherry

Stories My Father Told Me

Hungry to learn then, I was.
Cherry

The Heat of the Desert (I.P.)

"They cannot scare me with their empty spaces between stars – stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places." Robert Frost
Cherry

Your Mother Yourself

You, and things important to you, have become inconsequential to your mother...
1 likes
Cherry

'The Man in Black'

(Re-edit) The man wore black and wrote a song 'bout Vietnam... Johnny Cash 26/02/1932 – 23/09/2003
Cherry

The Art of Letting Go

A balloon wafted over my yard today... reminded me of a Mother’s Day six years ago, now.
Cherry

The Leaving

Mind if I sit here? Lovely afternoon, isn’t it? Who did you come to visit? Me? My son.

Definitely Not Just Another Dog Story

(Edit 18/03/2014 Her old faithful bought it yesterday – under the wheels of the dustcart.
1 likes
Cherry

Sliding Doors

Inside my head, though, I’m out of here; light-years away from this hell-hole

Swallows and Sauté Pans

We were in the field, picking the first of the spring greens,
Cherry

Dear Darling...

"Please excuse my writing; I can’t stop my hands from shaking..." http://www.muzu.tv/olly-murs/dear-darlin-music-video/1878041/
2 likes

Musings on my Muse

Watch you as you sleep; arms akimbo...

Child's Play? (I.P.)

"He says he'd like a Rubik's cube," said Mum to Dad, one afternoon;
Cherry

His Will be Done

...that small, silver cross catching the light...
1 likes
Cherry

Waiting for Godfrey

So, what's up, Godfrey; cat got your tongue?
1 likes
Cherry
Poem of the week

Once Upon a Life...

I got into bed – made love with the boy – happened to be there
3 likes

A Touch of Red

(Edit) Cancer not only ravages our bodies... "Each day, she dies, a little bit more..."
Cherry

Flying Without Wings

A day, a place, a moment, he was to remember, until the end of all his moments...

Lilies for Lily

Her twentieth birthday today... I take her out to lunch
1 likes
Cherry

Shibboleth...

...an open book a hint of patchouli

The One...

The one married the wrong bloke, the one was in the wrong place at the wrong time...
Cherry

Marginalia

...succumbing to another painful bout of writers' block...
Cherry

Journeys

So, I wouldn’t bring you back, even if I could, to somewhere you wouldn’t want to be
Cherry

When Barry Met Larry

I'm with Moya...My offering for Parkinson's Awareness Week. "Mention Parkinson's to most folk and they haven't got a clue..."
Cherry

Finding Ashley

It hardly seems but a minute ago, you were knee-high to a space-hopper...
1 likes
Cherry

The Season of Migration (I.P.)

Dusk fast falling, and I contemplate the day; how I’d seen the first swallow of the season
1 likes

Just Because

Because I wasn’t meant to be.
Cherry

Gone to Ground

...maybe the one ate the tops off your radish plants, you so carefully set the night before?
Cherry

Sons and Brothers

"At this rate he would not live. He had that poignant carelessness about himself, his own suffering, his own life, which is a form of suicide. It almost broke her heart." (D.H. Lawrence - Part 2, Chap. 10, Sons and Lovers)
1 likes
Cherry

A Sudden Resurrection (I.P.)

If ever there were to be a second coming what would it be like? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARmMn5hJaHM
1 likes
Cherry
Poem of the week

At Holcombe Beach (I.P.)

Each day he would stroll to the sea, walking arm-in-arm with ghosts of the past...
Cherry

Stones

There were no words, not that day, not that afternoon; not then

The Colour Red

Why’s learning the names of colours so important?
1 likes
Cherry

After You'd Gone...

They told me, ‘Keep busy; take up writing, again.’ Get a dog...
1 likes

Crow and I

(Edit 30/04/14) A 'vegetative state'? What the hell does that mean?
Cherry

Came the Spring

There was a barn stood here, once;
Cherry

The Blue Chair

I’m too old to be your muse...
Cherry

Wild Child

Braids – blowing free...

Women of a Certain Age

(Edited) The year is nineteen-forty-seven...
Cherry

Since Parkinson's was His

Albeit unwittingly, he taught me many things....
Cherry

The Night Before the Radiotherapy

Hugs his pillow – craving his affections, after what they term, necessary, drastic surgery
1 likes
Cherry

These My Daughter Taught Me

Made me see the beauty in the common and garden weed...
1 likes
Cherry

Beaujolais Days

Straw hat tilted to shade her eyes, in the shadow of the vine-covered veranda, she sits – glass in hand,
Cherry

One Morning in May

I watch the tall trees bend in the wind, at the far end of the lawn;

Etude

That first morning I woke before you...
Cherry

Castles in the Sand

How fast a fortnight flies...how very blue the sea was.

Rise

My tribute to Maya Angelou
Cherry

Air Kisses

You think you own me and, in a way you do;
Cherry

"Oh, It's a Lovely War!"

A fiddler plays The Twelfth Street Rag, wives and husbands clap their hands...

Castle in the Clouds (I.P.)

(Edit) Her mother seeks her out – but not in her bedroom, for she seldom sleeps there..
Cherry

Phoenix Rising

Real events don’t have endings. Only the stories about them do.
1 likes

The Naming of Plants

Enough to bore the socks right off the birds and the bees!
Cherry

Darcy May

My thoughts – entirely of her, every mile of the way; leathers on, the wind in my hair...
Cherry

Just Jade

A watercolour – signed, just, 'Jade' – his portrait, as a young man
Cherry

Letticia's Come Home... (I.P.)

Gives it up for the morphine – for the nurse – treads, black-stockinged through her mind...
Cherry

My Heart Belongs to Daddy

For fathers...everywhere, on Father's Day.
Cherry

No Fairy-Tale – This

Once upon a time, found himself in Basra; Royal Engineers – Parachute Squadron.

Little Red Shoes

A summer storm - yet no raincoat, no umbrella...
Cherry

Poetry and That

Something stirs, something breathes...
Cherry

Life on Mars

Reminds me so much of my first day at school; like being marooned on another planet.

In These Shoes?

(Edit) So...you've wound down the window - so there is life on Mars...
Cherry

The Undergraduate

To set the scene, it was 1968; Jonathon – seventeen, and me? Shall we say…a year or more his senior?
1 likes
Cherry

If Pigs Could Fly

Something was in the air tonight – even Battersea seemed half-bearable. Stubs out her cigarette.
Cherry

Tomorrow Would Have Been Her Birthday

Times, like now, I feel humbled by nature...
1 likes
Cherry

Kuroi Ame (Black Rain)

August 6th 1945 Were you born yet? If so, where were you? What were you doing?

After the Ball

"May I have the pleasure?” asks this debonair young man
Cherry

A Star is Born

There’s a stage at the Theatre Royal, in most every child’s heart;
Cherry

After the Heat Wave

A skylark climbs the ladder of its song...
1 likes
Cherry

It All Came Out in the Wash

Brand new estate... brand new mums, so we had a rota, week and week about...

Flying with Wings

And still one more time they circle the pond... my two ducks.
Cherry

Crazy for You

Travel light, didn’t you always say? I might just take your advice;
Cherry

Note to Self

As is her way, she knocks on my open door, this woman of the world,
Cherry

When the Lights Went Out

In the grand scheme of things our loss was nothing, nothing at all;
Cherry

Freefall

If you are the first to go...

Breaking Up

(Re edit) Looking forward to summer holidays – tea-time, just after, when Mum got ill...
1 likes
Cherry

One of a Kind

Just one of the ones who dreams a dream
Cherry

Another Man's Treasure

(Edit) Under graffiti-daubed, grey arches – his abode;

Present Imperfect

(Edit) He still misses her, I sense...even after all these years,
1 likes
Cherry

Blackberry Wine

‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...’ And of blackberries, the caviar of hedgerows
Cherry

It Usually Rains at Funerals

I’d planned to cut it short; just pay my respects, that sort of thing.
Cherry

Monday Morning Autumn...

and a murder of crows insist amongst the shawl of pine trees
1 likes
Cherry

Days Like These

‘The Chaos Theory’ personified – you and your room...
Cherry

Dear Darling...

"Please excuse my writing; I can’t stop my hands from shaking ‘cause I’m cold and alone tonight" Olly Murs
Cherry

Schiehallion

You came into my life like errant mist steals across a mackerel sky at dawn,
Cherry

Tonight Josephine

Saw an ad in the local rag and there I was...in the buff
1 likes
Cherry

The Backpack

And so you’re off to Uni in a week or so... your gap year...plus one, at an end;
1 likes
Cherry

Small is Beautiful

maybe one and the same you and the moth...
Cherry

The ABC of Zoe

Autumn returns – way too soon
Cherry

Lines in the Sand

Given up as infants; a disposable commodity. All we ever wanted was to belong.
Cherry

New Shoes?

Who you staring at Mister, in your posh limousine? Kerb-crawling’s illegal, so stop hassling me.
Cherry

The Thing about Autumn

to see but one leaf fall, releases the melancholy in me
Gold cherry

October's Geese

Pinch-punch
2 likes

Flo's Flutter

An ocean of mixed rinses dazzles;
Cherry

Moving On

Hard to imagine, before – us taking different routes; halving our possessions.

Sweet Charity

(Re-edit) She’s here to shelter from the rain. So am I, if the truth be known.
Cherry

Something Inside

She promised me faithfully she wouldn’t ever let it happen again
Cherry
Poem of the week

Albatross

A CD on repeat, and Fleetwood Mac softly strum her to sleep...
Cherry

Room Nine's the One in Three of Us

What’s up? You need the loo? And yet... seems you couldn’t wait.
Gold cherry

On Putting the Clocks Back

Autumn drags its heels. Summer – got its act together, for a change, this year...
Cherry

The Power and the Glory

Always there – on that broad chest of his, that small, silver crucifix I gave him for his 21st.
Cherry

'Poppies in the Snow'

Red – her colour. Poppy by name and nature,
Cherry

Letters from the Dead

I think of your future sans me, of world peace, of global warming...
Cherry

Blithe Spirit

...the Weeping Window and the Wave to be given a reprieve.
Cherry

The Shadow of Lilith

Erase from my mind, endless afternoons...
Cherry

Night Moves

Closer, closer yet, the tawny...
Gold cherry

PS No PS

Light has bleached the ink...
1 likes
Cherry

My Mother Myself

A Monday in the long, hot summer of 1983, headed for Tooting Bec Asylum.
Gold cherry

Breaking Glass

Died inside when they ushered me in; my mother – stripped naked,

December Late Afternoon

A CD on repeat; neglected all others – gathering dust;
Cherry

The Beautician's Day Off

Her nail polish, chipped – in need of repair... except...

Always Read the Label

n between his cornflakes and his toast, he looks at me – says he thinks he’s bipolar.
2 likes
Cherry

Spiegel im Spiegel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtFPdBUl7XQ

Saving Gracie

Smoke hung low over the cemetery, from allotments across the street.
Cherry

Quarter to January

Christmas morning; that off-kilter smile, that very last gift you gave to me
Cherry

A Passing Thought

Saw the Beatles, live at the Apollo, Hammersmith
1 likes
Cherry

Lily Rose

Fay-like – fragile, she seemed...
Cherry

In the Early Morning Rain...

Deposited you at the station
Cherry

You Are No More...

You who are no more, no less, than a memory now...
1 likes
Cherry

Loving Angels Instead

No last goodbyes – no sad songs, no sentimentality
1 likes

Ars Poetica

'To begin at the the beginning...'
Cherry

Shoots Leaves and Eats

Think they own me for it’s true; I am all theirs in exchange for a pound or two.
Cherry

Letting Go

If only we could begin again...
1 likes
Cherry

Reasons I Hate Winter

Strike winter from my diary...when we first made out beneath the trees...
Cherry

Breast is Best

(Edit) Support her head for goodness sake! Didn't the midwife teach you anything?
1 likes
Cherry

Girl at Piano

I'd watch her through my window of an afternoon –
Cherry

27th January, 2015

And so they came with their tributes – world leaders, all
Cherry

Late January Morn

The snow – melting underfoot;

Shenandoah

She speaks to me, often, if only in tongues
Cherry

Only Cats Know When to Walk Away

Nothing in the photo bodes of your crap life early dementia... early demise... it’s all sweetness and light – you sitting on a swing beneath a tree...
1 likes
Cherry

For Sale - Sold as Seen

The yard full of clutter – an old sink, a has-been lavatory cistern, to ‘come in handy one of these days’.

Room Six - Tooting Bec Asylum...1982

where people like my mother, merely suffering from early onset Alzheimer's were sectioned and committed, until its closure in 1992.
Cherry

These I Have Loved

(Edit) A glimpse, of a balloon slipped its string, up there in the blue.
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Cherry

To a Cherry Tree

Your limbs – stripped bare... trunk, so slim, so delicate,
Cherry

His Father's Eyes

So soundly asleep; lays her cheek next to his, so soon bruised by the world
Cherry

Ticket to Fly...

...and a one-way ticket, at that.
Cherry

"All the World's a Stage"

“The lights go out and I die. Tomorrow I will be reborn. Tomorrow I will dance again.” (Rudolf Nureyev – March, 1938 - January, 1993)
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Beaujolais Days

(Edit) I drink a toast, my dear, my own, my darling.
Cherry

Green Railings

Green railings divide earth from heaven..
Cherry

The Fragility of China

two mugs stashed – each in each; so tight I can’t prize them apart for fear they’d break in my hands,

Silence is Golden

Looks at her – 'eyes could charm the birds right out the trees', and perhaps they did.
Gold cherry

The Beat Goes On

Durham Buildings reeks of spliff, of fish and chips and oysters,
Cherry

Spring Springs

The time of year when the earth is created again, one piece at a time,

The Nothingness of Stars

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces between stars – stars where no human race is. I have it in me so much nearer home to scare myself with my own desert places. Robert Frost
Cherry

The Myth of Narcissus

Spring has arrived and yet, but one tiny bud would dare to open;

In the Cold, Spring Sunlight...

(Edited) ...it was mothers who stood out on the steps of St. Paul's, at today's service commemorating the end of UK's involvement in the Afghan War...some wearing blood-red knitted poppies to raise money for military charities that give ongoing care for the wounded. Whatever views one holds as to the rights or wrongs of such involvement, the stark reality is, that 453 British souls were lost, along with an unrecorded number of Afghanistans', and as many families...wives, husbands, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, friends, left to deal, alone, with the aftermath. At the very least...a prayer for them?
Cherry

A Blot on the Landscape

...much of rural Britain, clothed in the garish garb of a rubbish-tip; plastic bags...French-fry cartons...
Cherry

Camelot

A story, loosely woven from the threads of the legend of Camelot, written in the style of Tennyson's poem, 'The Lady of Shallot'.

The Naming of Plants

Some half-naked – stripped of their papery raiment...
Cherry

Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

Perchance the comparison should be more fitting to liken thee to a winter’s night,
Cherry

'White as Diamonds'

I've known mornings, white as diamonds, silent from a night so cold such a stillness... calm as the owl glides... Alela Diana Menig
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Little Red Shiny Shoes

What's the time, Mr. Wolf?
Cherry

On Putting the Clocks On

With a ‘ morning’s come too soon ’ kind of a yawn, she drifts off to sleep again beside me – her spine curled against the dawn only moments ago,...

The Prodigal

OK – so you’ve finally made it home, and yes... I am mad at you...and I might sulk for a while...but
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Cherry

Long Night's Journey into Day

Winter long – so sound, they sleep;
Cherry

Another Kind of Heaven

Verdigris – the fall of light between the trees.
Cherry

Simmering Sibblings

OK...I admit it. So, I pissed my sister off..
Cherry

Cinderellas Have Stubble Too

Balls aren't all they're cracked up to be...

Holly Blue

Spring’s hedgerows; blossoming brambles and white nettles, await your kiss;
Cherry

Black Was Her

Wear them black stilettos until you tilt, babe...
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"Don't Laugh at Me..."

To mark the start of Parkinson's Awareness Week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbwS9qcpi0k 'Don't Laugh at Me 'Cause I'm a fool' Norman Wisdom, OBE 4/2/1915 - 4/10/2010
Cherry

A Woman Wants...

(Edit and repost) someone gives her the courage to ask, 'Milk...and one lump or two?'
Cherry

Zone Red

“Leave the money on the pillow, close the door before you go; it’s freezing in this hell-hole and the meter’s running low!”
Cherry

Pas de Deux for Violin and Sky

Absence is the highest form of presence, didn’t someone say?
Cherry

For the Love of Her

“...and if I should carol aloud from aloft all things that are forked, and horned, and soft would lean out from the hollowed sphere of the sea all looking down for the love of me.” ‘The Mermaid’ (Alfred Lord Tennyson)
Cherry

Night in the Camargue

Not the Camargue or the Rhone, not the wind bending bamboo on the brackish, delta marshes;

Run Roe Deer Run

(Edit) Through the half-light glimpse a roe deer...
Cherry

I Am I Said

*I am, I said, to no one there," and no one heard at all. Not even the chair." Neil Diamond

Things make me want a Duvet Day

(edit) Meeting someone in the street, tells me, ‘ Time’s a great healer’ ; dogs that make a bee-line for my crotch...
Cherry

Journeys

Cherry

Moving On

All that ‘stuff’, squirreled over the years...gathering dust in the attic; time to pack it all up in a cardboard box...time for moving on.
Cherry

Quietus

Ink may fade, and paper age under the sun's unrepentant light as a silent epiphany leadens

Of Mattie and Me...

Loch Awe, the bees, buzzing in the heather, the way you squealed and ran away whenever one deigned to invade your space...
Cherry

Dearest Daughter...

That last time I visited you in the hospice, wanted to confess...own up, tell you what I’d been doing that afternoon, but didn’t know how.

Uncle Amos

Turned up with a pushcart – the old man who moved in across the street. A ‘Yid’, Dad said he was...
Cherry

The Birds and the Bees

A ribbon of mist curls from the moor skirts the river; a farmer’s predatorily parked Jeep at the entrance to the field...

Matchstick-Man and Rainbow

A covey of chairs – lace-backed, pink-chintz...
Cherry

Boy Blue (Poetry Monthly)

His sweetheart she rose early, one bright and sunny morn, the sheep were in the meadow and golden glowed the corn.
Cherry

The Hand that Takes the Picture

All floral frock and seamed stockings, shaded by a tree, where the sun sought you out –
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The Last Goodbye

Love, you are the world to me, yet it’s time to call it a day.
Cherry

The Longest Day

Another night, another day... this last one, the longest, waiting...for finality,
Cherry

Future Imperfect

How serene, and unruffled they seemed. Much like us; standards to uphold. Heaven forbid we’d break the moral code.
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Cherry

June...

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Cherry

The Letting Go

If only we could begin again, or at the very best... forget, but gradually, for love is precious, love is rare...
Cherry

Fay's Flutter

An ocean of mixed rinses dazzles; outside it’s drab; grizzled anoraks drift by, but in the bingo hall it’s warm – as, pen in hand, Flo spreads her cards before her like a florid fortune-teller.
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Cherry

From a Stopping Train (Poetry Monthly)

A fleeting glimpse from a window... in her small backyard, all wrapped up in a winter-jasmine wind...
Cherry

Women of Small Histories

The year is nineteen-forty-seven... through the smog I can glimpse it. Summer dragged its heels – one of the hottest on record. Women are waiting for life to get better.
Cherry

Aftermath

7/7 Ten years on
Cherry

'Just One of those Things'

‘ So it’s goodbye, dear, and Amen... here’s hoping we meet, now and then. It was great fun, but it was just one of those things ’. Cole Porter
Cherry

'You've Been Framed!' (Poetry Monthly)

Pigeons potter in puddles; in the road, an old man with a stick brings the traffic to a standstill... Bankside – Tate Modern.
Cherry

Sweet Daughter Mine

On my desk she perches... eyes of ambergris,
Cherry

Reclining Nude

A young, black girl – draped on green baize settee;
Cherry

Up to Here with the Weather...

He can’t abide me smoking in the flat; that’s why I’m out here, on the roof, on this drizzly afternoon...
Cherry

Red Devil

Touched, it seems, by earthly fire, up it spirals...ever higher... eyes and mind with death conspire;
Cherry

The Town the Wind Blew Away

“Cleaned a lot of plates in Memphis pumped a lot of gas down in New Orleans, but I never saw the good side of the city till I hitched a ride on the river boat queen...”
Cherry

I Believe in Unicorns

Strangely taboo – yet beautiful, that last ever image I have of you...

Doppelganger (Poetry Monthly)

I have to agree with you. Could be your double, and I should know
Cherry

Sara Orange-Tip Was Here

Like a warm, sleepy southern drawl dawn arrives; wafted here by a primrose wind white-winged, she stutters in.
Gold cherry
Poem of the week

The Poetry of Porcelain

He could tell by its style...the shade of the clay – trace its origin, its artist...
Cherry

Opacity of Glass

and in the orangery remained a phantom of the past...
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Cherry

Chess

her breathing melding with the ether...
Cherry

Flypast

A field of August wheat...
Cherry

Sweet Lightning

Thunder thrums; in the middle distance a willow – overhangs the window, screeches on the pane...
Cherry

Clothes-Speak

Anyway, they wouldn’t understand, not about death, even though it seems they ask...her clothes...
Cherry

The Silence of the Summit (Poetry Monthly)

Darkness falls and I am cold; limbs – stiffening, hope – fading.

Washing Day

Her smalls on the line – slow shimmying with the breeze;
Cherry

Black Rain

6th August, 1945. Hiroshima. Seventy years on.
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Cherry

For What it's Worth...

How could I possibly have known when I woke that December morning, the last of the month, it was to be the day we two would make that final ascent?
Cherry

An Air on a G String

Bach was to blame for bringing them together;
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Cherry

A Little Tart

I just have to do as he tells me. "C’mon love, Give me what I like...I’ll see you’re alright..."
Cherry

Something I Said

Gentle – go gentle I want to tell them as they lift you from your bed to the chair...
Cherry

Summer Wine

‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...’ of rosehips, and ripe plums bejewel the tumbled twilight of thicket and spinney...
Cherry

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

(Edit) She invites him up ‘for a coffee’...but then they all say that, don’t they?
Gold cherry

On my Daughter Learning to Ride

She could barely walk, but she must learn to ride, she says.

Spilt Milk

Half asleep, he rubs his eyes - pulls back the awning, glances outside. From his mattress on the floor picks up a kaftan – soft his bare-feet fall on...
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Cherry

Snap Shot

Musical box full of sea shells and 'if onlys'...
Cherry

Performance Piece

“This a poetry reading, lady?” enquires a sunny faced Japanese gent –
Cherry

Ruddy Ducks

I wouldn't care if I never saw another ruddy duck...
Cherry

In the Name of the Father...

...as of this moment, there is a new definition of the word, 'Displacement'...
Cherry

The Weight of Snow

We started talking about nappies today...how he'd been such a dab hand at folding them...
Cherry

The Lavender Rocker

She outbid me at auction - the girl in a beat-up, green MGB GT...
Gold cherry

'The Old Man of Coniston'

Gaze so glued to the skies, I doubt he's aware the two of us share the same square meter of shale...
Cherry

The Woman in White

They paid their last respects, laid tulips on the new-dug grave of the vicar's wife...
Cherry

Lucy in the Sky

Days were scattered that year, like the leaves seemed to engulf the bench where we two sat...
Cherry

Why Does it Always Rain at Funerals? (Poetry Monthly)

Fascinating things - funerals...snippets of conversations. Especially if you're a 'fly on the wall'.
Cherry

'Mine's a Saveloy!'

Closer to who he will become, I watch him cycle off down the street...
Cherry

My Father's House

The place is ablaze with trees torched by autumn's epiphany...
Cherry

Journeys

Child in her eyes, and in her bones...
Cherry

'Made in India'

Treat myself to a new dress for my niece's twenty-first...
Cherry

Stepping Stones (Poetry Monthly)

...blew a kiss, as they hit the open road...
Cherry

Poet to his Muse

My contribution to National Poetry Day
Cherry

It's Only Me, Mrs. Jenkins

It's a programme on TV, Mrs. Jenkins. No need to be afraid. Just a flim. It's not real life.
Cherry

Oyster Bay

Twixt myth and magic, is Oyster Bay...elusive, yet easy to find...
Cherry

'Go Now'

The Moody Blues blasting out from a cherry red 'Dansette Bermuda'. There we were, my sister's boyfriend, Rob, and me...and Monday's washing dirty-dancing on the line...
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Cherry

'The Borrowers' (Poetry Monthly)

An expedition...all the way to the top, me and my two year old; a picnic by a covey of chattering pines...
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Cherry
Poem of the week

'Incident on the Line'

No one saw him fall...
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The Missing

Fall is the season of mellowing and missing...
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Cherry

"At the Going Down of the Sun"

Saw the morning star tug, with all its little shimmerings at nights such as these...

Novemberesque

Spring, summer, and autumn, come and go...
Cherry

Nights Such as These

When I think of you, I can’t recall your face but there are times when I walk outside – like this evening – the sky a deeper shade of missing you...
Cherry

Lines in the Sand (Poetry Monthly)

For my sixth birthday I wanted a doll. They gave me a rifle and box of bullets...
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Cherry

Joyride

I rode away into forever...
Cherry

'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World'

Imagine, if you can...the two of us, drifting slowly to sleep, and when we woke, the joy of starting over again.
Cherry

Tripping the Light Fantastic

...goes inside - turns his back on distant towns and cities...
Cherry

An Ill Wind

Wishing his life away...he knew that, but this was it; winter had, finally, arrived. He felt content now... lulled by the rain thrumming on leaded...
Cherry

For Sale - Sold as Seen

The yard full of clutter - an old sink, a has-been lavatory cistern, to 'come in handy one of these days'.
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Cherry

The Journey to End all Journeys (Poetry Monthly)

With which of us would you bide until today...we who bore you here, sweet child?
Cherry

Seeing the Light

'There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in'...Leonard Cohen
Cherry

'The Parting of the Ways'

For a neighbour, and dear friend, who passed away, suddenly, this morning, in their 93rd year.
Cherry

What Am I?

I am the fawn-light, the ambergris of a forest floor...
Cherry

Girl with Tambourine (Poetry Monthly

Girl in crimson dress...crave her caress...girl in dress of fire...igniting desire...
Cherry

Solemates (Poetry Monthly)

A very fishy tale indeed this one
Cherry

One Man and his Dog

Your gift – ribbon tied, sits, ungiven still, beneath the tree; a mere bottle of Port, but a vintage one, I think...not that I know much about that...

A Tiny Light

(Edit) Bon Voyage to Tim and a safe return - Tim Peake - the first British astronaut to arrive at the International Space Station...now safely docked. The space station will be visible on earth to the naked eye as a 'tiny light'.
Cherry

No Fairy Tale

As God's my witness, honestly, you couldn't be more wrong. No pack of lies....no fairytale
Cherry

Glass is a Supercooled Liquid

I wasn't leaving her alone - not in that place, any more than I had to, but died and died again when they ushered me in...
Cherry

Santa's Little Helpers...(I.P.)

...not forgetting Donner and Blitzen who were mortified to discover they might not get a mention. Quite a challenge to write, but our little cloven-hoofed friends are worth it, hands down.
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Cherry

Reprise (Poetry Monthly)

If only we could begin again...
Gold cherry

Stars of Wonder

'They cannot scare me with their empty spaces....'
Cherry

The Paler Shade of White

'See last gold sun behind clouds, inked water in moonlight. No poems written to praise you, I write them white'. Carol Ann Duffy
Cherry

White Noise

"Good Morning, Mr. Reeves,' say the children, as steadily it snows on the playground and the trees...
Cherry

The Guy Pushing Big Issue

He's got the gift of the gab...that look in his eyes...
Cherry

A Sin is What it Is

Pity I never topped myself when I reached seventy-five...
Cherry

Of a New Year's Eve

Trapped in a time-warp, dusk succumbs to dark...
Cherry

Happy Days

What is it with the past attracts us like metal to a magnet...?
Cherry

'The Way Through the Woods'

This is the track leads to the tree, still remembers your first time...
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Cherry

What Seems to be the Problem?

Come in. Do take a seat. Mrs. Parker, isn't it? Forgive me...I'm new to the practice...
Cherry

My Family and Other Animals

Hot-house plants...me and my sister...
Cherry

It's Hard to Kill an Aspidistra

Iron Plant - its nickname. Almost impossible to kill, but you managed it in one fell swoop; unless it learned to swim, it never stood a whisper of a chance...
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Cherry

Sarsparilla Dreaming

...sipping sarsparilla through a straw...slipping off our shoes and socks...
Cherry

Bird (Poetry Monthly)

Before you were a bird, you were a sunburst....
Cherry

The Way of Rain...

the way I always write in the past tense, these days...poems about yesterday
Cherry

Nobody Passed like Aunt Sis Did

"The best thing about getting old, one doesn't lose sleep over niceties..."
Cherry

My Father's House

Many rooms you and I have slept in...
Cherry

A Borderline Case (Poetry Monthly)

Migrants from India, Bangladesh, China...passports forcibly seized at the border...
Cherry

The Making of Love

Creep up the stairs...peep in through a crack in their bedroom door.
Cherry

The Lady that Played Piano

A potted palm sits, stalwart, atop her piano, an ancient upright, unquestionably seen better days, taking me back in time...
Gold cherry

Anniversary

And so, it's that time of the year, again, a time I don't want to remember...nor forget, if that makes any sense.
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Cherry

Painted Lady Motel

It's thirty years since we booked in to the seedy motel; Mr and Mrs Might-Have-Beens...
Gold cherry
Poem of the week

Painting the Homeless Godly

As long as spots go , hand in hand, with chickenpox, so Billy was always there in the pitch next to mine...
Cherry

"Yours Truly"

"Well. Of all the cheek! Just can't believe this is meant to be about, 'Yours truly' "... he said.
Cherry

Say That Again...(Poetry Monthly)

Why did I do it? Join up in the first place, do you mean?
Cherry

The Tenth Circle of Hell

Your hell, blow Dante, you said, was a circle of chintz-backed chairs...
Cherry

New Beginnings (IP)

It was ever Christmas in Gran's kitchen - painted gloss-green.
Cherry

A Passing Thought (Poetry Monthly)

Don't mind if I scream at the next person tells me, 'You're in the best place'...because I'm not.
Cherry

Future Conditional

Say the sun turns into a red giant tomorrow...Say the clouds' water supply gets turned off - permanently....
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Cherry

As it is in Heaven (Poetry Monthly)

The clocks didn't stop...dogs insisted on barking...
Cherry

The Naming of Bulbs

How impatient they are to be freed – these teardrops with roots,
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Cherry

Not Just Any Sunday

Easter Day; an afternoon's hard digging behind me, glance up - two lapwings splice and ocean of lapis lazuli...
Cherry

Chasing Stars

A perfect night – we scoured the skies as the clouds, finally, broke;
Gold cherry

Not Quite Fern Hill (Poetry Monthly)

Still...my favourite place to be...Narnia's any place you want it to be, and this is mine.
Cherry

The 'It' Girl

'Make it snappy!' she'd holler, standing on the porch, curlers in her hair...
Cherry

T'is the Season...

Dusk fast falling, and I contemplate the day...
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