When I was a lad I worked on big ships. Here I describe the Suez Canal stretch of a sea passage from Quebec City in Canada to Colombo in Sri Lanka round about 1977. Our ship was loaded with a bulk cargo of poverty relief grain financed by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA). Some of my writing is an embellishment of the truth and a little bit of it is the result of pure imagination, but this poem is as near to the truth as I could get whilst attempting to remain poetic.
Exhausting but rewarding for
Posted on Mon, 15 Jan 2024
Exhausting but rewarding for the farmer and the sheep. The need of a lamp to see it through adds to the atmosphere without revealing which age it might have been in. Your poem describes the event extremely well.
Read full commentPosted in Night Help
Thanks very much for your
Posted on Wed, 17 Jan 2024
Thanks very much for your encouragement and support Di. The short answer to your question, I'm afraid, is that I can't be bothered.
Two things make me want to write. One is that younger generations of my family will have something to read...
Read full commentPosted in Lovely Palace, Must Fly
I admire you for taking a
Posted on Wed, 17 Jan 2024
I admire you for taking a crash course in Japanese (or was that just in the story?). A Chinese friend of mine here in Bulgaria tried to give me a crash course in Mandarin but in the end (well, after thirty minutes) my brain crashed.
Your...
Read full commentPosted in Enoshima (Part One of Two)
From the bottom of my coffee cup.
Posted on Wed, 17 Jan 2024
Hello Jacques.
I appreciate and sympathise with the words in your comment, sending thanks from the bottom of my coffee cup.
Read full commentPosted in Lovely Palace, Must Fly
I love this bit...
Posted on Mon, 15 Jan 2024
I love this bit...
Heavy cloud in fashionable grey spread from horizon to horizon leaching the colour out of greens of any remaining foliage and reds of brickwork.
It contributes a lot to creating the scene.
And...
Read full commentPosted in New Directions (1)
It was the Farsi word for
Posted on Sun, 14 Jan 2024
It was the Farsi word for farcical that had me beaten.
Read full commentPosted in A Fistful of Rials
A terrible story, a sharp
Posted on Sat, 13 Jan 2024
A terrible story, a sharp reminder and a well written poem.
Nice one Luigi!
Read full commentPosted in One Night, in Berlin
Optimism
Posted on Tue, 09 Jan 2024
There's a lot of hope in your well thought out words Paul.
I hope the hope comes true.
Good on you!
Posted in January Panorama
Having lived in the West Country
Posted on Wed, 03 Jan 2024
Having lived in the West Country for twenty years, none of this surprises me Paul.
A well written and gripping tale.
Read full commentPosted in Abyss
I really like this. I like
Posted on Sat, 06 Jan 2024
I really like this. I like the way you've highlighted how water is used over and over again in nature; many times in the past and many times in the future, as well as here and now.
Read full commentPosted in Autobiography (but not mine!)
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