Category Archives: September 2021

Jill Martindale Farrar To no schedule but her own mostly, maybe, after rain though sometimes drought decides She sits and bares her teeth surviving soil as poor as stone and crooked stares Medea in her battlements equipped with barbs impervious, immune to beauty’s rules And season’s rhyme till some whim or enduring rage weeps fromContinue reading “The cactus when it blooms”

Christine Hill In the morning when I run, the bush smells sweet. The dog agrees. Seduced by bedded scents of nature’s nightlife, her nose sweeps the undergrowth. I push my legs. Urge my breath. Make myself keep going. When the virus comes in the morning when I run I stop dead beside a tree whoseContinue reading “The Tree”

Christine Burrows winter solstice tick-tocks the cutting, digging ritual secateurs snick, cut clean through thick thorny shafts and scraggly-leafed branches each rose bush must be pared down to a gnarled fist with a single, spike-armoured finger menace revealed, then tucked into a bed of pea-straw when frost-melt steams in September sun new-forged thorns and leaves,Continue reading “Winter Pruning”

Gillian Swain More godlike than dog there’s smile in your walk your shadow and shadow me you do. How is it that as I slide my hand over your head along your spine, your silk, your warmth will move a health into me simply through touch? Seems odd to say out loud. No thoughts disruptContinue reading “Deity”

SoulReserve words, familiar, catch on the tessellating susurrating fragments of her fluid mind. like fish in a paddy field, she is mindlessly adrift, drifting within the corridors of half-eaten, half- -nibbled-on words with a smooth, gliding motion. the tender-green sprigs of rice lie submerged inside amber water. stagnant, clouded with faint memories that become livingContinue reading “Fish in a paddy field”

Cheryl Achterberg I once had a love Clear and true as the Best soprano. Alice happy To just breathe Beside me. I drove her away. She full of joy, She wouldn’t go. She ran to greet me, Sang in the garden, So pleased with life, Her small round eyes Wide open, Unknowing. Alice was aContinue reading “For Alice”

Pratibha Castle The sea sparkles, a glimmer of fallen stars, glint on the horizon of coral light. I pause at the water’s edge, bowl my hands as if dawn might be cradled like a gull’s egg. Waves sluice the shore, the legs of an oyster catcher stood, head bent, a prophet hearkening; my bare toesContinue reading “Dawn Walk at Wittering”

Paul Fleckney dry grass prickles the balls of my feet as I tread from house to hammock hungry for silence and solitude on passing the woodshed a rustle alerts my sensors too loud for a bird too soft for a cat a scaly tail slithers into the dark I halt then a head and twoContinue reading “The lizard”

Scott-Patrick Mitchell musk deepening age hardens the bean with each wall scaled a noisy ascension graceless as if to announce a bell trails at night, this is a herald as is the door, knocking a loose tooth in jamb incremental, growth stretches across made beds strand by strand, shedding how want makes a body liquid,Continue reading “kitten”

Robyn Rowland Once a week my respite in this old family beach house my uncle built, and him buried last May with his ten watchers. Sitting inside this stillness, this suspension, unencumbered momentarily, I watch at Barrack Point the sea entering the small inlet to Little Lake, our headland one side, rocky breakwater the other,Continue reading “Unwelcome Fixity”