Category Archives: Poetry

Accusations of wokery is just cover for anything they don’t like. Be it: Kindness to strangers Empathy Equality of the sexes Tolerance of gender fluidity Refusing to bend into prescribed stereotypes Liking refugees – believing they are people too Caring … Continue reading →

Is this really the house? Number Eighteen, it says on the door. Has the house shrunk in the rain, like wool? Or have I grown too big, Like Alice, drinking and eating Till my head won’t fit through the door? … Continue reading →

Since I wrote this poem the arches have had barriers closing them off and so not available for the homeless to shelter. This is probably because Bradford is the 2025 City of Culture. The building in the distance is the … Continue reading →

Dawn raise its grey head above the horizon and small birds shake out their feathers, find their voices. I also raise my own grey head but cannot find a voice to greet the morning. Another dull day, a day of … Continue reading →

I remember well those golden days when the world was fresh, and I was young and eager, apprenticed to the trade of life. I recall listening to the salmon’s plash in pools of bright water; I see again the quick … Continue reading →

Born from the forest Released to observe without limitation Memories condensed into the energy of thought Transmitted and caught by the sticky threads that bind us Jackie Parsons February 2025

I sometimes walk at sunset through the long woods up beyond my house where the mournful owl swoops among the darkening trees. I pause and listen to the rustle and scurry of unseen feet, the various mutterings of the forest. … Continue reading →

With passion and with bardic fire you shaped a golden past; weaving from the threads of Time ancient stories, ancient rhyme, you massaged the nation’s ego with visions which would last. Yeats, your poet’s words awoke the slumbering nation’s heart: … Continue reading →

One late summer evening In the autumn of our lives As we often do these days We talked about death These were our good times The old feuds, bitter arguments Cutting insults, biting sarcasms All lay behind us We agreed, … Continue reading →

Three decades Dad’s volunteered at Oxfam, sorting the books, pricing them, putting them out, taking longer each year to walk the quarter mile, summer and winter, tapping his stick along streets shifting like oceans under his feet. Knocked over once … Continue reading →