Heartlines

When errant breezes catch your hair,
I watch it flow – a stream of golden fire –
and my blood races with desire.

Your skin, in early morning light,
invites my touch, soft and warm –
to your body’s hive my senses swarm.

Hair, skin, body, touch – they all
thrill me, and they never fail
to float my boat, to raise my sail.

You are my love, my life, the star
in my night-time sky, my treasure –
and if I should die before you,
well…it’s been a pleasure!

Bill Fitzsimons

I think I’m done here.
I’ve seen the things I wanted to see
I’ve done the things I wanted to do.
At least, I am reconciled to
Not seeing or doing more.

I’ve broken some hearts,
I think. No one has told me so.
I’ve lived some fantasies,
A threesome, an escape
Running through back gardens
Leaping suburban fences.
Fast cars, fast women,
Slow nights in seedy cocktail bars.

I’ve been made happy and given happiness.
I’ve tried marriage and the relief of celibacy.
I have given and received the healing force of adultery.
For some, a life enhancing liberation,
A beneficial reordering of things.

I could tell you about my life,
To me quite ordinary but perhaps
To others, quite exotic.
But to record it is to seek immortality,
and fail.

Many have already forgotten me
Through death or disinterest.
All memory of me will pass
Disappointingly quickly
But I will be beyond disappointment.

No regrets, no could have done,
Could have been,
No what ifs.
I have been, I have done.
Is the world a better place?
No. But that was never my plan.

I came from a random arrangement of dust
Lived a life without care or conscience
And to that dust I will return,

A dispersion of atoms of no consequence,
drifting and percolating again through the world
Destined to become part of something, or somebody, else
Perhaps become, briefly, consequential again.

So, my patient friend,
Swing your glistening scythe,
Speed me on my way.

Terry Wassall

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.
As the last light fades, I feel afraid,
yet strangely alert
to the nightlife around me.

And I know the electric thrill of freedom,
the elemental rush of tuned senses
as the soft night breezes ruffle my hair
and the mossy ground sinks beneath me.
The stars flicker above, seen intermittently
through the lace trellis of the treetops,
and the moon casts a silver net of radiance.
Moon-moths brush against my cheek
and somewhere a night-bird calls a piercing note:
a sad, yet exhilarating, sound.

And then I know that I am in my rightful place,
at one with the forward momentum of life,
as the trees around me are anchored in the rich loam
of the forest and the wind shakes my bones
with the knowledge of my affinity to the earth,
that dark and fertile mother.

Bill Fitzsimons

I miss the thrill of reading to a crowd,
that uplift to the ego when, aloud,
my verses soar, dip, take flight again –
no longer trapped on paper, and it’s then
my poem may live or maybe die,
crash to the ground or sometimes fly
on wings of lyric grace. But nothings sure,
my poetry may sink, may lack allure.
Yet, I miss that element of chance,
the uncertainty of reception, that dance
of emotional turmoil when I dare
to let my poems fly loose into the air.

Bill Fitzsimons

“At times I felt so happy I had to quit” Carver R Tess

Out on the field here
at dawn, and the rippled grass
and trees stood in small groups
of ancient growth, huddling close
and a grey mist, laying its
damp shawl freely on my skin
and a collared dove in the
oak tree, calling gently for its mate
and the blackbird and the greenfinch
and the bullfinch perched in the elm tree
puffing out his exotic apricot chest and
the gentle breeze of the dawn
blowing round me and through me
like all my dead leaves are being
blown away, and this morning
I felt so happy I had to quit
walking and lie face down
on the wet grass and smell
its meadowed sweetness and listen
to the deeper beat of the earths heart.
It was through that beating that I
heard you calling me home
for breakfast, you said
and I knew then that
here between the fresh clean earth
of the field, and your voice
is where I belong.

Eileen Neil

“I will arise and go now” Yeats W.B Innisfree

When it’s finally all finished,
I dream of heading North
Where the wild winds aren’t diminished
Where the oceans swirl and roar

Where the white unleavened sunlight
Pierces cracks in grey flecked clouds
Where gannets soar in streamlined flight
Across the broken shroud

Where squalling gulls call daybreak
Where a seal’s sad cry heralds noon
Where darkness arrives before evening
Where poetry’s written in runes

Where islands layer on islands
Where bright strands layer bleach white
Where mist rolls in whispers across silver sand
Where the runes are written in light

Where the earth and air co-mingle
Where fire and water burn
Where waves crash on soft shingle
Where all once held sacred returns

I will arise and go there
I will go once again to the North
Where the wild winds aren’t diminished
Where the oceans swirl and roar

Eileen Neil