Heartlines

The melancholy garden drips spent rain
from brittle seed heads clustered on bent stalks.
Ripe rose hips and unseasonal blooms
enliven damp stone walls.
We walk on Persian rugs of gold, red, umber,
while gaunt trees stretch knotted fingers
skyward as we slip and slide below
on paved paths slimy from old rain.
A fir appears, majestic on a lawn.
Its branches, sweeping downwards,
weep in mourning for the dying year.
An early twilight closing in, makes
far horizons blur to blues.
The distant tree-line darkest blue,
then paler till –
screening the glowering moors –
the mist is almost white
before it seeps into a bloodless sky.
Later we sip flat whites,
the dampness draining from our bones,
the scene outside dissolving.
Ephemeral beauty on a drab Autumnal day.
A garden on the cusp of Winter.

Cate Anderson

One of the Headingley Open Gardens collection. Click to see the full list

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 for others here and abroad
Belief in Climate change
Belief in Justice and demanding justice be done
Believing we are all immigrants
Seeing no difference between ex – pat and immigrant
Rejecting narrow views of patriotism and embracing internationalism
Being a citizen of the world
Believing Brexit = self – harm
Those who did not vote for Brexit
Not embracing white supremacy
Wanting our children to learn about their history and not just the good bits
Not loving all famous statues
Seeking the truth about empire

Woke
Let us reclaim its original meaning. ‘…be woke or be dead.’
Being aware, awake to life and death situations.
I’m in.

Ha
Not a Snowflake in sight…at least, not on this side of the argument.

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?
I knew change had come
When I entered the street,
Because all the cobbles had gone.

But yes, this is the house,
It has not moved
In forty years; it stands,
Common sense tells me, unchanged.
Inside, it has a child
Hidden away, but blissfully so.
A brother, a mother and father
Still eat together at Sunday lunch,
With the wireless tuned to Radio Two,
Playing songs from before I was born.
Our cat sits on the windowsill,
Waiting to be let in.
Betsy the car sits out front,
A big black tank of a car.
I wonder if the stairs still creak,
If the cellar stinks of damp,
If the woodchip paper covers the walls.

How I want to go in,
But the past is locked inside.
The door will not let me pass.
It is a new door,
White, when ours was green.
It closes my wondering down.
This is just a house now.
Someone else’s home.

Howard Benn

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 Midland Hotel

The Punishment of the Gods

Walking past the brick arches from the station to the Midland Hotel
That monument to Victorian engineering and optimism
I saw its antithesis, a ragged human sat on a sheet of cardboard
In front of an abandoned festival tent.
Reading a book.

I feigned I had not seen him and hurried past
To meet my friends in the Midland for afternoon tea
Poured from a Japanese porcelain pot into near translucent cups
With quartered sandwiches and dainty iced cakes.

Warm and laughing at our easy banter
I watched the rain siling down outside the window
Now vertical, now slanting as it bent to the wind
And thought of the crouched reader sheltered in the gloomy arch.

I stood beside him, in my mind, invisible
He held the book close to his face, a narrow gap between
An upturned collar and wound scarf, under a grey hood
His hands in fingerless woollen gloves.

His legs were in a sleeping bag pulled round his waist
The tent floored with cardboard
Inside a small rucksack, bundled clothing, a blanket
A dog lead and bowl but no dog.

His age was hard to tell, but not young
Or, if so, prematurely aged by life in the margins.
He rocked as he read, a Quran perhaps or some
Nervous condition.

I left my companions, tea undrunk,
Sandwiches and cake wrapped in a serviette
Leaning into the wind and rain
I returned to the dark arches.

He was as before, reading, rocking
Engrossed in a world of imagination
Perhaps one with more comfort and hope.
I approached him.

I noticed for the first time, in a corner of the arched niche
A kitchen peddle bin, an incongruous emblem of another world
Of warmth, security and domesticity
Where rubbish and dirt could be discarded, order imposed.

What to say? I found myself wordless.
Anything I started to say lapsed to silence
In fear of appearing patronising or patrician.
I felt like a stranger, dumb in a foreign land.

“What are you reading?” I heard myself say.
He started as if he had been unaware of me
His eyes met mine and looked down at the proffered food.
“I thought you could do with a bite to eat”.

I put it down on the cardboard beside him
“It’s just a couple of sandwiches and a cake”
I clumsily opened my wallet to see what cash I had
Looking for the usual tin or hat to put it in. There was none.

He raised his hand in protest. No. No thanks, no need.
I should have put money in with the food.
“I’d like to give you some money” but as I spoke I realised
That’s what this is. “I’d like”. This is about me.

I dropped a ten-pound note at his feet and turned away
Bowed with guilt. Why had he done this to me?
Would thanks and gratitude been easier to bear?
Perhaps, but we both would have been dissembling.

“Metamorphoses” he said to my back. “The greatest poem ever written”.
I faltered in my step and turned, confounded.
He held the book up. It was in the original Latin.
“I’m reading the section where the Gods punish the Mortals. Do you know it?”

I walked back and sat at his feet.

Terry Wassall February 2021

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 anxiety and faint fears.
Eyes rimmed with fatigue, dreams
dissipating like smoke, I climb
out of my sweat-stained bed
and grope about for my clothes.

And I am ready – ready to face
life’s trials and troubles,to shrug
away night’s stifling blanket.
Each morning is the same, a routine
well-established, Today I’m determined
to break the mould, to begin anew.

Why be in thrall to invisible phantoms,
to dreams of the mind’s own making?
No, today I will confront the minotaur,
break the bones of that leering skeleton,
death, and bathe in the soothing waters of Lethe.

Bill Fitzsimons

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 gleam of sunlight
on silver.

I remember well the warmth of sun-filled meadows,
where fat , lazy cattle wandered, grazing,
and women sang soft songs, like the drone
of summer bees.

But I remember too the clash of iron
as we tried our weapons in a forest glade,
and Fiachra, my master, scolding me
when I failed.

And I remember well those boyhood friends,
stout-hearted lads who stood beside me
in battle, when our fledgling courage faltered,
but always held.

And Aoife, my lover, whose sweet embraces
kept me warm on winter nights
as we watched the cold, cold stars,
our hearts entwined.

And the sweet magic music of the fili;
those poets who could shape the world
and weave the unformed fabric of creation
into something new.

But those days are gone now, lost;
the world has shifted and moved on,
and memories, once vivid, will soon start fading
like autumn mist

For I am old now; they say I should be wise
But wisdom does not ease the aching bones
or feed the empty belly
on a winter’s morn.

Wisdom comes with age, or so I’m told,
but I would swap all the wisdom of the ages
for the ignorance and innocence of youth.

Bill Fitzsimons

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.
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 lacy 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,
my dark and fertile mother.

Bill Fitzsimons

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:
you gave us heroes to admire,
dreams and visions to inspire
the dormant yearnings of the soul:
such is the power of Art.

And yet, is Art the truth,
or merely a well-wrought lie?
By conspiring with your Muse,
our emotions to abuse,
did you stoke the fires of fervour
and cause young men to die?

But what is Truth and what is Art?
what is love or life?
Did you ask those questions when
you picked up paper, picked up pen
and coined a deathless phrase or two
in praise of strife?

And who can blame you ,Willie Yeats,
for what was meant to be?
In truth, you gave the nation pride;
for that , and honour, men have died,
and the Rising’s “terrible beauty”
was Ireland’s destiny.

Bill Fitzsimons

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, life is too short
And getting shorter
We resolved to see our days out
In a companionable truce

We no longer rose to the bait
That could disturb the surface of our lives
The wounds were healing
Though some scars remained

I’d like a woodland burial she said
Beneath a rowan tree
To give passers-by pleasure
After I am gone

I will find a suitable location
To bury her ashes and plant the tree
Somewhere to remind me of her,
Somewhere awkward and irritating.