Heartlines

An hour before dinner, grey churning clouds assembled
At the top of the lake and merged testily,
Like cavalry waiting to charge.
They filled the space, swallowed the strident rockface,
Blanked the waterside villages below.
Waiters hurried to strip their white starched tables
Of silver, linen and glass.
Guests abandoned the terrace,
Took huddled refuge in the vaulted bar,
But, exhilarated by anticipation,
We climbed to the top of the garden
To watch the unstoppable army
Swarming its thunderous boots towards us.

Barbara Lawton

For this poem, I used the title of a poem by May Swenson (1913-1988), a US poet of
Swedish descent.

Single worm,
now multiplying daily
in a dense green plastic dome
of kitchen waste,,

devouring vegetation,
feeding
on the sweat of leaves,

ingesting their fibre,
offloading rich humus,
and transforming carbon.

Avarice is their secret,
These writhing pink clusters,
trapped beneath a humming lid,

where odour and heat
oscillate like steam in the dark.

All those welded knots of
wise worms,

fattening
towards death,
so organic waste

can reinvent
as garden mulch.

Barbara Lawton

THE CLOUTIE TREE Madron Well Cornwall

She wakes, May day.
Checks her phone,
sees summer comes at last.
Leaves sleeping houses
Take the inland road,
through greening landscapes
strewn with granite quoit and capstone shadows –
black against the salmon clouds and brightening skies.
Bent backed trees, stripped naked by sea winds,
are poised in flight, unable to escape.
Hawthorn, blackthorn, buckthorn, whitethorn.

She hurries to the hallowed place.
That women’s place.
Looks left and right
then pushes through the buds of may
into that faery world still moist and dark
beneath the hawthorn’s shade.
She trips along the puddled path,
to reach the holy spring –
a murky pool half hidden in the grass.
Alone, she shudders.
Skeleton’s laugh
as winds rip through gnarled boughs.

She stoops, brushes violets, enchanter’s nightshade,
dabs her cheeks with morning dew.
Then ties her torn pink strip of T shirt
among the thorns and festooned twigs.
A selfie by the cloutie tree – her TikTok testament.
The spirits of this sacred grove appeased,
she leaves them to their stillness,
undisturbed by animal or bird.

Cate Anderson

If only some of the past was a foreign country.
Remember that teacher
that ridiculed you 60 years ago?
The scars as familiar
as the London streets
you walked back then.
No map needed
to traverse the route
that took you through
your mother’s death.
That woman you loved
but who left you
with the oh so familiar language of heartache and pain,
in your mother tongue.
The failure, as you saw it,
of school feels like
only yesterday.
No qualifications needed
for that job you took
of no hope,
of boredom,
a cul-de-sac of ambition.
And yet the good times, too
not foreign but parochial, local,
down the road,
in the neighbourhood,
of this land.
Remembered as if it is round the corner
In the motorway of your memories,
not across some long-forgotten ocean.

Malcolm Henshall

‘There’s small choice in rotten apples’, he quoted,
as he sank his teeth into the Pink Lady.
The sign had declared, ‘Choice Apples’.
But why, he thought, as his tongue found the worm hidden within,
had he chosen this one.
No money,
No opportunities,
No future.
No choice,
but to live his life
chewing on the scraps and worms
he came across
in the fruit basket of his existence.
Oh yes,
he has the choice
to eat or to keep warm,
to sleep in the park
or in that doorway on the Arndale centre.
Happiness is a choice, the comfortable say
but it’s hard to make that choice
when you are hungry, tired and cold.
Caught between a rock and a hard place,
between the devil and the deep blue sea,
on the horns of a dilemma.
Call me Hobson, he thought.
Choices are the hinges of destiny,
but his door is locked
from the outside.

Malcolm Henshall

Can you help me?
Certainly sir
I need something to be furious about
Well as you can see on the shelves
there’s plenty to choose from, sir.
Yes, you always have a good selection at
‘Fury-R-Us’.
Let me see,
Brexit,
Covid,
Johnson,
Hancock,
Fascism.
Spoilt for choice.
The weather
Pollution
Traffic
Litter.
A fulsomeness of furies
Tyson?
Oh, I get it
Your little joke
And that one comes ‘boxed. Very clever.
Will the bus ever come?
Piers Morgan
Road Works
Other drivers.
We do have a buy two get one free offer, sir
No, I must choose just one
or else Fury will take over.
My life would be Fury itself
I would be Fury personified.
I know it will be expensive but
I’ll take Brexit for now.
That should keep me going for a few years.

Malcolm Henshall

It begins, as always, with the wings of a bat.
The rest I tailor for you.

A phial of shine from Sun.
A drop of fresh dew,
Taken from white petal
Of daisy or rose,
So mornings are new.

For sleep, the charm
Of a lover yet met.
Scent of honey, lily balm.
Moon silver I’ll sift
And you will lift
Beyond body and harm.

Take the light from a tree
And the darkness from its trunk;
From this gentle strength
All colours will come.
Drink to the spirit of a fallen leaf
And see an end to grief.
This is no hokum;
Your heart, no longer broken.
The world seemed set in its ways.
Now is the world held open.

Howard Benn