The Sewing Basket
 
In a flat in London, I became acquainted with him.
My grandfather’s friend, Mr Pollard,
whose eyesight was blasted by a firework
when he was twelve. I don’t remember
the colour of his eyes, the features of his face,
or whether his ears were well-shaped. But I still have
the willow sewing basket his nimble fingers
wove for me. A sensible gift,
well-loved over the years.

WLTM

probably, you thought I’d never know
you were looking around for a stop-gap
until I came to my senses, after all
I didn’t read the local paper, unless
it was to find when strawberry picking opened

friends of mine did and were curious
thinking they knew you from your small ad
you left a voicemail and I’m very good on voices
I also know when it’s prudent to keep quiet –
so now you know I can see for miles and miles

Fitting in, being wanted
conforming to the norm
meeting  expectations
while having the ‘wrong’ accent
the ‘wrong’social background
the “wrong”colour
these kids look in from outside
and wonder why they are ignored
not invited, don’t have a voice
 or worse, are the subject of abuse
Verbal or physical.
 We try.  
 start from scratch
With the very young
share culture
art, stories, drama, dance
education, education, education.

( I used to work for the Schools‘ Intercultural Support  service with dance, drama, arts and crafts, mostly in first schools.  We  all had a fabulous time and the. the children performed, in costume,  in schools and on the public stage  in inter-school festivals, getting to know the parents in the process,. I firmly believe this is the right way..)l

inheritance

Don’t start me on this.
An everyday frustration.
The hearing loss is my own.
The eyesight nuisance
Is an heirloom
Handed down mother to daughter
for eho knows how long.
Thanks, Mum, auntie, sister,
Great aunt 
and however many grannies
ThatI never knew 
In the dim and distant past
before the  .thing was identified,
This afternoon I have my eye injection .
I have. lost count, approx 29th,  
My afternoon out.
Can’t wait.

(They don’t hurt, much, and the staff are lovely)

This was a good prompt after yesterday’s Stephen Laurence Day prompt..Maybe there is a continuation in the theme..

RAINBOWS ACROSS THE SKY

What I wish for all the Stephen Lawrence’s on this earth

To live with dignity

To have your chance at survival

To not be beaten down by those

who hate, who belittle, who only

know how to destroy not create.

To try, to fail, to try again at work

at play, at love. To look up at the sky

at night and see a million stars

and not be afraid but be astonished.

Tragedy: the definition

being in the wrong place at the wrong time
being the wrong colour, the wrong sex
wearing the wrong clothes, dark makeup,
black dreadlocks, with red ones and piercings
meeting the wrong people in the street
being in the wrong part of town, someone else’s turf
meeting a gun, a knife, a boot
being seen as the outsider, being different
being left-handed in a right-handed world

After…

After the dinosaurs decompose
After the fossil fuels burn
After CO2 increases
After the earth’s temperature rises
After the ice cap melts
After the ocean levels rise
After the Pacific Islands disappear
After coastal cities are damaged
After the crops are flooded
After the diseases take over
After the world’s population dies,
the remaining animals and vegetation thrive,
but will humankind survive?
We like to think so.

Unusually for me, I started with some free writing; and then the thought came -‘what about a pantoum?’

22.4.2026 Built

Posting early as phone & WiFi are intermittent here. Sorry I’ve been absent, back home soon.

Other

My son
went to school, that day
though he didn’t 
visit the shops
or his uncle, who also didn’t
live nearby
and he didn’t take
the bus home, or change
for a quicker one
the one he did not look
to see 
if it was coming
and didn’t spot the six
people crossing 
the road
with intent
towards him – 
my son came home.
 

I picked tragedy. Yesterday was the birthday of my neighbour’s daughter. Sophie died two years ago after suffering a cardiac arrest.

Sophie
 
She takes a cake to the beach,
to celebrate her daughter’s
34th birthday. She can’t
hold back the darkness
for grief is ugly, ungainly.
She remembers the month,
two years ago, when
high-tech wires soft-soaped
her daughter’s heart and her brain
turned to dust. She wishes
they could celebrate the day together.
Instead, she cries, hello
to a beautiful mermaid-like woman
who satisfied her ache for the sea,
its depth a door,
Sophie had to enter.

I wrote a poem about racism.

UNNAMED1

Freed From The Operating Table

I fell and twisted my ankle on Monday. This came from the new BMJ protocol i discovered.

A protocol for healing twisted ankles and broken worlds

Protect, refrain from movements that exacerbate pain. The world does not need more bombs, more drones, more destruction.
Elevate above the heart. Raise your expectations higher. Dream the world a better place and manifest it every day.
Avoid anti-inflammatoires, they reduce healing. Sometimes you have to burst the boil, let the gruesome gunk gush before you can move on. But not randomly, on a clean and controlled environment.
Compression contains swelling, but not too soon and never too much. The world’s anger, it’s injustice and it’s suffering needs to be held but neither too tight nor too hard.
Educate yourself, remember your body knows best. Never forget we are animals first, one species amongst a myriad of sisters and brothers.

&

Load. Let pain guide your return to normal activities. Listen to your body it will tell you when to stop. If we all did this more, most of the above points would become so much easier.
Optimism, condition your brain for optimal recovery by being confident and positive. We can be better than we have been, look at how far we have already come. Remember the moon!
Vascularisation, increase blood flow to repairing tissues. Things that are broken need resources to mend. Broken limbs, broken hearts, broken people, broken souls. Give them time and space and the necessary funds.
Exercise, adopt an active approach to recovery. This world won’t heal itself on its own. 

Catherine has suggested Earth Day. I am happy with that, either to combine or as a separate prompt.

A prescription from the doctor

Go outside
Breathe in the flow of receding tides
Tread softly along the bay dyke path
Absorb the drumlins
Feast on the sight of bald eagles in their nest with new babes
Observe your elders holding hands
Approach the shoreline directly
Stop and watch the heron, standing, fishing,
Forget the time of day
Ignore the agony of battles far away
Close your eyes and merely be at one with
yourself

21.4.2026 we need a cure for this

I thank Alan for this very original prompt.

TO CURE THE MADNESS OF WOMEN IN THE ATTIC

Panacea

You ask my advice,
‘ My curee-all
my old-wives ‘recipe
my crystal ball
ny mother’s remedies
my magic wand
the phone number of my doctor
the Marriage Guidance Councilor…
I am. sorry
 none of these
can cure that from which  you suffer
except time
and time and time and time
and time………..

Taking The Cure

cinnamon buns
beside chocolate digestives
conversation
and the resonance of wind-chill
still fresh in the face
the hand-cut vagaries
of a jigsaw puzzle
with its view
of a different season
the silence
of completeness
and a glass of wine

Turn down the noise

do not shout
lock the megaphone in the cupboard

only ask one question
and allow the answer to come in its own time

reduce the number of people
allowed in until nervousness is reduced

do not expect tasks to be performed
in parallel if they should be completed accurately

be patient
everything is there and will come in the end

do not lock up the toilets
but allow phones unless used for social media

Rough interpretation of the form.

I first heard of you in a song

I’d seen your sunflowers of course

bursts of yellow joy only someone

who has known sadness

more intimately than any lover,

could ever paint onto canvas.

You had probably been mentioned

in school, on the television, glimpsed

on bookshelves or in encyclopaedia,

but it was only when I heard, this world

was never meant for one as beautiful 

as you, that I sought you out. Sought

your starry nights and your serious

self-portraits. It was not easy to face

your palette of suffering, to see you

all of you and not turn away. And still

in the midst of darkness you painted

the light, an ink blue world drenched

in the promise of a thousand stars

A Flood 
(Sir  John Everett Millais – 1870)

they are floating
the old wooden crib looks well made
the child remains calm but
the cat meows

the old wooden crib looks well made
it’s riding high
although the coverlet trails

the child remains calm but
is focused on distant birds perhaps or
how high is the sky

the cat meows
this world is unsafe
and the water is devoid of fish

Under an arch of swords

I sit and wait,
and gaze upon this photo of you and me,
where we walk together
among the giant cedars in graveyard,
watching over us as gods,
protecting us from harm
(and there is so much harm in the world these days),
and we will walk together
as we have these past 41 years,
hand in hand,
remembering the swords and gravestones
from that April 20th,
remembering that white limousine,
its comfy seats, its wide expanse,
that took us from the church to dinner far too fast,
not giving us the needed time to pause and to reflect
on all that was before and would be in the future,
a future when I am still with you.

Inspired by Kleiner Protest by Maike Frees, this a found poem using a deliberately loose translation of the gallery blurb.

20.4.2026 Papier, Bois, Polyester

One Person’s Rubbish…
(after The Flight – Vernon Ward)

a thick, grey view
fills the slopes
where crags spill lambs, sheep

and sedge
down to the empty frame of a barn,
dry-stone walls

that seem to lilt 
beside this reservoir, this road
of potholes

and broken verges,
fly-tipped 
tile-shards, glistening

bottle-necks, electric
detritus and the remains
of a painting:

sudden ducks
at braking distance, seizing flight
through a twist of sycamore

chestnut remiges, white-defined 
emerald – a return
of blue

I love art and paintings. For the poem, I chose a Leonardo da Vinci painting, which is in the National Gallery in London.

I probably saw it there, too. It is painted about 1491/2-9 and 1506-8.

The Virgin with the Infant St John the Baptist adoring the Christ Child

A Satyr Mourning at the Death of a Nymph
Or. The Death of Procris
Piero de Cosimo :National Gallery. London

You would think
she was sleeping
were it not
for the sorrow
in their eyes
his eyes
and those of the dog.

He looks at her in a way
that makes your heart weep.

His hand rests gently
on her shoulder
as if to ptotect her
yo reassure her
that she is not alone

See how his fingers
stroke her forehead
gently gently
as spots of her blood
stain her neck

while the dog
play forgotten
sits still and silent
his head bowed
as if in sympathy

How could he see to paint these
with his eyes full of tears?

If you search for her story
you will learn
the tragedy of it all
the heartache.
the sorroe.

Hot of the press and really just my diary entry 🤣.

In the plane to Marseille
we look out the porthole
and see a patchwork of fields
forest green and rape seed yellow
spreading for miles beneath us.
We drift through altocumulus
till on the other side we float
in a sky-sea of unruffled calm.
Our vessel is a modern miracle.
Even science struggles to explain
If it’s the lower or the higher pressure
that keeps this metal, nuts and bolts
in the air without a single feather.
We almost hold our breaths until
the wheels touch down again
bounce the tarmac to a scattering
of cautious applause as if
the crew and passengers, all of us
had been pausing too, waiting.
As if we’d believed we might die. 

From School to Home

I never get bored with this journey
along the top of the valley to my village,
taking in the medley of fields,
scattered hedges, and farmsteads.
Under sunlight today, the rolling downs
on the other side, flavoured with green,
still casts a beauty I love.
This view is, at all times, uplifting
even years ago when I travelled
four times a day on the school bus.
 

Sunday Afternoon

A cap
A fleece
Good walking shoes
A walking stick in case the slopes are steep or
the blackberries are plentiful and sharp,
a water bottle as the sun is out.
Across the Golden Ears bridge,
along Ford Drive to the Trans Canada Trail,
6 caches found on a pleasant hike
beside the Fraser River
in Pitts Meadows.

1. Remember it is head first.
2. Do your bit.
3; ‘Hope your journey is a long one. ‘
C. P.Cavafy..

A very timely prompt, as we flew home today.

19.04.2026 River

Resurfaced

The last time I was on the M62 
I was in bucket-hat and baggy jeans
hitchhiking 
a little more into the year
maybe, than cherry blossom
but less than roses
my partner
less than roses

the moors absorb the light 

just as they did then 
the sun through the windscreen 
much the same
as the creased driver 
making good a family visit, suitcases, children, a tin of brownies
yes, homemade
but plain brownies 

Disappearing
to the birds and the bugs and the night butterflies, to the trees and the flowers and the ones we never even named…

They used to be dime a dozen
They used to be everywhere
They used to be ubiquitous
They used to be banal

We took them for granted
We took them for fixed
We took them for the scenery
We took them for invincible

Now they are rare
Now they are precious
Now we wish to save them
Now we are too late

I’m not really happy with this but I am keeping up to date.
It was hot on the last day of June
at the start of the 250 mile journey,
so hot the roads were melting
and the tyres made a clicking sound.
The car was over heating and the heater
was trying to draw heat from the engine
until the driver was ready to pass out.

The house was shut up, the locks changed;
salary would pay the mortgage until
the tenants moved in. They were not
staying long but provided a stop gap.
After that, with the job finished,
what would happen but the adventure
had begun and a new chapter started.

Let the journey take you where it will..

AN AFTERNOON EXCURSION