I guess this week’s prompt is ‘Snippets of summer’ , so I wrote a poem about my summer now.

I wanted to write to this prompt last week ( it was in my head) but I was too busy. I am glad I finally wrote something about it..

THE POOL

This has been a wonderful prompt in many ways, as I’ve actually done some tidying-up of random papers!  However I also got very distracted and struggled to pick a line.  I finally fixed on some notes made during a week away.

Holiday Cottage

the advert said sleeps four
I discover in the kitchen
twenty-seven mugs (assorted styles)
and fourteen egg-cups
no sign of a can-opener

it’s the coast, it’s seaside decor
beach hut cushions, shells,
huge fish-shaped light pulls
and a tidal wave of model boats
on windowsills, one of which
falls off as I approach it

I consider the week ahead
tiptoe past the little boats
choose a mug for coffee
boil an egg

The Veterinary Student

I can’t help noticing the tattoos on the arms,
the studs on lips and nose, a silkiness
of long blond hair. I think male
because of the flat chest,
the deeper voice. He is a fifth-year
veterinary student. He has the nervousness
of a schoolboy in this consultation room. I ask him
whether the tortoise he is holding is male or female?
He cannot answer this question or the next one
about the species. I do not comment to the
senior vet, his mentor. I keep my thoughts to myself.
Wish him well in his studies.

Big skies   parched fields
we lean on a gate watching swallows
him with his shirt sleeves rolled up

curtains billow paisley stars
the night mooing of a heifer
and hot summer sheets
the striped ones Granny bought
and him with his shirt sleeves rolled up

the interior smell of a Morris traveller
leather and hot plastic
dry maps  desiccated arguments
pencilled on dusty  B roads
and him with his sleeves rolled up

a track down to the sea
with sudden muddy hollows
a Mexican wave of brambles and ferns usher us on to the sea
my sister with her hands above her head
and him with his sleeves rolled up.

a warm breeze blows
yellow beaked seagulls  squabble over scone crumbs
a trickle of sand falls from my mothers hand onto that funny old picnic rug
tiny red letters  on a crinkled name tag

and him with his shirt sleeves rolled up.

Across The Rock

the blur of snowstorms and freezing rain
a white blanket with a crust
winds howling across the rocks and grasses,
the nor’easter chills the bones, but
the peat fire warms and cooks this Jig’s dinner
out of whiteness, a moose road crossing sign
warns kitchen party attendees to drive safe,
to stir the spirits on a February Saturday night.

WWELL, LOOK WHO’S HERE

I don’t know how he got there
but I’ve just found Nigel Hawthorne
In Bold print
sitting in my ipad
surrounded by NaPo poems
just sitting there doing nothing
feet up on the mantelpiece.
No idea how he got in
or even if he is still alive.
I must look him up..
I have actually met Nigel Hawthorne
sitting next to me in an tairport shuttle bus.
I said hello.
He didn’t respond,
probably amazed by my presence,
but I dumped into him again in the Cairo Museum .
. I heard him say to his partner
“We are meeting the same people.’’
I didn’t see him again
but I must have made an impression.

I push out the moon
the stench of blood
behind my eyes

muffled voices
above the curve
of my belly

as pain shatters
tectonic plates
through my pelvis  slips

the hospital clock
slow ticking
on the wall

there is no going back

stars nibble
at the edges of dawn
through a frost of vernix

he blinks….

“grief”

boy, alone, endless path.
burden of life upon him.
the motherless son.

heartbreak overwhelms.
birdsong fails to fill the void
mother’s love would bring.

numb, cold, lost, not found.
his path ahead enduring.
mother is no more.

I’m confused as to what week it is and I seem to have forgotten it’s my turn to offer a prompt, I think the heat is finally getting to me. Sorry for the absence too, I have my parents visiting and lots of stuff on.

My prompt is this : pick a memory of summer, real or imagined. Start by writing about it as a whole, the general lines of vibes of it. Then get closer and closer until you’re writing about it at molecular level. About its cells and atoms. Ask a question, slip in something that on the surface it’s irrelevant but full of resonance to you.  This could be one long piece, or a series of snippets. I’m thinking of this as a poem with the capacity to both zoom in and panorama.

x x h

ps week 10 2026 The Realities CAW

Sniff sniff

The prettiest little sniffer dogs
earn their luxury dog food
at Christchurch airport
nosing into bags for forbidden fruits
and illegal substances.
Their human counterparts deal with …
<lets not put too fine point on this…
fàrmyard manure..

Our perfectly scrubbed boots
(We knew the rules) 
were whisked off our feet
and taken off to the disinfection laboratory
>while we watched with a mixture of awe and disbelief
as another inspector at the next table
emptied out a packet of baby food
Presumably looking for 
the aforementioned illegal what not
While the baby
and its assorted siblings
crawled over and under the table
 with piercing screams.
Baby food! I mean,!
The dogs are cute, though..

Beneath a sky full of prayers
 we are ant like
 a million feet
marching on plastic tiles
 trillions of teeth
clenched in the safety
of a duty free enigma
like a grounded peacock
fanning cheap feathers

we wait
watch each other
negotiate the thought
of defying gravity
spreading our fragile
wings like white swans
in dark cloud.

An Egyptian model
glides into altitude
on the escalator
hides her tears
with dark glasses
fans her world of coco Chanel
with a travel brochure.

A business man in a tight suit
hunches over a love affair
flickering intermittently
on his iPhone,
babies grizzle hot legs
drop their chubby rattles
into the crosswinds of travel

so many hopes and dreams
zipped up in samsonite
the fading trundle
of wobbly wheels
over the concourse of
the here and there

such a wanting to be free
to be together
to be missed

My discarded line is: ‘The sunset boulevard’..It reminds me of old Westerns, for some reason, and I never thought I was going to write another poem using this line..

BEAUTIFUL

I don’t think I’ve ever been told not to write about something.  But so often the advice has been to ‘write about things you know’.

Write What You Know

no
let me
scramble into other skins

explore
what it means to be other
an oil-rig worker, or a paring knife,
one of Picasso’s Girls of Avignon,
a disillusioned saint,
maybe that dog
sprawled in the Tuscan dust

what dullness I’d offer
writing only of what I know

surely words may dance
beyond description
into imagination

Look through your old notebooks/scraps of paper. Find an unused line you like and use it for a new poem.

In Transit

empty barn of a building
strip-lights, pitiless plastic seats

at midnight only us,
two bored guards with guns
and a trail of ants on the concrete floor

as the hot night inches on
we play cards, play hangman, play scrabble
we discuss whether ants ever sleep

finally, daylight flicks a switch
and the world bursts in   a chaos
of suitcases, queues, shouting

we queue too
the woman shrugs   a ticket
does not guarantee a seat

we watch our plane
leave without us

There was going to be a ZOOM meeting after National Poetry Writing Month-maybe the end of June- did it take place?

I joined only one ZOOM meeting. I was wondering if I missed a second one…

No-one has ever told me
 not to write about something
but at school we held a debate 
about fox hunting
in which we had to take sides
for or against
and state our case.
It would have been unanimously 
against
except for one girl who actually did it. 
she  knew
where the toss-up was heading
 slunk down in her seat
trying to look small
until called upon.
She stood up
spoke eloquentlyfor the farmer
the hens, the young chicks.
Twenty-nine votes Against.
One For
but I   can see her now
standing up
stating her case.

ESC – APE

he stands, one passenger manifest
momentarily, at the top of the steps

no long share of friends, down there
even in a glass, the borrowed jacket

breathing an air, so salt, so acerbic
as it blusters, cuts across the tarmac

her furrowed lips almost visible, moving
to the rhythm of Tik Tok and poki bowls

he stands, one passenger manifest
momentarily, at the top of the steps

the sun, in its shaping of distant cloud
displays the jumbled hills beneath

no long share of friends, down there
even in a glass, the borrowed jacket

cancelling headphones, strange flies
on repeat, fences and the failed fields

her furrowed lips almost visible, moving
to the rhythm of Tik Tok and poki bowls

the sun, in its shaping of distant cloud
displays the jumbled hills beneath

with hand luggage and hat tip crumbling
like a weathered sandstone bluff

no long share of friends, down there
even in a glass, the borrowed jacket

his free fingers now alight the hard rail
that pronounces such strange words

her furrowed lips almost visible, moving
to the rhythm of Tik Tok and poki bowls

with hand luggage and hat tip crumbling
like a weathered sandstone bluff

he stands, one passenger manifest
momentarily, at the top of the steps

Again responding to my own prompt very quickly..But I did write this poem to Jonathan’s prompt in May…I made a few revisions later on..

ABOUT WRITING

Destined to Return

1 Tendon:  Achilles  had one.
Possibly..
 
2 Tennis : Wth tea on the lawn. 
And  servants

3  Tenon.   I saw one in pieces in the shed..
Or was that a jigsaw.?

 
Intent   : in thunder, lightning and in rain.
And  full of Midges. . 

5 Tentacle  : So why  does the octopus have
o;ly eight?

6 Tennant: that mysterious woma
at Wildfell Hall.

7 Tender,: A loving kiss, a perfectly cooked joint    
or what you do with your resignation. .

8 Tenterhooks: : used to stretch leather
or to  hang your  tent on to dry..

9 Tenacity :  I must  get a grip on myself.
This is fun not poetry.

10 Tense,   The future looks bleak at present.
I’m past it

I am posting my prompt a day early because I have some check-ups tomorrow and I won’t have time to post it in the morning.

What does this prompt mean? It actually comes from a Jonathan Edwards course:

*Write a poem about whatever people have told you NOT to write about, and write about that…

Or it can be done this way:

*Start with somebody who told you once NOT to write about something, and write about that…

I wish everyone a wonderful week.

Special Birthdays

I found his work fascinating. Still trying to catch up after doing a course on revising poems.

Looking at M.C. Escher’s Study of the Eye
 
It’s a compelling image, this drawing of an eye
with a skull reflecting in the pupil. I learned from Google 
that it portrays the artist’s own eye. Yes, the presence
of the skull is an effective reminder of death,
my own, friends, relatives, neighbours.
But the more I look into the eye, I think of life
and the way each stage of my existence is a scene
where I am an actor in costume playing
the daughter, the mother, the wife, the worker, the poet.
These days, hopeful that time will write me
into further scenes before the final exit.

I have lost track of which week this was. Good luck with this!

Sorry

ps week 8 Hes Watching CAW

Manifest

In the soft-voiced flame of camp-fire
we discuss
criteria for National Treasure

the upper range of his voice
along
with his work for homeless veterans
as evidence

largely unremarked
the way he sang
violet lilac, mauve and plum
broken on a brick wall out in the slum 
 
and the next day: cold sausage
and a scrape of mayonnaise   
you hear on the radio
he’s died

we point at each other
ugh – it wasn’t me, though somehow 
someone said his name, and now…?

but it’s no more
coincidence
than those long, flexible stems of buddleia
that point purple
at clusters of hard, green fruit – expecting them
to be juice and July

or with Jupiter
so close to Venus – a new moon
you’re suddenly going to buy that half-timbered house
of martins and hollyhocks
we once promised
ourselves

the way we all
make the ills of the world
comfortable
in these canvas chairs
marshmallows

on a stick – browning to the spiced
rum
that’s suddenly
a cure for Acute Myocardial Infarction

Apparently they are called Cuisenare rods…

Counting to Ten

I had no idea, and then remembered taking a flight from Tanzania to Zanzibar in the grips of salmonella. Glamorous it was not.

At Kilimanjaro International Airport

Thaskaloiannis, Chania, Crete

I am going back to Crete
Why?
Tui has give n me £200.
What! Why?
It’sca long story.
Thirty minutes long
Thirty minutes of wondering
with increasing agitation
while sitting all aline 
in Departures
waiting
for Assisted Travel
to wheel me to the aircraft.
Yes, they forgot me.

Eventual ly
,a member of staff passed my vision
came to my yell
ran with me across the tarmac
dragged me up the steps.
The plane left 30 minutes late.

The staff gave me a free bar of chocolate.

I am very behind. Last week whilst in London I got a draft of a villanelle but when we got home it seemed rather gibberish so needs revising!

The only thing I could think of for 10 then lodged itself in my brain and refused to let anything else in. I am not going to type it all out being sure that you will all know the original Ten Green Bottles hanging etc etc. So here is the beginning of it …

Ten politicians sitting on a bench

and if one should accidentally fall

there would be nine politicians

sitting on a bench.

Okay okay I will endeavour to do better. Hope to post the villanelle soon.

If someone told me  I will write a poem about Istanbul Airport one day, I wouldn’t have believed her/him in the world!

ISTANBUL AIRPORT

Late for my own prompt – disgraceful!  I tried the ten lines/ten syllables Decastich as well, I liked it as a form, it didn’t seem too restrictive.

The Seller of Stones

perches on her doorstep, asks hopefully
if I’ll buy one. Pebbles set on a tray,
price list in neat purple crayon, although
adding up’s a challenge, needs her mum for
6p (grey-brown stripe) plus 4p (pink-ish).
Yes, found them herself in their yard’s gravel
and I think she’s sad to lose two, despite
her profits. But I need these stones, for they
will remind me I live surrounded by
beauty. Little ordinary lovely things.