Sometimes….
 I wonder if heaven is a choice of time and place
where you want to exist for eternity.
Let me then choose summertime in my former house
where a plastic paddling pool clutters the lawn
and the air claims the squeals of my kids
jumping in and out of the water with others.
The sun is always shining in theory
and tiger lilies, and dahlias spin a blaze of colour
around the well-mowed lawn. I am in the kitchen,
chopping lemons to make lemonade,
licking the sharp taste from my fingers before
wiping them on my floral dress. Friends are
gathered around the table chatting about
the recent playschool fete and how the
sweet stall needed more home-made
coconut ice.  Their voices like the resonant hum
of bees intent on gathering nectar. Imagine them
as phantoms with me celebrating
the absent sights and sounds of summer.

The two little fir trees I planted
are doing well  in their pots
on either side of  the bench  
by the bay window.
I sit there and play the soft fronds
like a harp and think of you.
 

I emailed this to the dentist and today they me rang me offering an appointment in mid August . The power of Poetry irrespective of how bad it is.

AFTER.

Nice to be back.

Write a poem which includes a line or word/s which you have heard or read. Two suggestions are

I can’t rob a bank anymore

I don’t do football but I do do controversy.

2026.07.25 week 11 Sights and sounds of wildlife

Hello everyone,

I will be going to Alexandroupolis, Greece this Sunday 26th July for my summer holiday. I will hopefully return 1st August Saturday.

I won’t be taking my laptop with me so I won’t be able to write to next week’s prompt or other commentaries to your poems.

Hope to be back and running on  3rd August.

Best wishes,

Gul

This year – a nd a thousand white butterflies

Seeking the shade
Staying indoors
Curtains closed
Watching the forecast
Drooping leaves
Hard baked soil
Forest fires
Survival of the fittest
Death to the precious
The town empty.
Streets clear of cars
Shops closing early
A strange silence.
Fears for te future
Climate change
2026
and. and thousand white butterflies.

Newfoundland in June

Rocks and trees
Icebergs and puffins
Moose and rabbits
Humpbacks and dolphins
Vikings and Basques, and once long ago, the Beothuk
Gander and Bonavista and possibly Dildo
Witless Bay and Western Pond
I’se The B’y and Welcome to the Rock
Call Sean or Mary for the time of the kitchen party
And don’t forget your ‘ugly stick’

bottle of Champagne in the fridge, plus tastefully decorated chocolate cahe on thetable.
PoetrySchool have let me in!!

‘I have a password problem with Poetry School and cannot get on to NaPo. I have been trying for over a week but still no success. Poetry School keep sending me a link to fix it, but it is sending me round in circles. I have now emailed to ask them to do it for me.  No response yet.  I am missing all of you lovely people.’

I’m enjoying your discarded lines. Mine is on its way but I have been distracted by our decision to move to York to be nearer family so you will have to bear with absence/bizarre poems from me for a bit–or a long time. Knowing I can escape into 2017 will help though.

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