Emily Jane Emma
(im 1971)

To us she was just a little old lady
when she came to visit, taking off
her coat, donning her apron before
sitting for the rest of her stay –
a memory of her days in service.

She survived her son by two years,
unforgiven by her daughter-in-law
for never marrying.

The Christmas slippers arrived reliably
every year, gratefully received.

The faded monochrome photograph
shows her suited and hatted
but cleaned up her gentle smile shines.

On the reverse she is named G Gma
as she always signed herself.

There is some more but Wendy’s eyesight makes it difficult to read her email fully.

Thought I’d better post something for my own prompt, although I’m still working on it (not happy with that last line).

Another small battlefield

gran seizes the mending pile
the darning, the halo of helpfulness
calls insistently to my mother
red thread, scissors, other wool
for surely there’s a better match
for the heel of this sock
that pullover’s elbows

my mother
refuses to mouth gratitude
keeps her tongue stitched silent, flinches
if my grandmother shows her restored buttons
a resurrected pocket
feels them
as tiny jabs of judgement on how she lives
what she neglects

not much between them
ever repaired

We found the Men’s Shed in Andover after taking the tortoises to the Vets nearby. We were at Andover yesterday for a pre-hibernation tortoise party. This year they behaved themselves during the hour-long journey to and from, but we separated the troublemakers.

Well-Loved Clock
 
The clock my son gave us
when he moved out
loses time. I don’t want to say
goodbye to this pine
mini version of a grandfather clock
residing on the lounge wall.
Over the years, it has witnessed the last-minute
rush to work, to appointments
to days and evenings of pleasure.
This afternoon, it has returned
from a three-day residency
at the Men’s Shed, repaired, spotless.
Its pendulum, like Sleeping Beauty
lifeless for many years,
awakened by skilful hands.
 
 

Is Life Beyond Repair?

Tossing my manuscript into the air,
I kneel upon the ground and weep,
expecting perfect words to flow,
to mask white hair, grey eyes, sorrow;
acceptance that I wished for
became invisible in the sun,
the loss of face reflected in
her words, not mine, quoted throughout time.

Her words, not mine, quoted throughout time
reflected in the loss of face,
became visible in the daughter’s
acceptance that I wished for,
to mask white hair, grey eyes, sorrow;
expecting perfect words to flow,
I kneel upon the ground and weep,
tossing my manuscript into the air.

Stop Watching the 6 o’clock News

instincts push into ever encroaching darkness
unknown senses find their way toward reality—
depending on the season,
depending on the window we’re looking out,
depending on which shade of blue sky appears—
out of the window in the room
that houses women
always present to—
throw out the false lies of politics,
throw them into the sea of history,
throw them
long ago and so far away.

I reviewed my these poems of mine:
— 04/01/17 – #courage
— 17/04/20 – Words to Remember
— 14/08/2023 – Our Country Wept, Fully, Completely

And came up with this. It’s not happy, but truthful.

Death is a Solitary Journey

In the end we are all alone,
there are no voices in my head,
speaking kind words, positive thoughts
breaking the silence with love.

There is only emptiness,
quiet revelation,
a search to the stars,
the big bang of the life that is ending.

When nothing is left of the self that was here
on this planet, in this moment of existence,
at this instant when time—
a relative term— slows down.

When you are at peace with knowing
that tomorrow, you will not see their happy faces,
but a new and exciting journey
will begin.

Week 18Repair.

Pass it on.

  My mother 
could not see to thread a  needle.
She repaired hems with safety pins
wore laddered  stockings in the house.
She had cardigans eith missing buttons. .
Her b handwriting was like illegible
She passed on her inheritance 
To her two daughters. 
Thankt yoi  Mum. 

So, in true NaPo style, post and be damned: here are a couple of responses that I hope are up to snuff.

Week 13: Hills and Valleys

Written in Welsh, then translated into English, which was an interesting pairing of challenges!

Hills and Valleys

Week 15: Morpeth Rant

Another one with a Welsh twist. You can find the song I refer to here

Tu Cefn Y Ty

Hello everyone,

Again I have some news for you! I will be coming to England  between 2-10 September. I will be participating as a reader in the Tears in the Fence Poetry Festival in Dorset between 4-6 September. The rest of the time I will be in London buying books, etc.

So please make me exempt from next week’s prompt. I can catch up with everything later in the 14 September week, hopefully.

Here is my poem for this week’s prompt.

UNDER REPAIR

( I won’t be taking my laptop with me)

Sorry but this is daft

To improve that poem of yours

replace
every
possible
adjective
in
reverse

I’ll give this prompt another go later.  Thanks Annette

Morning everyone.  A one-word prompt this week – a poem on the theme of REPAIR please.  As always, I look forward to reading them! 😊

With hindsight, I wish I had studied my 10 words and written whatever they said to me. But what follows is the story of my day on Tuesday, with 9 of the 10 words shoehorned in. It is a revised version of my original. I took it to the study group I go to with Almira yesterday and I have incorporated some comments made there. Thank you, Almira, on 2 counts!2026.08.29 Week 17 v3 A Tuesday with U3A walkers

I picked a book at random,  ‘Standing in the Sunshine‘, a history of New Zealand women in the twentieth century.
The words are:  promise – thin – sullenly – listen – house – patterned – sum – orchards – throat – nightdress.  They’ve shaped themselves into a somewhat predictable poem! (although it is raining here this afternoon, thank goodness).

Drought

the promise
of rain overnight

she wakes to listen for it
hears nothing, gets up
to wander through the house
as if her watchfulness, her longing
might coax it from the clouds

heat hangs sullenly in every room
her thin nightdress
feels heavy as an overcoat

is this the sum
of what was promised?
a few fat raindrops patterned on one window
so few she could count them

she thinks
of scorched orchards
trees letting unripe apples fall
of hedgerow blackberries
parched into small sour stones

her eyes blink grit
when she swallows
her throat imagines dust

My words come from the book I’m currently reading, The Mysterious Affair of Judith Potts, and are:  kitchen, clock, outside, somehow, find, haze, first, benefits, wait, bright.  This is the latest Marlowe Murder Club offering.  The words are not so out of the way so I had to work to make the poem something else.  Ink not yet dry, needs a title.  I’ll look through a notebook and see if I can find something incongruous.

Standing outside the action
you wait to see your way through
the haze of expectations;
the bright cliches forcing their impressions
on daily life somehow seem irrelevant.
The kitchen used to be your haven
but now even the clock has lost its charm.
How can you find your equilibrium
in this crazy world? Are there benefits
still to be discovered? First you must
retrace your steps …

BNOARD GAMES

But isn’t life like that?
Fingers crossed
missing a turn
snakes waiting to swallow you
paying forfeits
being sent back to the beginning
hoping to land
on a get out of gaol free card.

This is a prompt I’d like to go back to, and keep working with (thanks Alan). I’ve got several half-written ideas but I wanted to post something – this is a sort-of response to several memoir poems.

On Going Back 

What did you expect
to recognise?
the old house
has a loft extension now
faux-brick cladding
the apple trees
are a double garage

every street
bewildering
maps kept folded
for years inside yourself
impossibly out of date

even those you love
not as you imagined
hugs, tears, cries of delight
yet also
flicked glances
towards the clock
the calendar

that not-quite-focussed look
whenever you begin
to reminisce

Our internet connection is back! ( after a week’s cut)

Thank you for this prompt. It was a very nice exercise to find these words in Ian Duhig’s book ‘New and Selected Poems’.

The words I chose are:

shell, mists, waters, class, skin, tattoo, chess, yet, gift

I also chose ‘fall’ (page 91) as a word but forgot to use it when I was writing my poem. So, my poem ended up a ‘9 words’ poem.

Sorry for that Almira.

A TALE FROM THE HEART

Where Once An Ash Stood

We walk towards the old house
with the curve of the road
beneath mottled sycamore, hazel
already dropping its cobbs
onto dry-gravelled tarmac and verges
dusty with ivy and dog’s mercury.

Up ahead I can see the chestnut
I’d set in hard earth, rootbound
from its first trip away from home,
its siblings dried, counter to the rules
and strung opposite the friends
I’d left behind, broken on the playground.

Its low fork and alternative trunks
are now twisted
up into boughs, bronzed and umbrous
lingering the sun green and ochre
over the lane. I stop
to see how it forms part of a gate,

gives on to the field behind it
its shape leaning accumulated shade
into the walls of a small window,
whilst its sinuous reach
into space, the light I now realise
had always granted it.

Hello everyone,

Our internet connection is still off. Today at work somebody showed me how to connect from my iPhone, so that is how I am sending this to you now.

But it is a bit costly. So, I can only post my poem. Apologies for not commenting on your poems. Maybe we will change to another service of internet. This malfunctioning isn’t sorted out yet.

THE HUNTER

For this poem, I used ideas from two of my recent poems.
And thank you Wendy for letting everyone know about my problem.

Not really happy with this but it’s the first thing I’ve written since week 6.

Poverty, poverty, knock

Alice has donned her clogs and bells
poverty, poverty, knock

the metronymic rhythm beats out
poverty, poverty, knock

George is wearing high heels and sequins
poverty, poverty, knock

glamour beats to its own time and the
poverty, poverty, knock

boys in line, in Stetsons and boots
poverty, poverty, knock

girls form a circle round handbags
poverty, poverty, knock

the dance goes on but still there’s
poverty, poverty, knock

please don’t clap hands or lose
poverty, poverty, shock

New Okanagan Normal
From Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare

A summer’s day, a hazy sky,
more lovely and more eerie.  May
summer’s hot shine and not burn as often,
every chance encounter with humanity changing course.
Eternal summer fade or lose or wander off
in eternal time. So, breathe deeply when you can and
see lives live life to their fullest.

The trill of the castanets
did not ring of birdsong
more the clatter of falling
objects scattered apart.

In our soft-soled indoor shoes
the clicking of heels did not sound,
only the creak of stiff spines.

Straight back      arms aloft
marking the rhythm   chin up
full skirts beginning to twirl.

Before term ends      fingers loosen
castanets flowing like rivers
matching footfall almost pleasing.
The language of dance.

Not managing to catch up very quickly, but here’s something for Theresa’s lovely prompt.  (Wants a better title, but I need to go & listen to a Morpeth Rant or two!).  Back to read & comment shortly.

Childhood is Hills

Land leaps and plunges

to leave the house
is always to go up or down
every neighbour
below us
or above

a low-gear grind
of zig-zag gravel roads
steep dust tracks
and endless steps, a Friday bus
that creeps to us
at walking pace

windows
spill panoramas
treetops, valley, hints of river,
scatterings of rooves, beyond them
a blue smudge
of harbour

it’s home, I take the hills
for granted, scarcely think
about the views
only pause, sometimes
to stare longingly
at the little distant town
wonder

what a valley life might be

(To the rhythm of the music.jpossibly!

Take your partner here we go 
fiddle , drum and  old banjo
and here they go, the old life,
the good times all together,
lost in some dusty archive,
.boxed in attic cupboards
lost in the empty parish hall
forgotten grave and care home

And the sad thing is that the young don’t know 
of the fun they have missed with heel and toe
and the songs we sang with glass in hand 
in country pubs throughout the land
and the orris men with bells and nat
and rapper swords held high in in a lock
in city square and on village green .
When was the last time these were seen?

I chose some words from a poem I would probably totally forget about in a few weeks’ time.

TO SUMMER ENDING SOON

I’m confused about weeks, and thoroughly behind in responding to prompts – but thank you for the new prompt list, Wendy. The scraps I’ve written lately all feel unsatisfactory or unfinished (or both!) but in the interests of catching up…

After

the washing up, the washing
after emails, bank statements, groceries
after paying the plumber, phoning the dentist, dealing
with grime and cobwebs

after that
there will be time
to walk or sit or open a book

although somehow
there rarely is

and so today I choose
before

Revising

Take a poem you are not happy with plus a highlighter pen. Highlight only words, phrases, and images that stand out for you.

Copy these phrases etc, into a new document and build a new poem from these pieces.