Looking Back
 
A rainy day, and I am flicking through
my son’s photo album,
remembering his small fingers
positioning each photo carefully.

Staring out at me, his brother
grinning from the upper bunk,
hemmed in by Mr Men wallpaper
and of course the matching duvet cover.

How young we all are posing
in the Forest of Bere. Husband
in his 1980s plaid jacket, annoyingly
taking up space in the wardrobe today.

All those photos of Dr Who memorabilia
my son got for Christmas and Birthdays,
still wrapped faithfully with other valuables
each time he has had to move house.

Turning pages, I can’t help thinking
of the day  he could have drowned
but managed to swim to the rocks
and capture with his camera
the full force of water at Aysgarth Falls.

Even today, elder son still photographs
each adventure, adult fingers posting
pictures on WhatsApp, far better
for him than memories
held in a photo album.

Only slightly exaggerated.

Careers Advice for Girls, circa 1963

Could do worse
than a nurse

it’s within reach
to teach

typing skills
will pay bills

these are great
while you wait

but a ring
is the thing.

A great prompt, Alan, but I’m not sure about it in terms of my productivity – I spent all yesterday afternoon messing about looking at old photos and not writing a thing!!   As with Patrick, so many I could have focused on, I’d like to go back to this.

Celebrations, Various

I.
The tree sags sideways.
Under its several balloons
my sister in her red-check dressing gown
lost in unwrappings.

II.
bald Uncle Eric
whale-bellied
armchair-beached
snores off the morning’s beer

III.
The Mini at our front door
bright orange, brand new, gift-crowned
with a vast crepe-paper bow
my mother staring at it
nervously

IV.
two small boys in shorts
scuffed, smeared
with half-eaten Easter eggs
do they look guilty
or faintly sick
or both?

Page Seven

I’d never seen him in uniform before.

Proud as a peacock in his pilot’s blue.

It was moving and sad, to think

of this whole life he lived I never knew.

9.4.2026 Solitaire

Two can play at that game

he plays the game with marbles

she prefers to use playing cards
having been shuffling the deck for years

he drops a marble and the cat thinks
this is a new game and bats it across the floor

she is teaching her daughters
the infinite variety of patience
and they are learning more all the time

he watches the cat bat his marble across
the kitchen and under the fridge, amused
at the cat’s reaction when it doesn’t come back out

she watches as he tries to play without
that lost marble, just out of reach

he thinks of getting her attention by hiding
her packs of cards

she was always one step ahead

August 1972 in Fading Colours

I
Distinctive dark brown slats on white plaster
Many windows, many sizes
Painfully short grass

II
William, atop a column, not far from home
possibly reciting ‘to be or not to be’

III
Gradual rolling green hills
littered with ewes and lambs
that never seem to stop

IV
Uncle Rod with Land’s End behind
waves crashing, gulls crying

V
A tiny church covered in cup fragments,
a crowd inspecting
awaiting a return visit

Two tiny boys stare at the camera
with something approaching fear.
Behind them a man in airforce uniform, 
his wife stiff and expressionless.

He looks up for the next hand hold
his beard points to the sky
his knitted hat threatening to fall.
Rather the hat than him.

Now she leans over a desk,
pen in hand, signing her name.
He stands by, watching,
looking into the future.

He is a silhouette against the sky
The summits fade  into clou
Far, far below, the lake  is a puddle.
He stands triumphat.
. 

They sit together on a bed
their arms round each other.
as if clinging to this happy moment
preceding a doubtful future.

wG

laptop, laptop (skewed), i-pad, note-pad, pen

–          –     –

long lines of looped scarlet,
carmine, kingfisher and mustard
neat, in the lie
of a crochet blanket

–          –     –

pavement:
tilted kerbstones
that contain
the shifting walkways
of infilled utility

–          –     –

he’s six foot
and a skipping rope

–          –     –

a tumble of pens,
pencils
clustered in a pot of glazed roses

–          –     –

doors
hooked open
for the sun to step in
past street-furniture
over brief shadow
from the roll of traffic
to see
the new season’s stock

the closing statement.

What can I say, it’s only a photograph album

Some of the images have long since fallen out
but the full length portrait of Great Aunt Ida
still holds her place in proper Victorian dress,
and the stern face she presented to her family.

Other aunts and uncles are sometimes named,
more often they have been forgotten known
only to history. The cousins are all more recent.
There’s Cousin George in his sailor suit alongside
sister Lucy, dressed as a flower girl for somebody’s
wedding – no mention of the bride and groom.

One picture shows a little girl – you tell, she’s wearing
a dress – but age has obscured her face – she might
be me, although no-one has thought to name her.
She steps out of a summer house I vaguely recall.
I am shown in an old-fashioned pushchair with
my mother – both named – aged two-and-a-half.
Me, that is. No school photos, although there are
a couple of my brother and sister, one of him holding
the cat as if his life depended on her being there.

A wedding picture but the rest of them are elsewhere.
Baby pictures of the three girls – un-named but I
know who they are. Other family pictures have
disappeared, Louise on her first day before school,
the other two girls on holiday – leaving my life
incomplete. Who took them? Maybe he did?

I agree with Patrick that this is a great prompt..I think you can become a tutor in Poetry School if you wanted to!

It brought back many memories..

FRAGMENTS FROM A PHOTO ALBUM

How to build a fire

She buys you a book
Norwegian Wood
which holds all sorts
of Nordic secrets
to burning well
and long and warm
how to lay the logs
the kindling, how to
light the whole.
You never read it.
And she grows cold. 

Firebug

As a kid, she says,
she couldn’t seem
to help it

matches
fidgeting in her pocket
always noticing
sticks in a ditch or
some dry scrubby bit of ground
she lit
and lit and lit
little fires
watched their hunger

a shed, once
more than she’d meant
chaos of hoses, shouting men,
great walls of exploding flame
no, she didn’t
get caught
but she stopped then

so long ago
hastily brushes off
the ashes of what she’s saying
doesn’t want me to hear
how it can still spark through her
the old appalling longing

What a great prompt! I could write a bookful, but I’m not sure how interesting they are…

8.4.2026 Budleigh Salterton, perhaps

2026.04.06 Day 6 What there is to see

She stoops in the bee light
turns over the embers
with a garden fork
sweet smoke rises
stings her eyes
her life story safe
in the ashes

Imagine an old photo album, full of small photographs – maybe they’re annotated, maybe they’re not. The prompt is to write any number of small poems that consist of a single image – just a few words will do for each image, but fill them out as you wish or even give them a title – keep them sharp though!

The End and Beginning of Lytton

Wildfires burning everywhere
So many human-caused,
but the one that burned down Lytton
its’ cause stands unexplained after five long years.
The town folk blame the railways,
the railways blame a lightning strike.
Two persons unaccounted for,
their names have been withheld.

By last June a few houses have returned
as government money was slow.

Still no town hall, food mart, bar, motel, hospital, or bank.
Only one business has been rebuilt,
the Chinese History Museum.

We Hardly Give It A Thought

If fire could speak
its tongue –
what could it say?

that to consume
the brittle waste of summer
was a throwaway word

or to burn a ship,
with squads of torches of a Tuesday evening
is mere tradition

or maybe it will oxidise
carbon, silicon and manganese
for rails, rifled iron

to tender as construction
with just a whisper of protection
to consume a tower block

that still shouts
its verse of eternal sulphur –
or tell a candle

in simple conversation
of seared courgettes,
scallops and a glass of wine.

This was not what I had intended writing but Prometheus and Oppenheimer just weren’t picking up on my pleas for ideas.

Conversation after the Funeral

Did you get Mum’s ashes
he asks at Dad’s funeral
No she says I thought perhaps
you had picked them up
Never mind he says we can
reamer out the wood burner
and bulk them up that way

about six months later she
drives the 250 miles back home
and calls at the funeral parlour
we still have your mother’s ashes
she says and dusts off the casket

 Fire
 
I was out of bed early today
roused by a single blackbird
casting its song across the rooftops
in the ringing exclamation of morning,
and I, into the kitchen barefoot
go, unsteady from the darkness of dreams
to fill the kettle for tea
with a spoonful of honey to spare
the shock of the waking day,
but suddenly comes a dazzle of light:
The sky is on fire!
 
If you go
to the very top of our garden
stand by the old apple tree
from where the blackbird sings,
you can view the sea’s tide
rising to greet the sun in its dawning,
throwing its waves up haphazardly
at the islands of Sark and Herm
which slumber in the cool waters
like basking sharks, and unbelievably
they’re oblivious of that fire in the sky
careless even,
of the blackbird’s demanding song
and even of me
barefoot in my cotton nightgown
making tea
 

No clouds tonight, I can
lie in bed and watch the moon

astonished, again, to think
four people of my species
are there
spinning close to it

I want to marvel at this,
lose myself in the extraordinaary,
I want to believe in the moon’s
luminous unbreakable beauty,
believe in skill and bravery,
that new knowledge
is rich and wonderful

and because I also want
to be able to sleep
I try to push away echoes
of other things, the NASA bulletins
that speak of maintaining
American leadership in space
a permanent moon base
superiority in exploration

for the benefit of all  they say
I do not believe them.

Toast

My father’s toasting fork
hangs by my kitchen gas fire
with a door that does not open .
The wire construction 
has warped through years of use.
It was Dad’s job to make the toast.
He drew his armchair onto the hearth rug
and held the bread to the bars.
Mum spread jelly dripping from Sunday’s joint.

Mum and I made the hearth rug from old clothes
and an old sack from the grain-mill across the road..
 I can still feel the pressure of the scissors
against my thumb as I cut the strips. 

The fire glowed through the bars.
I looked into the caves between the coals 
where dragons guarded their hoards
and tried not to think about Cinders
the young girl who, according to rumour
burnt to death on our hearth
when her nightgown caught fire.

Today the fire service came
to fit new fire alarms.
My daughter wants Dad’s toasting fork when I die.
Not to use. To remember.
WG

Astronauts in Space
 
Forget the poor plumbing
on the Artemis.
let yourself think
of the foursome bonding,
chatting together like
kids out to play
telling each other
their mortal dreams,
and not able to resist
fixing eyes on the earth
as fantastical as fusion power.

‘Fire’ has such negative connections in my mind- including hell fire…So my poem is a bit on the dark side..

THE NEWS

This feels most out of place amongst the amazing Artemis poems and conversation, but in the interests of catching up…

Examinations

Blurred feverish half-doze
tram-loads of facts looping
through my head on rattling tracks
I dare not sleep, for what if
some crammed-in essential thing
edges into dreams, escapes, leaves me unable
to separate Mensheviks from Bolsheviks,
find an example of ergative verbs, or remember
the Latin for insomnia?
What then?

Next day, in frenzies of tiredness and anxiety
I will scribble down every fact that I can summon
walk out and
never think of them again.

After so much angst, I wanted to write something forward-looking, hopeful. There was a tradition at the farmhouse of laying a fire for the next visitor, so I took that idea as my starting point.

7.4.2026 before closing the door

Like many of you I’ve been struck by the contrast between what’s going on up there and down here, it’s almost as if two futures are hanging in the balance and I think we can all agree on the one we’d prefer. I’m amazed by the Artemis mission but also deeply concerned. Mapping so often precludes, possession and possession leads to aggression because what is mine is therefore not yours. I worry we are gearing up to plunder our most beautiful satellite exactly as we’ve plundered our beautiful earth. Then must we hope for a vengeful Artemis to protect her bounty and punish us for our greed? Maybe I’ll write a poem about her!

One step forward, two steps back

As you flew by the moon
taking its measure, photographing
even its darkest, unseen parts
flying us all into a bright future
some of us had already lost

threats of a return to the dark ages
pinged off satellites, tracing new
constellations of violence across
the littered night skies, even as you
catalogued planets at sunrise and sunset;

Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn. As you
mapped new craters, you blessed
unseen places with precious names
an act of love, heedless to the fact
that naming is the first act of aggression.

Plunged into silence out there
on the dark side of the moon
did you even know how crude oil greed
continued to bloom its bloodied red
across the hands of our nations?

As you flew by the moon
taking its measure, did you feel
the taut tug of gravity, remember
how it is to love this broken earth
did the pull of home blow your mind?

the furious toll exacted as one thing leads to another

first it’s the daughter
this leads to the father
the son avenges on his mother
all for the man whose wife has left him

this leads to the father
when his wife exacts her revenge
for their daughter’s murder

the son avenges on his mother
who sees the woman more complicit
than the man – what ever changes

all for the man whose wife has left him
middle-aged, lacking in imagination
for a young man full of passion – hot stuff

Was There a Plan? 

I am sad and awestruck
and full of anxiety
The crew are busy and proud
and empty of energy

The sun is all bright,
the moon is half dark

On the far side, they could shout and scream,
we would not hear them
Perhaps they wish they could just keep going
out past Mars and Saturn,
and the Horsehead Nebula,
out to the beginning of when we all began
as stars
as dust

The dark side

And her arrows rain down
on the cities, the schools,
the markets, the bridges,
the water supplies
while our minds are diverted,
our eyes turned elsewhere
with praise for her namesake
high up in the skies.

WG.April 2026

I watch them on a screen
smiling and tumbling
as if in a washing machine.
They peer closely at me
say they can see earth
and how beautiful it is

and YES it is beautiful

the daffodils are out
the sun is shining
a new born calf totters
in the field out the back.

A warm breeze blows
through blackthorn blossom
puffs up a smoke signal
of smut black crows.

I hang the washing out
crooked garments dance
against blue  big sky
I want to see them

wonder if they can see me

I wave just in case
flap a red jumper
to catch their attention
shout thank you

tell them I have named
the little calf Artemis.

It seems a shame that a trip of wonder has been overshadowed by war in the way it has. I saw that the astronauts were wearing orange jumpsuits, and this poem followed. I’m not sure about the italics, which indicate the names that might appear on a paint chart.

6.4.2026 Artemis

Artemis

I prayed for myself, and my sins
then for my family
my friends
and for all those I know.
I prayed for the wider community
the country to which it belongs
and how it might be
beyond its borders.
And not to leave anyone out
I prayed for the whole world
with everyone in it, failing
to take into account
four astronauts
taking passage to the moon.

This prayer is for them.

Oh dear, already slipping slightly behind – the night before + Artemis not yet taking shape! Tomorrow…

Another report from Iran

Another name I know although
I wouldn’t have recognised a picture
of the place even before the bombs,
too long ago now, all I remember
of Bandar Abbas is the heat and
those small roadside shacks
where we would buy a drink
or fresh chapatis, sit at tin tables
in some scorched scrap of shade
and watch lizards on the walls
while the stallholder
squeezed orange after orange into glasses
stirred in salt to sharpen the juice’s flavour.

One day I hope I will write an excellent poem or poems about the Greek gods and goddesses..It is one of my future goals. But at the moment, this is something very small- a small step in that direction, maybe.

THE WOODS

Easter Sunday
 
The early morning walk
with my Grandparents over
fields to the next village,
face hot with laughter,
picking delicate primroses
to the harmony of church bells,
the irresistible Easter Eggs
lined up like soldiers at home,
unaware, this  childhood time
had to disappear.

You can venture to the dark side of the moon, or imagine the claustrophobia. Safe journey!

ps april 5 2026 Those Completely Blind CAW

Working Out

Despite the semblance of a ‘to do’ list
you sit by an open window
two elbows
hands, breathing
in the acrid, bitter blackness of coffee

as if to savour the angled years revealed
in a garden now withdrawn
into itself
its fence, shed,
chairs of arid rain, its growth of detritus heavy

against the humidity of yesterday’s breath
now held, by the cold
of a still night, our evening’s
words long caught
in the slender-budded branches of rowan,

lilac and viburnum, each thought so detail-
delicate, picked out
on the surface of a morning,
its stiff shadows
to be released by the minutes of your sun.

Caring for Coco the puppy

Sitting on her haunches, buttocks spread wide, tail at rest for a change,

sun bringing out the shine in her mottled coat, Coco’s mistress relaxes at last!

To all those middle aged mamas

out there walking in your on-trend trainers, your punch-pink fleeces, your skin-tight leggings or your too-baggy joggers, with or without your poodles or your labradors or your blue-eyed huskies, you posse of witches with your wristwatches registering steps –

I see you I see you      I see you

I see your spare-tire love handles, your menopausal muffin-tops, your sad, sighing chicken-fillet breasts and your saggy bottoms, I see your last-ditch, must-work bid to shed five pounds, trim that waist, tone those biceps, to wind back the hands of your biological clock –

I see you and you are beautiful, bitches

I see you laugh-drunk on friendship, your wobbly-bits jiggling, your wrinkles crinkling, your generations of togetherness as you walk about alone or in packs, I see your strength and your power, your needs-must, knuckle-down pull-it-together mentalities holding the world up –

I see you     all of you     you beautiful mamas