Just before tea and bed
a splash of oil swirled
slow  still  in a dark puddle
his face illuminated
by a bright pit light
strung above his head

the dark chassis of a car
drip dripped dark rust tannin
like tea leaves left in a cup
as if it were his own blood
falling into the water below
an upside down rainbow
with all the luck tipping out

he rescued a frog once
cradled it in his oily hands
brought it to the surface
let me touch it’s cool skin
told me to make a wish

 A radio raps until tea time
 men in smart chinos
plug in huge silent cars
no oil, no frogs,
no rainbows.

For Falling In Love With A Mole.

Mother said,
Remember to wear velvet.
Pretend you like worms
at least to start with.
Do not meet at night
in a remote field,
establish boundaries early on
suggest a first date at dusk
in a suburban garden.
Forget about open plan living
and clean shag pile.
Do not disturb on digging days,
but look impressed when
he emerges nose first from a heap of soil.
Don’t tell your father about the lawn
and remember there is always light
at the end of tunnel if you are both in love.

This is very much a work in progress (as is the wood, now I come to think of it!).

It takes time to fall in love with a wood

Begin with a shrug.  This wood
does not exist. How can you love it?

Frown as you trudge the edges of their plan
your boots heavy with mud and pessimism.

Feel a flicker of hope. Imagine other landscapes
emerging from acres of exhausted cabbage fields.

Marvel as, month by month, hundreds of people
plant thousands and thousands and thousands of trees.

Notice how quickly hazel and blackthorn settle
how butterflies arrive to explore the margins.

Delight in the thickening of oaks
in silver birch already twice your height.

See hares. Hear woodpeckers. Let yourself
believe in nightingales.

Stop Looking and He Will Appear

Present yourself truthfully
Give criticisms gracefully
Speak praises succinctly
Bake cookies cautiously
Read Pratchett as well as Asimov (and discuss)
Call, don’t text
When ready, reveal yourself ‘one star at a time’

Hi Folks. Hoping this is week 23.!! The prompt is to write a poem about Change and if you want to add a little extra challenge to that then acknowledge the style of Elizabeth Jennings whose centenary it is. Have fun. I will endeavour to check in but we are getting nearer to moving date…

Ah, why do I ever say I’ll be available? Of course then there had to be massive student protests. Of course my daughter had to leave her high school to find riot police and gas on the streets and no bus to take her to her dance classes. Of course she had to spend 4hrs trying to get home, thank god with a friend, before I managed to reach them and navigate the beleaguered public transport system till they were both where they should be. And of course she then didn’t want to go to school on Friday and risk it all again. I am with all my heart behind the young and brave sixth form protestors who have been treated with violence and disregard by the authorities. But I am also kind of hoping they won’t be protesting again tomorrow. Anyway, here is my effort about falling in love with a book…

Seven steps to falling in love with a book

Do not read it because you should.

Do not read it because it won a Pullitzer or a Booker or the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Do not read it for its 5-star Goodreads review or its no.1 bestseller status, or because
it made Reese Whitherspoon’s bookclub or has now been adapted into a major motion picture.

Read it because it makes your heart sing.
Read it because it leaves you hungry as a new-sprung caterpillar.
Read it because you want to know more.

When you are ready to begin, have broken the spine and ceased inhaling the heady
fresh-print scent of its brand new pages, choose your spot. Somewhere comfy and quiet.
Leave your phone far enough away you will only get up for emergencies.

Tea or coffee, water or juice will help with hydration. Biscuits, cake or chocolate are not
obligatory but may help create a propitious environment. Falling in love takes time.
Do not feel guilty if this is the case, it is okay to do only this for a while.

When you are done, when you have fallen so completely you cry when you reach the last word
when it feels as if the characters are your friends and you have seen the insides of their minds
and still love them, share it. Share it with your neighbour. Share it with your bookclub or your auntie or that girl you met on the bus who said she loved poetry. Share it with the world.
Of all the many things it should be, true love should never be selfish.

i have fallen in love

with my physiotherapist
his mile, the twinkle, in his eyes,

The way

he cones in to my room
leans against the doorpost.

i have falleen in love with his teeshirts.

a slogan on each.

i was so impressesd

Oxford University embalsened across his chest.

Did you go to Oxford? I asked.

no, he said,

ibought it from a charity shop.

how we laughed.

he is not a greek god 
yesterday it was Florida University.
😄
’I have a collection, he said.

cam’t wait fortoday’s visit.

I used seven lines, seven sentences- a love poem

THE FALL

ps week 21 2026 Tunnel of Life CAW

My sincere apologies. Due to my failure to post a prompt on the 21st we are all out of sink. Jo valiantly stepped in and posted her great nature/emotion prompt a week early. Mary after seeing the rota Almira posted for me, which confirmed her week was next week, prefers to keep her change prompt for next week and has removed it. I’m very sorry for the fuss and confusion. Can I suggest that this week anyone who hasn’t posted yet waits until next week to submit their change poems for Mary? In case she doesn’t check back in till then. In the meantime anyone for who needs or wants  another prompt to chew on (for this week or next)  how about a belated one from me?

Write seven steps to falling in love (with a person, with an animal, with a place, with a book, with yourself, with whatever). The poem should be 7 lines or 7 sentences or if you’re really inspired 7 stanzas. You could stick to a strict seven based meter too or pick any form that involves 7 or multiples of 7 so even a sonnet. 

I hope this is helpful and if it’s not ignore it! I’ll be in the kitchen with a cuppa and a chocolate biscuit later today and tomorrow. Then I will be blissfully absent until Monday, which is my birthday,  as the rest of my family who are not here in Bordeaux with me and my youngest daughter are visiting for the weekend.

love to all h

I will check spelling tomorrow.

  Improvement?

The beautiful venetian  harbour/span>
has been improved.
That is their word for it, 
Not mine
Now it is spotless, surrounded by restaurants
And many of the old characterful buildings
have been swept away along with the charm
and history..
The Minoans were here
Their walls still are
Towering above our heads
What would they make of it all?
The mosque is still glowing on the newlly paved square.
Displaying the work of budding young artistS.
The Maritime museum still stands next to the Fort.
But where is the bar where we danced the sousta, 
the syrtosl
the mantinades,the kalamatianos?
Does anyone dance them now?
Where is the stall where you could buy
a tasty lunch of meat and chips
for a few drachmas?
The restaurants predominate,</span
Their tills clicking.

I wrote to Mary’s prompt but if Jo later gives another prompt, I will write something for her also.

And, nobody wrote anything to my belonging/unbelonging prompt, except Wendy!!!

It was the week of Wendy’s fall news and ironically only poor Wendy wrote to my prompt.

Anyway, I will try to think of something better for my next prompt and in the meantime, I post my poem about change.

CHANGE OF MOMENTUM

Inspiration drawn from my neighbours’ lawns, which are not entirely recovered from the drought.

The forgiveness of grass

the slightest caress of rain

grass opens its burnt heart
unfurls greenness
tender   hopeful

seems to need so little
as if it will struggle up again
however cruel the damage

yet in the haze of new green
are scars, dust-bare patches
where nothing is growing

I think about grass as I stand drenched
in another brief downpour
of your attention

just enough, I expect you think,
to keep things alive

it is possible to die in increments
I will not always be
a velvet lushness under your feet

Not sure this is quite right but. back in the saddle.

As I’m driving the river road home

I catch her right in my headlights
her long silken ears prick to attention
her whole body turns rigid.

Underneath her coat I imagine
her fascia trembling, her heart
beating faster than a Shinkansen.

She is the caught in the bright arc
of articfical sun, so unexpected.
As if never in this life has she ever

known less how to behave, how to
breathe, how to keep moving, how
to survive, how to thrive.

She is beautiful and fragile.
And not fearless but something braver
for all this last only seconds before

she rushes headlong into the verge-dark
headlong into a future full of more moments
like this one. Or scarier.

2026.09.27 Week21 It depends where you fall

Patchwork Cat
My cat is a patchwork cat
A tortoiseshell, once a stray,
She hung about the garden,
Sad and thin, and thinner everyday
So we took her in, that wild-eyed child
And gained her trust and fed her
She’s a mixture of all the fears she’s faced
her experiences all mixed together,
the alley cats and fights and brawls
and lives lived by her mother,
they’re forged in her and made her brave
for the battles fought by her father,
Bits of ginger cat on one leg
and tabby on her tum,
tiger stripes, and on her face
the trace of a coal black tom,
There’s remnants of a Persian cat
in her full and bushy tail,
but a sly and wily light in her eye
from the Siamese on the hill,
my cat is a patchwork cat alright
a collection of feline mischief,
she’ll win you over with her charms
and purr and ask for more,
but just when you believe she’s yours
she’s off and out the door!

Owls

Last night owls were hooting
conjuring ghosts amongst shadows and chimneys
stringing the trees together
with their soft flapping

my grandparents garage
smelt of petrol and foxes
the skeletons of spiders
hung   balletic  hinge like
suspended for ever
in sunlit dust

blown birds eggs
lay in wooden drawers
curated in freckled order
from the palest blues and green
to shades of speckled brown

the silent chant of unsung songs and  tiny cracks in their delicate shells lit an empty
long ago world
the husks of childhood
never quite finished

a faint vibrato over the fields
melting into the black wax night
made me think of him

I have been away so long I am ashamed to show my face in the kitchen but could secretly really do with a chocolate bourbon. I hope that’s okay. And I hope you are all well? After seeing the news about Wendy, I feel the need to do a head count – serves me right for being such a summer flake. I did move from Brittany to Bordeaux (at least for term time) so that was a bit of an upheaval and has stolen almost all my writing time away from me. Sort of settled now and back in the saddle. I will read through some poems and get back in the groove. Missed you all. x x love h

Hello everybody,

I chose rain as a phenomenon from nature, since it has become a phenomenon itself now in climate change.

I really liked this prompt.

THE MIDNIGHT RAIN

Wishing you a wonderful and sunny week!

I hope it is the right week for me to set a prompt. I have been a very lazy poet this summer.

I am my mother’s daughter

But not my father’s.
We never saw eye to eye
On any topic
In any location
By any stretch of the imagination,
Of which he had none.
He only saw the concrete blocks to build with.
With the shades of blue and green beneath the water’s surface,
I wrote the poems of forgiveness.
He folded the paper into equal squares to build a box ,
He followed all instructions to tile the basement floor,
He never learned from his mistakes because
he never made them (so he said).
My words may be harsh toward him, but knowing
what I now know about the man,
I’m being kind.
My mother told me once she should have left him,
But she wasn’t brave enough.
I think that she was extremely brave, she stayed for me.

Behind again with prompts, I’m going to have to work backwards…  Something for this week, anyway, although I’m struggling for more useful title.

Visiting

I hate it when the aunts suggest a cup of tea
and mum asks for coffee.

Of course she asks politely, smiles
her best red-lipstick smile. She looks
so pretty amongst them! Her yellow dress
is sunlight, her shoes have little bows.

Even so, I know she won’t get coffee.
The aunts will say they’ve run out.  Sorry.

I wish wish wish
they’d love my mum as much as I do.
But even I can hear how the doors
in their conversation slam shut against her.

It must be the coffee, I think.
The wanting something different.

Doing the Maths

Some do some don’t.
Some can some can’t
Some will some won’t
essome have some not

That just about sums it up.

Belonging
Untitled

I have taken root
a bedding plant
Leaves spouting out of me ears
Fed and watered at regular intervals
A team of gardeners
Dispensing curative  potions
from 6 to 12o midnight
I just wish they would transplant me.

Son John flew here to look after me and has been allotted a superb apartment in prime position in old part of , facing Minoan walls   1000 BC.

ps week 19 2026 Its Called Climate Change CAW

Thanks Gul, I also heard from Wendy and she’s sounding cheerful. What happened was she fell over a coffee table on the second day she was there, in Crete, and a doctor nearby came to her rescue. Thankfully she’s in a good hospital now; Saga saw to everything. In the first hospital relatives of the patients had to be there day and night to look after them. Looking forward to when you’re back online and can return home, Wendy!

Hello everybody!

Wendy just wrote me telling me how she is doing and asked me to pass on her news to you.

She is in a private hospital right now. But before she was in a public hospital with no care after her operation.

Her son flew there to help her out two days ago. He went to his hotel when Wendy wrote me this note. She also says that some insurance pays for everything, including hospital.

Also a physiotherapist came and walked her with a walker. She says she will be back online soon.

I wish her a big recovery!

I guess this poem could act as a sample poem to my prompt of this week. Inspired by autumn apart from anything else…

THE LEAF

Hello Everyone,

I am back from the UK. My reading at the Tears in the Fence Festival went fine. I stayed a couple of days in London, too: buying books, visiting exhibitions- I can never get enough of London. On my return, I was shocked by Wendy’s news- I really hope she recovers soon.

This week’s prompt is mine. I am giving it from today since I have to be out early tomorrow. And it is this:

Prompt: Write a poem about belonging/ unbelonging, like being an insider or an outsider. It could be you/ other people/ an object, real or imaginary. Happy writing!

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! 😊