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Such Fun It was such fun to jump in autumn puddles, that made mud spatters on my red wellies and pale, sun starved legs, in weather too wet to kick up the leaves that lay swept soggily into piles. And when winter came, such fun to leap into snow drifts that came over the tops of my red wellies and my extra socks as I tested the deepness of the snow and the slipperiness of the ice slide. Come the summer rain, I tried on my red wellies but they had grown too small or me too large, so I got my feet wet when I jumped in the stream. Such fun, but I missed my red wellies. First published in Midnight Circus, Fall issue, EAB publishing https://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Circus-Fall-EAB-Publishing/dp/1537355457/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1474753123&sr=8-11&keywords=midnight+circus+eab+publishing
My Father’s Son I never knew my father’s son. Even though I met him once, or maybe twice, I never knew him. And then I met his son. Caught him miraculously in a net. Held on to him tightly. And, I found that he hadn’t left early, my father’s son. He’d waited for me, wondering, for a long time. And so I found him, my father’s son. When he was just ninety six, I found him. But I was too late to know him. At ninety five, he was already dead. So I never knew him, my father’s son. https://www.createspace.com/6575459 First published in Scarlet Leaf Review, May 2016
The Hoopoes Are Back The hoopoes are back, even though the walls and holes they liked to nest in were destroyed by human nest builders four years ago, when there was a housing boom and money to be made. The hoopoes are back, even though the new holes and rubble they liked to nest in were destroyed by human nest builders three years ago, even though, there was no market for nests and no money to be made. The hoopoes are back, even though the new holes and rubble they liked to nest in were washed away two years ago, as the walls that stopped the storm flow were destroyed by human nest builders, to prepare the ground for money to be made. The hoopoes are back, even though their nesting places are hidden, buried under growing mountains of rubble brought by the human nest builders a year ago as there is no demand for human nests and no money to be made, except from rubble. Hey, the hoopoes are back! I’ve seen
It’s Clear On a clear night I should see the moon full silver in a sky shot by moonbeams. Not greyed by a smoky mist and dust clouds rising from the ruins. I should see a black, black sky. Not bright from the orange glow from the fires of hell on earth. Which send sparks high enough to compete with the stars, the pinpoint moonbeam spangles. Not beamed by lasers. I should hear the silence in the depth of the black night, not the explosive cacophony bought by the masters of war and the silent screams buried in the rubble. I should hear people talking in the street and the music and laughter of the night. I should see them walking home to feel firm flesh loving and soft unsplintered and unblemished by shrapnel, unbroken by the metal clad monsters masquerading as humanity and wrapping themselves in the uniforms of thousand years old myths dressed up as history. These should be my rights. But they aren’t.
Like Alice I’m too big. I’m too small. I can’t I fit in, fit into this, rabbit hole world, any more than I did the other, the above ground world. Both can’t be wrong, can they? It must be me that doesn’t fit, that can’t be made to fit into them. Me that’s wrong. Both worlds can’t be wrong, can they? First published in Poetry Breakfast, September 2016 https://poetrybreakfast.com/2016/09/19/like-alice-a-poem-by-lynn-white/
Dreamers The sun is standing still for them Standing still for the streams of dreamers. Dreamers streaming down the roads to somewhere else. From somewhere that has become nowhere. Dreaming of escape. Dreaming of a future, any future. Dreaming of better things to come. Dreaming of the life they once had. Dreaming of normality, whatever that means. Dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. Dreaming of returning when the sun comes up again, if ever it does. First published in Expound, Issue 6, 2016 https://bywriters.com/poetry/dreamers-583/
Dawn Chorus It starts with one. One skylark singing. One Carson warning. Then the robins and blackbirds join in. The early birds, like Carson. Then the wrens and warblers as the daylight warms them. Listen. Can you hear them? The warning calls are warming up as well, strengthening their numbers as the bird song dies away. Listen. Listen. Can you hear them? Listen. Don’t sleep. Don’t wait to hear the silence. First published by Ealain, Extinctions Issue 7, April, 2015 https://intothebardo.wordpress.com/portfolio/dawn-chorus/
In The End In the end I’ll be like you. Dust with flakes of skin and bone wrapped in long hair. Teeth chattering With no voice. No sense of taste or smell. No reason. In the end we'll be invisible, impenetrable, anonymous, figments. But then, we always were you and I, we always were. First Published in In Flight Magazine, Paper Plane Pilots, January 2015 http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1155666?__r=116913
Washed Up So many dead people caught in the crossfire created by the the money men, the arms traders, the super ego-ed politicians. They lie dead where they fell. Flesh and blood transformed to fertilizer to nurture the seeds and grow the crops, in a future they will not see. Their bones decaying to dust to form the building blocks of homes they will never inhabit. Dying where they fell, over there, not here and not looking like us. Unseen or soon forgotten by us here. But the dead washed up on holiday beaches look like our flesh and blood. They’re wearing our clothes. They’re washing up to haunt us in the Old World. Then there’s the living, washed up alive and by any means necessary moving on to bear witness, if any one is listening. To bring the horror home to those who created it in the Old World. Bringing it home to the Old World, but not as yet to the New. First published in Whirlwind, 2015
A Rose For Gaza Gaza is a garden full of roses. Stone roses. Rock roses. No petals to crush and bruise to release their fragrance. Only dust. Dust and the stench of death. No green space left. No sweet tranquility, peace or quiet. No escape. No garden of Eden here. No gateway to paradise. Rubble and rock roses. So I shall plant a rose for Gaza in my green space, in my tranquil garden. I won’t bruise it, just gently sniff its fragrance and hope that one day fragrant roses will bloom again in the garden of Gaza. What else can I do? http://www.snapdragonjournal.com/store/p14/%22Forgiveness%22_Fall_2016_issue.html
Moving On They said that you never go back once you leave home. I was sure I would and I promised my mother as we packed the big black trunk. I was homesick and in tears those first few days in college. ‘Hay fever’, I said. In September! I promised I’d come home at the weekend And I did, I did as just I’d promised. But I didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to leave all my new friends and all the new possibilities, though it was nice to meet old ones again. I had lots to tell them about my new home, my new friends and my new place. And about all the excitement. I planned for old friends to visit my new home and they did eventually. And then the new went to visit the old. But ‘they’ were right to say that you never go back home once you leave. I never did. Not really. I never went back to stay. First published in Silver Birch
Anxious I am dancing in the sunlight, the bright, bright light. I know the cloud is there but I can forget it, till I stop. And then.. There it is, even bigger and blacker than before. Darker than ever. It doesn’t like me dancing, doesn’t like the laughter or the sunshine. Brightness breaks it, shatters it into a grey mist. But still it won’t leave me. The brighter the sunlight, the louder the laughter, the greater my fear that it will form again and suck me into it’s darkness. http://whispersinthewind333.blogspot.co.uk/
Green Dragon Does the horse believe what he's seeing as the green dragon floats by breathing rainbows from flower filled puffs of breath. Would you believe it? Would I believe it? After all, this is not the usual sort of dragon whose fire filled breaths register alarm. But alarm registers, never the less, as this is not the usual sort of dragon and none of us are sure what will happen next. http://visualverse.org/submissions/green-draon/
